Trying to Learn Piano: 5

My first piano lesson:
I rock up at my new piano tutors door on a rainy Harlow night. I am quite nervous but hopefully she will be impressed with the fact that I can already play a bit of 'Night swimming' by R.E.M & have learned some scales and notes.
I am not a fan of Harlow.
It certainly has it's strong points. There is no better place in the country to purchase cheap gold sovereign rings or pawn recently stolen goods. But I try to avoid it these days in case I am mistaken for a cream horn by one of the amply cushioned residents & accidently consumed in the high street.
I used to work for drug and alcohol services in Harlow and the office was cited directly above Wetherspoons (no lie), which tells you everything you need to know about the place.
My piano teacher is a nice lady with a difficult to place accent (perhaps Russian, I am too embarrassed to ask). She shows me to her piano (which appears to be around a thousand years old and is junky as hell). My teacher is apparently a classically trained harpist who studied in a conservatory for many years. This seems very cruel to me. My parents have a conservatory and it is always too hot in the summer and too cold in winter. My dad insists on keeping a cover on the wooden dining table therein, in case it becomes sun bleached.
I find myself feeling sorry for my teacher and imagine her wearing fingerless gloves as she trys to practice the harp surrounded by cat litter trays and old local newspapers.
My teacher says that learning to read music is important and is happy that I have learned to identify notes on the stave. She is however, anxious to impress upon me the vital importance of counting. 'You have to also count Ian, this is so so important for music'.
This is great news as I am already pretty proficient at counting. I once counted to one thousand and seventeen (which took ages but it was a really boring meeting at work and my boss was sitting too close for me to be able to doodle). I can count to almost any number you can imagine. I know she is going to be impressed with this.
She is not impressed.
Instead she feels that there are significant gaps in my musical knowledge (this will happen if you are a self taught guitarist) and wants me to start with some basic stuff before we move forward into my beloved and beloathed Bach prelude. She introduces me to the above book which is the most hilarious thing ever! I am a forty one year old man now straining in total concentration over playing 'Old Macdonald had a Farm'.
Overall my first lesson was very discouraging. The teacher offered me a sweet at the end which is apparently 'de rigour' for her younger pupils. I suggested that she buy some scotch for our next lesson.
As I am leaving I pass a mother and young daughter in the hall who look at me a little strangely. I try to give the impression that I am not there for a lesson but for some much more grown up reason like conducting an affair or something. I clutch my lollipop tightly in case the little sod tries to nick it off me as I brush past. Back to Bach I suppose.

Trying to Learn Piano: 4

The cheeky fellow in the picture above is from a new Ipad app that I purchased in the hope that it would speed up the painful process of learning to read sheet music.
His sprout like visage has replaced the previous picture (some sort of Ipad update) which was of a very grumpy looking Mozart.
Grumpy Mozart would appear to scold me whenever I failed to score acceptably highly on his music reading tests.
‘Screw you Mozart’ I would think. ‘It’s not my fault that you have ridiculously high standards’.
Probably if my father had forced me to practice piano for hours and hours every day in a locked room, I would also have been a child prodigy.
Mozart’s father would today have had a safeguarding case opened on him by social services faster than you could say ‘Minuet in G major’.
I picture poor child Mozart rather like a white wigged Michael Jackson. Forever staring plaintively from his practice room window at the happy boys and girls playing outside. Knowing that he could never be a part of their normal world. Maybe Mozart also had a creepy Neverland style ranch (although in his case it would have probably been themed around the brothers Grimm). Maybe he spoke in a high girlish voice and Moonwalked onto the stage for piano recitals.
I have started listening to more stuff on classic FM in recent weeks. I suppose that classical music is much like any other genre & that for every ‘Automatic for the People’ perfect album there are hours & hours of mind numbingly awful ‘ filler’ tracks.
I have in the past few weeks heard one or two pieces of music which made my blood thrill, my balls feel bigger and brought me closer to God. For every one of these I have heard probably couple of hours of repetitive scratching on violins and people approaching the piano as if it were an Olympic ‘speed playing’ event rather than with the intention of playing anything worthwhile.

It is my understanding that piano’s could not be manufactured until after Bach’s death and so they are a relatively new kid on the block. But seriously, come on people. No wonder folks are so slow to jump on the classical music bandwagon when it appears to actively discourage new passengers. This week I accidently turned on Classic Fm late at night and it was totally different. Music from films and modern videogames. Tunes you could really hum. Why can’t they play more of this stuff during the day. But no, back to our regularly scheduled program of Baroque scratching and Alled Jones milking the crap out of his career.
I tried to learn violin some years back but it wouldn’t stay on my shoulder properly so I stuck it in the loft for a while. I found it the other day and the fretboard bit had come away from the body.
I smashed it up and burnt it in my shed.
It felt good.

