The Last Post

Well, this is the last blog post here EVER!
But I'll still probably keep uploading my amateur piano playing to my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUweM46Y4EiiEsrwQMEqXoQ

There's not much there now, but I'll try and do the same thing I've been doing here but now on youtube!
Another thing that comes along with this being my last blog post, is that now is the time where I scramble to meet all the requirements I haven't done yet! Yay! Just kidding Mrs. Hechlik.
Here's a photo of  me practicing my brother took:

Anyways, as a final goodbye, here's one of my favorite pieces; it's the first prelude by George Gershwinn. It's short, really cool, and I cannot play it nearly as fast as it's supposed to go :P

This project has been lots of fun! It's been great taking time to just learn new pieces of music, and have fun working on something that I'm passionate about. I guess that's really the whole point of this thing isn't it? Work doesn't have to be something to be afraid of, as long as you enjoy what it is you are working on.

Page turns suck

     As requested, I recorded the Mozart Fantasy in D Minor this week. Just warning you, I mess up some of the runs near the end of the piece. We need to write 500 words this week, so I might as well talk about page turns. You see, the absolute worst part about playing music on the piano is page turns. Yes, page turns are the single worst thing ever. It really sucks to be trying to play something, and you get really into it, and everything starts clicking to the point where your plethora of mistakes doesn't even matter to you, and then all of a sudden... flip...it's a page turn.
     I guess the problem isn't really that pages need to be turned. If we didn't have music on multiple pages, we wouldn't have classical music at all. No, the problem is that pages need to be turned with your hands, while notes are played with the exact same appendages. What we need is a way to flip pages without the use of your hands. I saw a guy once who switched pages on his ipad with a button on the floor that he tapped with his shoe. That's what all pianists need, a button they can push with their foot to automatically turn the page for them.
     Anyways, that's enough about my hate for paper music. Hmm...what else is there to talk about? Maybe why I love Debussy so much. The truth is, I don't really know why. That's really the thing with music isn't it though? You just know that you love a song, but you never really know why. I guess, today you could like something you heard on the radio because of the lyrics, or the beat, but when it comes to pieces without words, I've always wondered just why I love a piece. For example, the other day, I listened to this jazz piece a friend recommended called "Red Clay", and I can't stop listening to it; but I don't know why that is. Is it just that particular arrangement of notes, that specific set of frequencies in series that makes me enjoy listening to the piece? 
     I seem to be running out of things to talk about. Oh, forgot to say hat I'm not going to be uploading videos of the Rachmaninoff piece. I feel like I've had my fun with it, and now it can take a rest. Plus, the focus of the project really has turned into just uploading bi-weekly videos of whatever it is I feel like playing. I'm thinking of working on a Chopin Etude this week, and maybe another Debussy piece (if you hadn't guessed it by now, I'm kind of obsessed with Debussy). But, there's the Chem final this week, and the extended essay we have to write for English, so it will probably have to wait until next week...again.
     

I feel like as this project goes on, my focus keeps shifting from working on one particular piece, to just finally playing all of the pieces I've wanted to but never had time or a reason to look at. Hmm...I smell a name change for my blog coming up.

This week I tried to work on the ending of the Liebesleid (I just learned that I'd been spelling it wrong all this time. Thanks Jasmine!). I talked with my mentor about it, and I think it's improved a little! Sadly the rest of the piece is still really disjointed, but it's slowly making its way there.
Here it is:

I've got a question for any of you who actually read my blog: should I start an "on request" video system? I think it'd be cool to ask for requests each week and then upload a video at the end of the week with one of those requests. What do you think?

For the "fun piece of the week" (I think that's what I'll call it from now on) I took a look at the "menuet" from Debussy's Suite Bergamesque (the same Suite we get "clair de lune" from.)

I finally made a recording of the piece I'm actually studying! And it is definitely NOT performance ready. But that's okay because moving from "terrible" to "good" is the purpose of this whole thing, right? Anyways...here's the first recording I've made of "libeslied".

I've still got a lot of work to do with it. Right now I still have trouble getting the feel of the song throughout, and trouble with the notes in the middle and end sections. By next week, I hope to make the song less sloppy, and more playful, because right now it just seems to drone on and on and on.

I also made another recording this week of another piece by Rachmaninoff. Here's a less than terrible recording of the "Moment Musical".

Before I embarrass myself terribly on the internet with the the terrible sounds of a piece in progress, I thought it'd be nice to put up something a little less, well...train wreck-ish (still not too great unfortunately. Just wait. I'll put up better stuff eventually; I promise). It's been a LONG time since I played this last though so it's a bit rusty (bit=A LOT), so don't mind the mistakes and page turns!
You know, two weekly videos sounds like a good idea actually! One that's not terrible, of some piece I like, and one of that song that's hard as... "rach" (haha see what I did there? It's funny because the composer's name is Rachmaninoff. (at least my fellow pianists laughed))
Oh, one more thing, just in case you were wondering, the song above is "Reverie" by Debussy.

I LOVE playing the piano. I like to sit down and just play, sight reading like a madman for hours at a time. But the other day, I pulled out my old ripped up Rachmaninoff book, and realized, wow...this is really hard. Because of all my school work, I don't have lots of time at home to learn it, so I was really excited when we got the 20-time project.

I've always wanted to learn the "libeslied" (love's sorrow), but it's really hard, and has a really confusing melody, and I've never really sat down to study it. But now I'm going to!
This is the place where I'll be recording my journey from terrible scratchy sounds, to slightly less terrible notes! I'm not sure yet how I'll keep track of my progress. Words are nice, but maybe weekly recordings would be better. Hmm...now the only problem is finding a nice piano....