Currently learning: Central Park
Yes, a new sort of review... This is actually a song that I'm learning to play on the piano. It's from the King Kong score by James Newton Howard and it is absolutely gorgeous. I've loved this soundtrack, and especially this song, ever since I first heard it, and last week we finally bought the sheet music for it.
I've been playing it every day since it arrived on Tuesday... it's definitely getting easier! There's one part, however, where it's all octaves on the right hand and it's so hard for me because I keep on slipping up and playing an octave and one key. *rolls eyes in exasperation* Still, I suppose it'll just come with practice. It is getting easier. :)
Perhaps when I have it down well enough I'll record it and post the .mp3 on here. If you'd like? :)
posted by The Ocean's Dreams at
11:13 AM
3 Comments:
Of course we would. :) Are your hands actually too big to go to the octave easily, or are you trying to compensate for the difficulty in grabbing for the octave.
I never had problems with the technical aspect of playing the piano. My hands are a great size for playing, and I never had problems with dexterity, as clarinet-playing really conditioned my individual fingers. (Those trills can be murder!)
No, my problem was reading the stinkin' bass clef! I played clarinet for MANY years, so treble was no problem, but I had to calculate each note in bass clef, and that was just too much.
I'd love to hear the piece when you've got it down!
By
Chris, At
14/10/06 11:38
hehe, well then, once I have it down I'll be sure to record it! :)
And yes, it's because my hands are too big. I can reach an octave and two keys without much difficulty (except perhaps a cramp or two if I do too many at once, lol), and, because the songs I play usually have either a little less or a little more than an octave, I'm just not used to playing an single octave... lol. But I just need to practice more, and practicing is the fun part! hehe.
Ooh, I had forgotten you played the clarinet! Do you still play?? It's a beautiful instrument... :) And do you play the piano often?
Yeah, the bass clef use to be really hard for me, too... actually, playing the piano period used to be incredibly hard. See, I took lessons for two years and then I stopped because I was just having a really hard time. My problem was that I was not really learning to read music. I can play by ear to some extent, so I'd play through the song I was supposed to learn once by reading it and then just play it by memory. So I really was struggling when it got to harder pieces that I couldn't memorize so easily.
So I stopped taking lessons. But then when we started coming to Grace and since I started playing for service I was forced to actually learn how to read music. And things to easier from there! And now I'm soooo glad I learned how to read, because I adore playing now... :)
By
The Ocean's Dreams, At
14/10/06 12:10
I play clarinet very rarely anymore. I'm hoping to be able to more often now that I'm pretty much done with school, but we'll see. I miss it a great deal, though. I have dreams about playing in concerts, and sometimes, when I'm driving to work I remember what it was like to play every day...Ah, the good ol' days.
Sounds like you got along in piano how I got along in the piano classes I had to take when I was a music major! :) However, when I used to teach music lessons only half the lessons I did were actual clarinet playing. The other half was entirely devoted to music theory; learning the key signatures (circle of 5ths...WOOT! Still remember it!), time signatures, bass clef, etc. I was determined that my students would not fall into the same problems I fell into. I think that oftentimes, piano teachers get so focused on piano techniques, they miss the theory aspect to music, and while their students end up being able to play piano, they can't read or understand music. Kim can read music and play piano from her piano lesson days, but I feel her teacher really failed her in the same way.
My band director at MJC got around the problem of people memorizing their music by doing a LOT of sight-reading. (Handing out a piece of music and making us play it right then.) In addition, he actually made us try out for positions by sight-reading a piece of music in front of the entire band. He'd walk in the room, pull out a giant ream of paper, and start handing it out. Then he'd tell us he wanted to hear clarinets (or whatever instrument) today. He'd tell us the section to play, and everyone would sit there listening to us try out. Then he'd post the results a couple days later. It was nerve-wracking, but helped us to play in front of people when we did solos and whatnot. After all, if we could do something like that in front of our musically-inclined peers, we should be able to do it for a relatively musically uneducated audience. :)
I play the piano occasionally. Usually, I find chords on the Internet to popular music and play those for the heck of it.
By
Chris, At
14/10/06 14:47
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