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Nov. 12th, 2006 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
commotiocordisBut on a happier note, I've been a keyboard playing fool this weekend. Just picking out stuff right and left. I got (technically, the family got) this keyboard for Christmas last year or the year before and when it was in the front room, everybody played around on it a lot, but it got moved to the basement where there's no place near it to plug it, so I didn't really mess with it anymore except for occasionally. I decided that I wanted to play it because there's some commercial with just the piano into bit of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" playing a lot on TV and I wanted to learn how to play that. So I brought an extension cord thing down there to plug it in and just hummed that bit over and over (usually just in my head, but sometimes out loud) and picked it out. So I can play the intro to that and the main piano bit really well now.
And then my brother came down and heard me playing that right after I got it and challenged me to figure out the Voyager theme song. Which was really hard as I didn't know it well enough to sing it so I had to just have it on repeat on the TV. This meant that I couldn't figure out just one section at a time, but had to wait through the whole rest of the theme to get back to the part that I was working on unless I wanted to take my hands off of the keys to fast-forward and risk losing the notes. And then I would forget what I had just figured out while listening to the rest of the theme while waiting for it to get back to the spot. And I couldn't slow it down to get it like I could when I was humming the song to myself. I worked on that one for a while and got a large chunk of it, but still not all (as I didn't realize that it was getting really late and when I did, I decided to just go to bed as I'm still not quite over that cold).
And in trying to figure out the Voyager theme, I managed to stumble across the notes for the SG-1 theme, so I fiddled with that for a few minutes before going back to Voyager (because that was going to bug me until I got at least one of the themes).
And today I picked out the basic vocal/piano theme of "Seasons of Love" from memory. And played around with picking out the actual piano part, but then left to go with my parents to buy a new van. (Which is pretty nice, but there's no rear air and the monitor of the DVD player in it quit working exactly one mile away from the place we bought it after signing everything. Which I'm not standing for. As the DVD player was pretty much what sold me on the van. We're supposed to take it back to them to get it inspected on Monday and I'm going to make them fix that. Rear air I could possibly live without if both front windows and the rear vents were all the way open or the front air conditioning vents were pointed straight back at me, but jipping me on the DVD player? No, sir. Especially if my grandparents expect us to drive down to Texas for Christmas this year.)
And the van buying took a really long time (but there was a machine there that for only 25 cents gave you a cup of really good hot chocolate) but I'm glad I went because without me, they would have gotten themselves jipped on the wireless infrared headphones and DVD player remote that are supposed to come with it but weren't with the car. And might have decided to trade in this old van that we don't really drive much as it sucks gas but drives amazingly and is really big and comfortable for the nothing that they were going to give us.
So then I came back and was fiddling with Rent music again and my brother came down and popped in my Rent DVD and I just played along. Because once you get a hang of the key and get your fingers on the majorly used notes, if you know how the song goes, it's pretty easy to figure out.
Though all of this would have been so much easier on my viola. I'm so bad at figuring out what keys go with which notes. And I've got pretty rudimentary technique. Viola playing is pretty much muscle memory for me; it's become almost instinctual that this finger position is an F-sharp and so is this one on the other string and if I shift up it's this finger position and so on. While with the keyboard as I've not ever seriously played it often enough to become really good, so I'm like "Okay. I think that one's an A. *presses key, listens* Yup, that's an A. Count up one, two, three. D. There we go."
I also just practiced random arpeggios, trying to get my fingers a little better at pianoing, and I'm not atrociously slow. Though the whole left hand playing one thing, right hand playing another thing is still pretty much eluding me for anything more complex than simple chords (like no more than two notes) on one hand while the other's doing stuff.
Still. Fun.
And then my brother came down and heard me playing that right after I got it and challenged me to figure out the Voyager theme song. Which was really hard as I didn't know it well enough to sing it so I had to just have it on repeat on the TV. This meant that I couldn't figure out just one section at a time, but had to wait through the whole rest of the theme to get back to the part that I was working on unless I wanted to take my hands off of the keys to fast-forward and risk losing the notes. And then I would forget what I had just figured out while listening to the rest of the theme while waiting for it to get back to the spot. And I couldn't slow it down to get it like I could when I was humming the song to myself. I worked on that one for a while and got a large chunk of it, but still not all (as I didn't realize that it was getting really late and when I did, I decided to just go to bed as I'm still not quite over that cold).
And in trying to figure out the Voyager theme, I managed to stumble across the notes for the SG-1 theme, so I fiddled with that for a few minutes before going back to Voyager (because that was going to bug me until I got at least one of the themes).
And today I picked out the basic vocal/piano theme of "Seasons of Love" from memory. And played around with picking out the actual piano part, but then left to go with my parents to buy a new van. (Which is pretty nice, but there's no rear air and the monitor of the DVD player in it quit working exactly one mile away from the place we bought it after signing everything. Which I'm not standing for. As the DVD player was pretty much what sold me on the van. We're supposed to take it back to them to get it inspected on Monday and I'm going to make them fix that. Rear air I could possibly live without if both front windows and the rear vents were all the way open or the front air conditioning vents were pointed straight back at me, but jipping me on the DVD player? No, sir. Especially if my grandparents expect us to drive down to Texas for Christmas this year.)
And the van buying took a really long time (but there was a machine there that for only 25 cents gave you a cup of really good hot chocolate) but I'm glad I went because without me, they would have gotten themselves jipped on the wireless infrared headphones and DVD player remote that are supposed to come with it but weren't with the car. And might have decided to trade in this old van that we don't really drive much as it sucks gas but drives amazingly and is really big and comfortable for the nothing that they were going to give us.
So then I came back and was fiddling with Rent music again and my brother came down and popped in my Rent DVD and I just played along. Because once you get a hang of the key and get your fingers on the majorly used notes, if you know how the song goes, it's pretty easy to figure out.
Though all of this would have been so much easier on my viola. I'm so bad at figuring out what keys go with which notes. And I've got pretty rudimentary technique. Viola playing is pretty much muscle memory for me; it's become almost instinctual that this finger position is an F-sharp and so is this one on the other string and if I shift up it's this finger position and so on. While with the keyboard as I've not ever seriously played it often enough to become really good, so I'm like "Okay. I think that one's an A. *presses key, listens* Yup, that's an A. Count up one, two, three. D. There we go."
I also just practiced random arpeggios, trying to get my fingers a little better at pianoing, and I'm not atrociously slow. Though the whole left hand playing one thing, right hand playing another thing is still pretty much eluding me for anything more complex than simple chords (like no more than two notes) on one hand while the other's doing stuff.
Still. Fun.
