Archive for the 'Play Piano & Music' Category

Time flies. Its almost a year now since I started taking my adult pop piano classes. “How come  you’re still not playing any pop songs?” asks my husband. 

Well, I’m trying to learn Mariah Carey’s Hero now so he should recognise that one. I am happy to be able to play Beethoven’s Fur Elise and Baby Elephant Walk now.

My playing is not fantastic. Its offbeat, and does not have enough “feel” (I’m just playing notes and it doesn’t sound melodious or like a song.) Still to be able to play is an achievement enough for me. I’ll work on the “feel” slowly.

And sometimes, I’m lazy. I’d try to guess the notes instead of looking at them properly and I play on my own beat. My teacher would laugh at me. “You ar… just simply play.” she would say.

Its wonderful to be able to realise a dream. Simply wonderful. You are never too old to start learning anything. I wonder what I should learn next. Yes, yes, I’d love to be able to bake but then I don’t have an oven nor the space for one.

This is an example of what usually happens when I am practising songs on my piano.

*tinkle tinkle tinkle*

The boy: Mummy, I want to umm mmm (poo)

*tinkle tinkle tinkle*

The girl: Mummy, can I sit here? (points to the piano chair)

*tinkle tinkle tinkle*

The boy: One more song only ok, mummy? (with a rather sad look on his face)

*tinkle tinkle tinkle*

The girl: Where are you playing now? (Points to the page on the piano songbook)

*tinkle tinkle tinkle* 

The boy: Mummy, why so long?

*tinkle tinkle tinkle*

The girl & The boy: *puff puff* (blowing air and saliva all over the piano keys)

MG: What are you all doing?!?

The girl & The boy: We’re helping you to clean the dust from the piano, mummy.

*no more tinkle* *pulls hair* instead!

Don’t know why everytime I try to practise songs on the piano, or trying to exercise etc, they suddenly want to go to the toilet, feel more thirsty then ever etc. AAAAARRRGGH! *Thumps chest*

YOU MUST WATCH THIS! ITS REALLY FASCINATING!

Someone sent Mr MG an email link to this amazing hand puppet song by Ray Crowe. I’m sure everyone has heard of that song “What a Wonderful World”. The accompanying hand puppet show is simply amazing and befitting the song. I found it too delightful not to share on my blog.

My kids love playing with torchlights in the dark and making shadow puppets with their hands. They loved it. I loved it. I hope you do too. Have a Wonderful Day you all.

Piano Lessons Update. My piano lessons have been going well. Teacher praises me occassionally. She says my sight reading is good, I learn fast and I’ve got a good feeling for music. Ahem! During my half hour lesson, hubby takes the kids to the park after dropping me at piano school. So they all enjoy themselves too.

I am diligent in my practise because I love it. However, even though I practise hard and sound ok at home, when I get to the class, my fingers stiffen and I make mistakes. I am suffering from Performance Anxiety.

Silly isn’t it? Despite my practise, despite teacher’s praises, despite it being an individual class with no one else around, I still feel nervous when playing for the teacher. I don’t feel nervous when playing for myself. In fact, I play with much more feeling too but in class, the feeling disappears in place for a nervous or performance anxiety feeling. Bleargh! 

My pop piano teacher is about 15 years younger than me, I think. The first thing she said to me when I arrived for my class is “Do you speak Mandarin?” Haha. Sorry. You can’t conduct the class in Mandarin or I would be totally lost.

I didn’t want to waste the first 1/2 hour of my class (each class is 1/2 hour long) discussing about what she was going to teach me. So I brought along my own book and played a piece for her which I had been practising for the past 2-3 weeks. Hahaha.

I discovered that pop piano is very different from classical piano. Its much easier to learn. She basically just told me to play the piece again with my right hand then she taught me an improvisation pattern for the left hand and told me to play it that way.

I played a while and very soon she was saying “Ok bye. See you next week.” Huh?! The lesson was over before I knew it. Too soon!

With pop piano, you just need to know some basics and patterns or styles and playing is entirely up to you to improvise (come up with your own style basically). In no time at all you will be able to play like a pro. No boring theory and practise pieces to play. Hehe. I like! I like!

I hope to be able to pretend to sound like a pro in a few months. That is my objective for learning. More updates later on.

I’ve always wanted to learn the piano but we didn’t have enough money so dad sent me for organ electone classes instead. It was cheaper to get an organ and it fulfilled my desire to learn some music. Dad bought the organ on hire purchase terms. It has served me very well and been with me for a long time. I’ve since sold it. I learned the organ around age 12, I think. I can’t remember!

Anyway, back to my organ. It has moved several places from Kuantan to KL to Penang and to KL again. It has been played by my cousin in Penang who loved it so much that she later took up some Clavinova lessons. It has been played by my nephews who loved it so much that they took up organ lessons of their own and got their own organ later on.

I stopped my organ lessons when we were moving around so much but took it up again when I was working. I was able to pay for my own lessons then. I studied till Grade 6. Later on I even taught a little girl till she took exams for her First Level, (that would be Grade 13 if I’m not mistaken). I was very happy to be able to achieve that.

What is this all leading to? The story of my very first pop piano lesson of course. I will save that for another post. Hehe.

This morning I tried to listen to my personalised internet radio station on Yahoo Music’s Launchcast but got this message instead.

LAUNCHcast Is Off the Air - It’s a Day of Silence

My mum used to listen to beautiful harp music on her old record player. So naturally I listened along with her as a child. Its really soft soothing music and I love it.

She had this old harp record. You know those things which looks like a huge disc. If you’ve not seen one before, you must be young and not old like me. Haha. So I’ve included a picture for my young readers. The picture is sourced from http://freenet-homepage.de/plattenwechsler/ 

We used to have one like this at home. The disc will turn and then you can manually place the needle at the start or on that part of the record that you want to listen to. (But my mum always told us not to do this. She said we had to place the needle at the beggining and listen from start to end or we would spoil the record. But we kids always got impatient and tried to skip songs. Hehe.)

I couldn’t find the music of her old record in any other form so I searched the internet for some free harp music and found some links. You can listen to the full song for some of them but some have only an excerpt or part of the song. Anyway, here are the links. Have a quick 5 minute break and listen to one or two harp music pieces from the following links. They’re really relaxing. Enjoy!

Helen Radice Wedding Harpist

Alice Howe’s Harp Music

Maui Harps Listen to Harp Music by Kristine Snyder