It will be 10 years in June............

.................since I first embarked on this piano journey.
I now feel like I have definitely made the transition from a guitarist to a pianist being entirely comfortable on the instrument. I own 4 keyboard instruments, my faithful Yamaha U3, 2 Casio's including the phenomenal Casio PX560 and very capable XW-P1 and lastly a Novation Impulse midi controller.
I have written heaps of music for the piano which can be found here.
I have released 4 albums which I could not have written for and produced without my new skill set. The next challenge is to get out there, after my partner and I have completed building a new home, and present the repertoire I am currently working on. I had originally planned to do this after 10 years of working on the instrument so I am on track to meet that important goal.

Coming soon!

Yesterday was a very special day.
I came out publicly as piano player. Yep. I really did!
The guitarist who discovered he was really a pianist?
Considering the LGBTI/same sex marriage debate we find ourselves currently embroiled in it is a little ironic.
The lovely folk who run the Denmark Piano Club allowed me to play three of my own compositions Andy's Song, Yungup and Inkling and I am allowed to come back and play again.
All things considered it wasn't too bad a performance and the monkey is well and truly off the back as I have been working towards yesterday's goal since I first started my piano journey way back in 2009.
Feeling pretty damn pleased with myself!

Sunyata released

The culmination of my efforts on the piano over the last few years occurred on my birthday a few days ago when I released the album Sunyata.
It presents 10 original tunes with a bit of rhythmic grunt for jazz piano trio.
The great crossover jazz outfit EST has been a great influence on my writing including a head entitled Gladwrap based on their much loved tune Goldwrap.
You can purchase or stream Sunyata from any of the usual digital distribution sites.
Listen to Sunyata by Robin on @AppleMusic.

Functional Piano Practice/performance Lighting

If you use an upright piano, the new iPhone 6 (being somewhat longer) is very useful for creating a lovely intimate source of lighting. I use it in my practice studio when it is still dark in the mornings rather than turning the lights on in an effort to save on electricity. I think it would also work very well for performances to enhance a particular piece's mood or where the lighting was not quite up to scratch.

Five years in to my piano journey

My goal to post here much more regularly just did not happen as I had desired but, I can report that I have been busy!

I continue to play Bach and revisited and relearnt the Fugue in C Minor from WTC 1. The constant posting from the irrepressible Shirley Kirsten has opened my eyes to a couple of the more accessible movements from the French Suite V so I have been working on the Allemande and as of today started looking at the Courante too.

I have composed two new piano pieces Friday's Beckoning Seas and Zep. I have a few others on the go and have also completed a couple of arrangements for different instrumentations. I have continued to work on my improvising skills using my own pieces in the main. Those skills have improved quite a bit as my technical competence has been pushed along because of the major goal I set myself for this year which was to study 12 of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas.

I have been using an easiest to hardest list, that I secured courtesy of Phlebus on the Piano World Forum, and it has worked very well for me.

1 - Op 49#2

2 - Op 49#1
3 - Op 14#1
4 - Op 2#1
5 - Op 79
6 - Op 10#1
7 - Op 14#2
8 - Op 10#2
9 - Op 26
10 - Op 13 "Pathetique"
11 - Op 54

12 - Op 27#2 "Moonlight"

Why, you ask? Well as a late beginner, having started this journey in my late 50s, I figured that if I can get some sort of handle on all 32 piano sonatas it is likely to stand me in good stead for pretty well anything I am likely to want to explore in the repertoire. Apart from gaining more technical skills my sight reading has also dramatically improved allowing me to more easily explore other repertoire. More than useful. Could I play you a competent performance of any of the sonatas? Well no, not at this point in time, as my procedure is to get a grasp of six at a time before going back and revisiting them all. So, having just completed the second six, I have started revisiting the first six for the third time. Once I have completed that process, I will move on to the new group of six for a second revisit. Each time they are revisited more of the technical challenges fall away and I get much closer to being able to play them. However, that is not my goal. I am challenging myself to explore them to gain more technical skill for composition and improvising for performance. So I am more likely to choose one or other to learn for a performance if that is something I decide I want to do at some point.
So what has the been the main technical challenge I have faced exploring the sonatas? Arpeggios, arpeggios and arpeggios! Both Shirley Kirsten and Graham Fitch have provided excellent technical information and routines that I have taken full use of to assist gaining a better understanding of arpeggio playing.
I would like to mention that the Pianist and International Piano magazines are tremendously inspirational for a self-directed student such as myself, with the former, in particular, providing a terrific entree to the repertoire with the number of pieces to play that they include in each issue.
Well, that is it from me for another year and it is straight in to the next twelve sonatas on the list.
13 - Op 28 "Pastoral"
14 - Op 31#3
15 - Op 78
16 - Op 31#2 "Tempest"
17 - Op. 22
18 - Op 2#3
19 - Op 2#2
20 - Op 90 
21 - Op 31#1 
22 - Op 27#1
23 - Op 10#3
24 - Op 7

