Weekly Wish 03/28/11

My piano tuner is almost done making my piano sound beautiful again!  He had to raise the pitch 12 cents, which is music jargon for "it was kind of obnoxiously flat."  Take that, neighbors who were blasting techno at 7 a.m.! 

Weekly Wish:
Heh... oh yeah, I learned the solo for "Lullabye", but I wish I knew what Ben Folds was playing during the rest of the song.

Last year I only ever had time to learn the structure of a song, and jam along to get the overall feel (which is what we classical-background babies tend to lack most) but didn't have time to listen closely to the details of what the piano player is doing.  The point of my Weekly Wishes project is to learn from piano players I admire by copying them. 

Maybe I've written about this before - I don't remember: I used to be the music coordinator for the Songs of Love Foundation.  One of the veteran songwriter/producers for that organization is also a wonderful pianist - plays jazz, club dates, in cover bands, all the stuff that I think is really cool but kinda suck at.  Once I was over at his apartment - think I was recording vocals for one of the verrrrrry few songs I wrote and sang (I mean, the organizations mission is to make the children feel better hearing their song, so...).  I asked him if he was still studying piano, and with whom. 

"Nah, I haven't taken piano lessons since I was a kid," he said.  I was amazed.  He gestured to his CD tower: "They're my teachers."

I wanna be like them when I grow up.