This week I continued to practice piano by playing with Yousician. I like this app because it’s actually fun! It totally reminds me of the old video game called Guitar Hero, except Yousician is educational. You cannot move forward in Yousician until you’ve completed a series of tasks and scored at least one star. Once you accomplish the “mission” then you can move on. I think the game-like nature of this app is really appealing. I need established goals like this in order to motivate me to practice. I was having a hard time sticking with piano before I tried Yousician. I would say that my rhythm and timing have improved in the last week. I still don’t quite have the hand placement down. I’m thinking that if I continue with piano after this project I may consider hiring a piano teacher to help me learn to actually read sheet music. Not sure how committed I am to that idea just yet. But either way there are plenty of great free resources out there like Yousician and Youtube. I am really glad that George shared this resource with me. Just another example of how collaboration and communication can enhance learning. Overall, I am really enjoying this process. However, I won’t share a video just yet; I’ll save it for my final reflection.
Last week I felt as though I had made some serious progress toward my goal. I felt more comfortable in my playing. Week 4 was a little different. It seemed like I didn’t make much progress from last week. I wouldn’t say I regressed, I just wished I had made more noticeable improvements. I am starting to re-think my goal. Is it realistic that I will learn the entire song by the next week? Probably not. My goal now is to improve my rhythm and master the segment I’ve been practicing. One of the members in my 20Time House, George Porter, wrote about a app that helps you practice rhythm, called Yousician. I was curious to see if Yousician had a piano version, and it turns out they do! So this week I spent my time practicing rhythm by playing some of the Yousician activities. I think these activities helped my rhythm, but I have not included a video of my progress because I did not learn any new parts of the song. I’ll be posting week 5 shortly since I’m a little behind on my progress. Stay Tuned! Here's a preview of what Yousician for Piano looks like
iThis week I learned only a little more of the song "See You Again". I am not progressing as quickly as I'd hoped. I have to say, learning piano from scratch is NOT easy! Looking back now I feel a little silly thinking I could master an entire song over the course of this project. I guess if I spent more than 20% of my time playing I could, but that would defeat the purpose of a 20Time project. Overall, I am content with my learning thus far. It's been great to have the video recording of my weekly progress. Before I filmed this week, I was thinking I hadn't made any progress. But after watching all 3 of my videos, I can finally see improvement in my pacing and rhythm!
I have become frustrated with my piano because of a few sticky keys. I realized that those 2 keys are causing me a bit of trouble. I get thrown off when I press a key and it doesn't produce sound and then I lose momentum. These keys are hit or miss when it comes to making sound. So that inconsistency doesn't help my confidence when practicing for my whole house (and neighbors) to hear. The good news is I went to a friend's house this weekend and practiced on her piano. What an improvement! It sounded a million times better and the lack of sticky keys definitely helped my rhythm. So, what am I to do about my piano? I researched more online and found that the most common cause of sticky keys is moisture in the key bushings, and I may be able to correct this myself. I followed the procedures but it didn't help. The website says in this case, the brushings are likely worn out. So, to properly fix this condition I'll need a piano technician to remove the key and use a special tool to compress the felt. Since it costs at least $125 to have a tuner come out, I'll have to make do with mine for now. Hopefully I'll be able to practice some more at my friend's place next weekend. I practiced a lot this past week but it may not look like it. My first task was to learn the second part of the chorus. I practiced that part I'd say over a hundred times until I got it down. The next and more challenging task was to blend both parts of the chorus together. I'm finding that this project requires a lot of patiences. I get halfway to the end of my part and then miss one key and feel the need to start it over. Moving forward I need to be more patient with myself and not get so frazzled by a missed note. Playing piano is much more difficult than I anticipated. I learn slower and need more practice than I had thought. First of all, my piano is old and somewhat out of tune. The keys are not very responsive so I really need to press hard on to make them play. However, it sounds like I'm banging the keys when really its the only way I can get them to make sound. I thought maybe I could tune it myself, but after researching, I discovered I may need to get a piano tuner to help me. Overall I am having fun with this project and learning a lot. I still need to work on my rhythm. I've uploaded a brief video of my progress to compare it to last week. You may not notice much progress yet but I'll let you be the judge.
After some research, I decided to learn piano via a Synthesia tutorial. Synthesia is a piano keyboard training videogame. It's a fun way to learn to play piano at your own speed. The specific tutorial I'm using is by a Youtuber named PlutaX. He's created a supposedly "easy" tutorial for the song "See You Again". So far so good. I really like how the tutorial breaks down the notes without using the formal sheet music. This tutorial reminds me of the old videogame, "Dance Dance Revolution". Overall, it highlights the notes to play and how long to hold it for. I am really glad I found it.
This week I've been focusing on playing the introduction to the song "See You Again". I'm somewhat impressed with how my progress is going for only a week. So far, I have learned how to play the notes of the intro but its the timing I have trouble with. This week I'm going to practice the timing as well the next part of the song. Here's what I have so far. Enjoy! I have decided to change my 20Time project. Moving forward, I will be learning to play "See You Again" on piano.
My grandparents were gifted pianists. They studied the piano at Juilliard and played all of the classics. One of my favorite childhood memories was when my grandmother put on a concert for the entire family after Christmas dinner. I was always amazed by her talent. Growing up, I felt intimidated to learn piano since they were musical geniuses. Now, I don't care about being even half as good as they were. I want to learn for the sake of learning. And I think it honors their memory. Hopefully I'll enjoy it enough to stick with it long term. So, I'm now going to learn to play the song "See You Again" by Charlie Puth.
After much consideration and research I have decided to learn how to play "Fix You" by Coldplay on the guitar.
I have always loved this song and, without going into much detail, it really resonates with me right now. I have spent some time learning about the chords and this song was rated as a great song for beginners to practice chords. I even learned how to play the C-Major chord today! I will be using internet resources, such as the following YouTube video, to guide my learning. Thanks for viewing my 20Time blog! Here's to a great experience!
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AuthorMegan Gonzales Archives
May 2016
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