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.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

I've decided that for my 20% project I am going to learn to play the piano, and to show what I've learned, I'm going to focus on mastering one song in particular. My first instinct was to find something by Frank Sinatra or find the sheet music for 'La Vie En Rose'. But after considering that I will be pitching my idea and playing this song in front of my peers, I decided to go with something that would give me a little more "street cred." That is why I will learning to play "Drunk in Love" buy Beyonce and Jay Z on the piano. I haven't actually began to look for sheet music yet, but I am watching tutorial videos on youtube. I am also studying the keys on the piano and how to correctly place my hands and fingers. I am really looking forward to seeing what I'm capable of and hopefully, by December, I will be able to wow my fellow classmates with my Beyonce-piano-playing skills.