# Piano Lessons 5 & 6



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I am a Northerner, and we have a saying in the UK: Northerners believe in '*calling a spade a spade*'.
'_Aye, fair enough_,' is the retort. _'But don't call it *a bl**dy trowel*_.'

If somebody asks me a question about *how I feel*, I have to say what I think. This morning Rho picked up on what she'd asked me last week - I think it has been worrying her, because like me she's a person who has *little niggles*.

So, after I'd explained that I'd have to leave a couple of minutes early because I was due to drive straight down to Pakefield for my fiddle lesson, she asked me again, 'Are you enjoying your piano practice? Or do you find it a chore.'

I said, 'I'm afraid I do find it a bit of a chore.'

'And why is that?'

'It's because I have to concentrate *one hundred percent* for the fifteen or twenty minutes that I'm playing the pieces. If you think about it, there are very few activities to which you have to give one hundred percent of your brain for a sustained length of time.'

'But what about when you're playing the violin?'

'If I'm trying out a new piece, I might have to concentrate like that for a short space. But mostly, the fingers move fairly automatically and I get used to playing.'

I sat down and went through the pieces she'd set me last week. I had improved as far as overlapping the notes were concerned. But I did go wrong a few times when both hands were involved - because as is usual with me when starting out with a new teacher, nerves kick in and I make very silly mistakes that I never make at home.

At the end of the practice, she said I was coming on, but that she didn't want to move me on to new fingering, as she'd planned to this lesson.

'I'd like to leave you to get used to what you've done so far - to have fun when you're playing - so you can get to the stage where you don't have to concentrate so much, and you can relax and not see practice as a chore.'

So she gave me a book for adults, *The Complete Piano Player Omnibus Edition, Books 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5* by Kenneth Baker. Book One contains lots of simple tunes that I will know, played with the introductory fingering that I've been taught. The only downside is that the names of the notes are written over the stave, so I am being given a crutch that I don't need and should not become dependent on it.

We had a go at 'Strangers in the Night', page 44, and I must admit - I enjoyed it! I felt I could even give it a bit of expression and slowed down on the run leading from '*love was just a glance away..*' through the momentous '*ever since that night*...'!

I think Rho's idea is excellent, because when I came back to the violin in 2012, I used to have a go at anything and everything, and my bowing fluency and enthusiasm both improved as a consequence.

Of course, in a way, it is canny of her - she may have surmised that I might decide to give up once Taggart returns to the lessons after Christmas. The thought had certainly crossed my mind...

But as long as Rho remains so considerate, as if she really wants me to get on, I don't think I'll be able to throw in the towel. I just couldn't do that to her.

The table of contents is certainly very *boomeresque*:

_*Banks of the Ohio* - *Can't Buy Me Love* - *Mary's Boy Child* - *Scarlet Ribbons *- *Streets of London *- *What now my love*._

Suddenly I'm feeling *very old*... :lol:

Lesson 6: December 4th 2014

Rho asked me how I'd got on, and I said I had enjoyed playing these sixties tunes. She put me on to page 48, which ironically is one I don't know. There is a bar where I have to play different time with my left and right hands and it utterly foxed me. We stayed with it - she made me count aloud - and eventually I managed. 
Then she put me on to the next page in the Children's Book, When the Saints Go Marching in. Now I am playing the new fingering with my left hand - finger 5/pinkie on the next C down from middle C, and so up to G with my finger 1/thumb. The right hand plays in parallel. Rho advised me not to try and learn the new letters/ notes but to think in terms of *step*s and *skips*. So that is what I've been doing.
At the end of the lesson I told her of my new plan to take the Grade 4 violin exam, ABRSM. My Fiddle Guru, Jim, has agreed to help me, but he is all brilliance and inspiration; he will be wonderful helping me with the exam pieces, but I am worried about the aural tests, where my exam teacher Richard (from whom I parted after he lost his temper with me) used to help me a lot. But Rho has offered to help me with these, and at last I really can see a point with going on with the piano.

All things happen for a reason.


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