Friday, September 26, 2014

I've been meaning to post, but my 20% time has been put on hold due to me being sick. However, I have been able to find the "Drunk in Love" sheet music for free! It's six pages, so I've got a lot of work to do before December.

My original approach to playing was to go through the sheet music and write the letter of the note that corresponds with the sheet music and basically memorize the order of the notes. This is how I learned to play songs like "River Flows in You" and "Therapy". Eventually, it became like muscle memory to me because I would practice the same verses over and over again until I got it perfect. My fingers would automatically know where to go and I wasn't really reading and interpreting the sheet music. For me personally, this is the easiest way to get a song on the piano, but that's not what I'm trying to accomplish.

I want to be able to recognize notes on sheet music and on the piano itself without having a reference. I want to be able to sit, see the sheet music and play like a professional. I know that this is not the case for this project. I will have been practicing the same piece for a couple of months so naturally, there will be some memorization and muscle memory that comes into play but my overall goal is to gain a better understanding of how to read music.

Being a perfectionist, it's gonna be difficult for me to accept the fact that when I perform for my peers at the end of the semester that this might not be as good as I want it to be. I might not flow, or I might have to mark certain notes on my sheets to remember certain keys. This project is not based on being perfect, it's to show improvement. Improvement doesn't have to be 0 to 100, improvement can be 0 to 75.

I have spoken with my mentor about helping me learn how to play piano. My mom will be my mentor, she has been playing piano for a very long time and even though she does not play as frequently anymore, she still knows enough of the basics to be an adequate teacher for me. Having my mom as a mentor will be very beneficial because if I have a question, I don't have to call her or email her. She's right there for me. Also, since my mom is a teacher, she will know how to teach me piano skills in a way that will make learning easy for me.