4/9 Blog #2: Starting Sweden

    I accomplished a lot this week, starting with some simple practice on SimplyPiano. It can hear which note I am playing on the keyboard and that corresponds to what shows up on the app, helping me locate where the notes are with consistency. The app focused on the notes C through G with only the right hand, and it was fairly simple. It provided exercises where I had to play the right notes that corresponded with a simple song and it was great practice. It even helped me learn to read some sheet music for the exercises laid the notes on a staff.

    

    This led to me learning the many parts of sheet music. I have been putting this off but I had to get around to it eventually. There are many symbols of notation when it comes to reading music. The staff consists of the lines and spaces and towards the left is the clef. The treble clef indicates higher registers of music while the bass clef indicates lower. Then comes the notes, the hardest part for me. I still do not have the lengths of each note down but with the help of SimplyPiano, I can identify which note is which. The clefs also provide an indicator of where G and F are if I am lost.

    Combining these two skills, I was able to play a simple version of Ode to Joy, a classic known for being easy to learn. I learned it very quickly for it only uses those five notes I practiced in SimplyPiano. It helped me identify where each note was on the staff quicker and play them with fewer mistakes.

    Next, I decided to take a leap. I wanted to learn to play Sweden by C418 and decided I could do it. It was a fairly slow song with nothing too complex so I thought, why not? What better practice than to learn to play a song? I looked up a YouTube tutorial (https://youtu.be/RWs9jG54nkQ?list=WL) and I am not going to lie, I was overwhelmed at first. The left hand had a seven-note pattern repeated throughout the song so after getting that down, I started learning the first part of the song with my right hand. Listening to the song many times, I had an idea of how it sounded which helped me through this tedious process. After lots of practice, I got it memorized. The difficult part was putting these together. The chord practice I did two weeks before really helped in playing notes with both hands. All there was to do was practice, practice, practice. The main problem that arose was playing notes farther apart from each other; my pinky kept pressing E and D when it was only supposed to be on D. My finger positioning was horrendous but I could not change it no matter how much I tried to, but hey, it got the job done. A similar process was carried through the next two parts of the song. I still have a few more parts to go, but it is looking good!

    As a reminder for myself, the key skills I need to work on are positioning my fingers and consistency with switching between notes farther away. In addition, I have also decided not to follow a Udemy course because I think it will be easier to learn what I want to with resources already available on the internet in places like YouTube. Therefore, next week will be me working on Sweden. After I learn that, I might choose a song from one of my favorite musical acts, Phil Elverum, because he makes a lot of slower music as well.

    My new timeline looks like this- it will probably continue to change:

    Surprisingly, I think I underestimated my goal and I think I can end up playing more complex songs by the end of this project with a little luck!

I commented on the blogs of Noah Okenquist, Tiffany Liu, and Nathan Antonio.