Bring it on!

Zep

Well the pieces just keep coming. Here is another written with adolescent pianists in mind even though most have possibly never heard of Led Zeppelin before. Anyway, the riffs work pretty well here in a piece designed to assist students to gain further hand independence. The Immigrant Song riff works so well as an ostinato. The piece is available here.

Sounds from the Baroque

Easter Sunday provided music lovers where I live with a rare treat when Georg Corall visited with his Ruckers replica for a recital. Georg is my musician mate Avril's recorder teacher at the University of WA where she is lucky enough to be studying currently.
Georg was born in Westfalia, Germany. His interest in music began at age 15 when he decided to learn how to play the recorder. He subsequently took lessons in piano at age 17, in harpsichord at age 18 and in Baroque oboe at age 20. At the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, he began his tertiary studies in recorder and harpsichord, and concluded studies of historical oboe instruments and recorder with Renate Hildebrand (Hamburg) at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy”, Leipzig. He also holds a teaching degree in historical woodwinds from the Hochschule für Musik, Hamburg. He completed his practical education at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Switzerland) from 1996 to 1998 in Baroque oboe with Michel Piguet, Baroque bassoon with Claude Wassmer and harpsichord with Massimiliano Rasschietti. Permanently resident in Perth (Australia), he recently finished his studies for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Western Australia in order to formalise the conclusions reached during twenty-five years of performing research and to develop his professional life as a scholar. His academic research focuses on “Hautboisten” (wind bands in the 18th century), playing techniques (articulation, eloquence, historical reed design) and questions of balance of instrumentation within a Baroque orchestra. Georg was awarded the  John Hind Scholarship in his first year of study in Perth, and was UWA’s inaugural recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s ‘Harpsichord Scholarship’.
With that background, I am sure you can imagine what a wonderful recital we were lucky enough to be presented with especially as Georg had the Ruckers pitched appropriately at 415 and used a well-tempered tuning. We heard music from Frescobaldi, Froberger, Couperin and Bohm including this Praeludium and Fugue in G minor by Bohm played here by Georg,

 

before the recital finished with his own wonderful period style composition.

There must be some truth to the story that harpsichordists spend more time tuning their instruments than actually playing them as this image shows Georg retuning the Ruckers during the interval to the delight of some interested audience members including myself. Avril informed me he had spent an hour tuning it before the recital!

Georg added to the ambience of the recital by wearing a beautiful below knee length, black sequinned, high-collared frock coat for the recital held in our quite gorgeous cedar lined local Anglican Church. I have presented recitals here myself in the past and I can vouch for it's suitability as a recital venue with a very forgiving acoustic only spoiled by extraordinarily uncomfortable pews resulting in a slightly penance like experience if the concert is lengthy. This is the first time I have ever heard a harpsichord in the flesh and it was an experience I am unlikely to forget and I look forward to Georg's promised next visit!

Friday's Beckoning Seas

Completed another tune for piano recently. Another tricky one in 7/4 so I am going to have to put a bit of work in to this one too before I can play it. The score is available here.

Series IV

Completed another tune for piano recently. Tricky little thing to play and I am going to have to put a bit of work in before I can do so. It can be obtained from here where the rest of my scores are available also.