Although the noise that I was able to get out of the violin could not have been described as ‘thrilling the blood’. It was heavens sweet song compared to the plastic saccharine tones dished out by my Aldi keyboard.
The keyboard boasts over 100 tones & I believe it. I have taken more than one hundred craps in my life but I would not presume to digitally capture them and claim that they were workable instrument facsimiles.
I have been through all of them & managed to find five which do not cause me to wince with every key depression. Despite this, my children love playing the horribly arranged demo songs and my daughter has developed her own words and dance to one of them which she insists on doing whenever she finds me trying to practice scales in the shed (the keyboard is not allowed to live in the house with my other instruments).
Oh well, let’s see if I can score more than nine points this time.

Trying to Learn Piano: 3

The Well Tempered Clavier?... More like The Bad Tempered Keyboard Guy.
 So I checked out some guy on the internet and he advised that Bach's prelude in C major is an ideal starter piece of music. I happened to be in Sawbridgeworth and their charity shop had a book with it in.
Sawbridgeworth is quite a middle class and well to do place, so you can expect to find a much higher strata of stuff in their charity shops!
Now this is my first foray into the world of proper classical music and I must say that it appears poorly organised. For one thing;  none of these composers appear to have much talent when it comes to naming their songs.
Bach wrote this book of fugues (don't ask me...I thought it was something to do with being a naked crack chef in breaking bad). He has called them all things like 'prelude 1' or 'fugue 2 in B major'. This is very lazy in my opinion and highlights a poor work ethic.
Surely it would have been the work of but a moment to come up with a cool title like 'Things about to get Fuguey up in here y'all' or 'Captain fuguetabulous's journey to the centre of funk'. Maybe you can suggest some titles in the comments section.
In any case, the book is called 'The well tempered Clavier'. I'm not sure what a clavier is (was it a type of Vauxhall?) or why it should be in such a great temper. Whenever I try to. To play prelude in C major, my temper frays to the point of near incandescence & I shout at the kids to stop making so much damn noise and leave me alone to fugue in peace. This is probably ironical in some way.
Also, Bach did not bother to write a proper index at all. Oh no, he just put in the first measure of each tune (so not terribly accessible Mr Bach, maybe think about marketing implications). He also has no twitter account which is just rude.
Next week I am going to tune my car radio to Classic fm. Classic fm is a thing that you have to listen to if you are trying to be a proper musician. They have kindly presenters with smooth bassy voices designed to make middle class white people feel safe and stop worrying about local kids playing too close to their hedges.
I pity the Fugue who doesn't prelude in C major

Trying to Learn Piano: 2

Piano players are impossibly talented? How do you ever develop that amount of skill without performance enhancing drugs. All I have is strong coffee and domesdos.
 So here I am, week four of my journey into learning piano. To be honest, I don't remember guitar being this difficult to get to grips with. A quick chat with my sister disabuses me of this notion however. I apparently sucked for (in her words) 'a really really long time'.
This week I started to try and learn to read music. This has been something I have managed to avoid for over twenty years on guitar. For the 'non musicians' among you; it is not necessary to read sheet music in order to play an instrument. A lot of musicians learn to play by ear or from 'YouTube ' lessons or from tab. Which is to 'sheet music' what shandy is to whisky. A sort of 'paint by numbers' for your fingers.
No. I have been putting off learning to read because I am a bit dyslexic. My experience of taught sessions is one of abject fear, as information swells over me like a tidal wave. Consequently I completely loose my sense of what is being taught and quickly forget even the stuff that I thought I knew. The idea of booking a 'one to one' teacher was quite daunting & I needed someone I didn't know so that there would be no relationship implications if I had to sack them.
Eventually I find a nice lady in Harlow but the stupid website that I used wants more than ten quid before it will pony up her phone number. Now I'm all for free enterprise but this is just too much money. I'm already down £70 wing wangs for my crappy Aldi keyboard. In the end I circumvent the website and find her details on the interwebs. We are in business. Lesson booked, anxiety building!
I start to glean some information from the net in preparation for the lesson. Apparently there are two clefs (bass and treble) and these can have dots on the same lines but the dots will be different notes depending on the clef (kind of like windy can mean blustery or meandering depending on the context of the sentence). So simple pimple! We are off to a good start. Unfortunately the only acronyms that I can remember for the notes are all too rude to publish here. Suffice to say that by the time I had converted the acronym to the note and found its corresponding twin on my plastic piece of crap keyboard; small nations had been birthed and developed into mighty superpowers.
We need to rethink this technique people.

