PIANO update! :-)

Piano lessons are underway.  My life has become God and his Work first of course, and then piano as the new time consuming addition.  Intense!  I became ill with the flu for about a full week, nasty flu bug, so that hindered practice, but last Sunday, I crammed in a weeks worth of practice to be "fit" for class yesterday afternoon.  My bosses are wonderful at HQ; they are letting me off work an hour early the days of piano lessons, so that I can make it in time to the studio for lessons.  When you walk in, there are voice lessons you hear going on to your left, other instrumental lessons to the right, and you walk down a long hall and find my piano lesson room.  It's really neat to walk into all of that.  Gets you in the mood.  I am realizing more and more how God opened this door for me and so many around here are encouraging me to stick with it.  It's all about serving him in the future....trying to use whatever time I have with my life style to be as productive as possible for God.

So, my first assignment was to learn and memorize a 15 page, yeah, song entitled, "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen."  It's by composer Edvard Grieg from Norway.  He composed it for he and his wife's 25th wedding anniversary.  Apparently, they had a big anniversary party and he played this for his wife.  Lovely!  At first, I was like, are you serious......memorize this monster long song!...but I have a really great teacher who knows how to push me, and it's not that bad at all once I got going.  She knows what I'm capable of, and I have to trust her.  I have the song very roughly technically learned and memorized, but she said I play like a soldier and need to speed it up.....she said I play very technical without feeling; I've heard that before from previous teachers, so it must be very true.  ;-)  Anyway, in lessons yesterday she would hold my arm and elbow while I played pushing it at certain points to make it move with feeling.  Talk about a distraction while playing.  Not only is your teacher right there, she's pushing you.  LOL  Who knew piano lessons can be so physical...arm workout!  LOL!  Sounds lame, but that is so hard for me, so the goal is to put my body into my playing.  My teacher wants animation to bring my piano emotion out.  Above is a short clip of me playing the beginning of the Wedding Day at Troldhaugen...apparently very militaristic. 

Also, she told met o memorize I think it is a 6 page song....Chopin's Opus 64 No 2.  I was excited to get this song.  I have always wanted to play it, but just never did.  I blanked out at the end of the video above though.  My mind was sapped of piano energy by then and my memory failed me, and that was the end of that for the day.  LOL  Real life practice....just aim the camera and get whatever take I get without redo's....Funny stuff!

...and last and actually least with my piano, my teacher, every week assigns me a chill out song to just sight read to end every practice that is way below my level.  The chill out songs are super easy.....I mean super easy.....I don't have to practice them as I can just sight read them as I play, so that means no memorization on those either, so I like her making me do this.  At first I thought it would be lame to play such lower level songs, but I can see how it's kind of piano yoga at the end of an intense workout, it makes you feel peace....and I think she's using it to gradually build up my speed at sight reading pieces at my own level.  She said doing this chill out song exercise with a different song every week will increase the speed of sight reading subconsciously.  ...so above is me playing the super duper easy song entitled "The Nut gatherers" inspired by the famous painting.  Okay, so far, she seems like a great teacher...best one by far I've ever had.......to be continued! 

BELOW:  is a pro playing the song I'm working on "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen"  This is not the composer Grieg, he's not living anymore; but another great player playing it.

Wow, do I have a long ways to go!  Beautiful quick song!

...and below the Chopin Opus 64 No 2 piece played by a pro

...and the famous painting "The Nut gatherer" that inspired my chill out piece of the week.

BELOW:   Photo of the real Troldhaugen home in Norway outside and inside how it looks today.   Composer Grieg and his wife have been long dead, but his famous anniversary song made his house named Troldhaugen a tourist attraction to this day and the source of a song that is taking up my evenings this week in hard piano work.  A reason to go visit Norway.  :-)