Trying to Learn Piano :1

Piano players are surely gods in human form? This is the conclusion I have come to in my journey to try and learn piano.
So in early September I decided that it was high time that I learned  piano (and also to read music after playing guitar for like 20 years).
I am tired of being embarrassed by the 'real' musicians in our band. Sneering at us 'mere mortals' who don't understand 'intervals' and 'deceptive cadence'.
So with hope in my heart and £70 English pounds in my pocket I took a trip to Aldi and purchased a handsome keyboard (which promised to hone my technique by the use of red lights on the keys).
Although none of the instrument tones on the keyboard appear to have been modelled by anyone with human hearing, I was undeterred and proceeded to find a YouTube teacher (Andrew Furmanzyk). Andrew promised to teach me piano in seven easy lessons (& 34 very hard ones). Unfortunately for me,; lesson three (or thereabouts) appeared to be.. 'Go and learn to read sheet music' & so I was stumped.
No matter. I can't expect to be great at piano after only playing for three weeks. I will employ the services of a 'bona fide' piano tutor to 'warp speed' me through the process. 'Make it so Mr Laforge'. 

 I fired up google from the comfort of my office (away from the prying eyes of my boss) & accessed a list of local piano teachers only to be met with a fresh dilemma. I knew most of these people very well... our children play together, I drink beer with their husbands  from time to time. I can't employ someone to teach me who I may very well have to sack. They might prove inefficient in turning me into a balding Chopin inside of six months. It would ruin a perfectly good friendship. What if I need to ask them to babysit for me in the future but they won't speak to me anymore because I poo poo'd their pedal technique or something?
Tune in for the next thrilling instalment of Trying to learn Piano' The next time I can be bothered to write it. I have to go and practice Bach's prelude in C Major on  my keyboards 'popular tones' setting again.

Jericho

The sound of Rams horns fill your ears as you trudge around Jericho following the priests. They walk slowly under the great weight of the golden Ark. The piercing wail of their horns bounces and echoes from the walls; dulled by the sound of a thousand foot falls as a whole nation walks once around a city. Once.

For days you have done this. Risen, washed, dressed and walked around high walls that remain every bit as foreboding and impenetrable as they did when you first saw them.

Yet Jericho still stands.  Like a defiant red cancer on the landscape. Testament to a culture that has long since abandoned morality in favour of child sacrifice and bestiality. The walls glare down at these shabby pilgrims, urging them to return to their endless dessert. Civilisation does not want them. After days of circling the walls in response to God’s word, nothing has changed.

All that has been achieved is a weariness in your body and an ache in your legs that is threatening to spread to your soul.

But you have to make a choice today. You have to make a choice in each moment. Will you choose to look at the walls with their grim message of discouragement? Mocking your people who dare to attack the reality of the situation with something as insubstantial as faith. Or will you keep your eyes fixed unwaveringly on that golden throne, the ark of the covenant? The promise that it represents of Gods government being established in the midst of broken, fallible human beings.

Will you look over to Jordan at the piles of stones heaped up at the rivers edge. Twelve hard, heavy, real things. Testimony that; yes, the waters really did part under Gods direction and , yes, you really did walk across on dry ground. Your mind reels and fights to make scientific sense of it. It tries to tell you that it couldn’t have happened because today life seems so…..normal. But one look at the stones silences the storm in your mind. God is real and his word is faithful.

Where will YOU look today as YOU wait for  the obstinate walls of your problems to fall down? Will you concentrate on the walls. The problem that does not fall down despite your faith? Or can you lift your head and look to the throne of God in your life and encourage yourself in the fact that  He has never ever failed to do what He has promised? Eventually the shout of praise will rize and the walls will fall. Until then we follow the commander of the Lords army because His battle plan is beyond understanding and His timing is perfect.

Keep on walking my friends.

Smell my Cheese

Went to Aldi the other day and saw a guy at the checkout with a bag that was clearly from Lidl (If Aldi was Waitrose, Lidl would be Tesco).
The guy was clearly feeling shamed at having brought an inferior branded bag into the shop and was concerned that the management might take issue with him. His solution was to  turn the bag inside out in deference to his surroundings.

I was in the queue behind him with my appropriately branded 'bags for life' flapping from my hands like the twin break parachutes on a drag racer. Smug in the warm glow of my self satisfaction as I had for once arrived to Aldi PREPARED. I even had one of those 'coin' things that allows you to use the trolley (although mine is a Sainsburys brand and so I try to jam it into the cart quickly so as not to appear overly 'high brow' to other Aldi Patrons).

I went to Waitrose once (I had some vouchers I think) and felt totally out of place among the clientele (who were just doing some light shopping in between fox hunting and renovating listed properties). I made sure to purchase a bag for life there (which used up most of my vouchers) and proudly used it whenever I was in town for some time.

Stuffing Aldi brand nappies into my Waitrose canvas bag gives me a  perverse thrill only equaled by the rush of completing a perfect parallel park or taking free samples at Sainsburies with no real plans to purchase the product at a later date.

I suppose that it might me possible to grade everyone on earth to their respective socio economic groupings based purely on what supermarket brand they have on their 'bag for life' and how strong the cheddar cheese is in their fridge.
Mine is extra mature... 'In Your FACE mild cheddar bitches!'