The Pianoteq Revelation

It had never occurred to me that at some point in time I would prefer playing an electronic keyboard over a good quality acoustic upright? This extraordinary situation has happened since purchasing the basic Pianotec Stage modelling software and discovering the magnificently rendered range of keyboard sounds available. I am finding it hard to be bothered playing my U3 now that I have connected up the laptop to my Yamaha 88 note weighted synth to enjoy a panoply of options ranging from clavichords and harpsichords, fortepianos, uncanny sounding classic electric pianos rhodes/clavs/wurlys and a classic grand in Pianoteq's modelling of the Steinway D. Many of these models have a variety of different iterations and extraordinarily, some of these great keyboards are available as free add-ons.
I have gained a much better appreciation and understanding of the music I have been playing recently. Bach on a harpsichord or clavichord suddenly takes on a whole new guise and playing one of Beethoven early sonatas on a Graf piano is a sublime experience. I don't currently play any Chopin but I can imagine it would be rewarding to do so on a Pleyel. You can try Pianoteq out completely free with all the sounds albeit with a restricted range of notes and for 20 minutes at a time before having to close and restart  to keep playing.

Jay's Songs

My longtime friend Jay, an extraordinarily creative person, who I have long chastised for toiling away much of his life in the public service, has finally got around to expressing himself.

So important if you are creative, and for Jay, who could turn his hand to any creative endeavour, it has manifested in the form of music. Having disciplined himself to taking guitar lessons, a little while back, his burgeoning skills on the instrument have allowed him to become a prolific songwriter resulting in a current project to record them.

In his inimitable way, he has convinced half the able musicians in the region to contribute their time to the project including myself. Knowing of my endeavours on the piano, he invited me to add keyboards to three of the tracks which I have just completed and thoroughly enjoyed.

Apart from my wonderful big black Yamaha U3 upright piano, I also own an 88 note Yamaha S90XS digital piano synthesiser which is the perfect tool for this job married with Apple's brilliant digital audio workstation (DAW) Logic Pro 8.

Jay and his recording team, Mick,  live some distance away and not being keen on the idea of travelling to complete any recording, I was intent on finding a means to complete the tracks without doing so and Mick kindly sent me the template track for each song.

This allowed me to record using a midi track, rather than audio, and utilising Logics soft instruments with the S90Xs as a controller. 

 

I chose this environment as having completed the recording, I could use Logic's export 'All tracks as audio files' (retaining all the midi information) to save both the template and the midi track and upload them to Dropbox. All Mick has to do then is download them, drag and drop them in to his DAW and chop and change the track as required, including changing the keyboard sound I have used, if Jay prefers. Brilliant!

Beethoven and I

Apart from Bach, my other great piano related passion is Beethoven. A further frustration with being a guitarist related to the weakness in the repertoire's classical period sonatas. They existed but they were just not in the same league that was on offer by Beethoven and an additional reason I was keen to learn to play the instrument. So the other day, when I was again listening to the radio on my way to catch a few waves, my ears pricked up when I heard Brendan Ward talking about his book "The Beethoven Obsession".  This fascinating book tells the story of how the greatest piano music ever written acquired an Australian voice, played on a revolutionary grand piano that shook up the conservative music establishment.

Translated this refers to the first recording, by an Australian pianist, Gerard Willems, of the complete cycle of 32 sonatas, 5 concertos, Electoral sonatas and the unpublished Fantasia sonata on a very special grand piano designed and manufactured here in Australia by Wayne Stuart. Apart from being a most interesting read, ranging well beyond the recording of the works, it is a flag bearer for the excellence of the e-book. If you purchase this book to read on your iPad, which I highly recommend, you will also be able to enjoy the embedded links to relevant pictures and music examples distributed throughout the book dramatically enhancing your reading experience. This book has inspired me to now start work on my Beethoven journey and I have chosen the second of the Op 49 easier early sonatas.

Jeremy Denk on program notes, J S Bach and other things

I listen to the main classical radio station here in Australia, ABC Classic FM, pretty well anytime I am in the car going anywhere. The other morning, a pianist I have never heard of before, Jeremy Denk, was being interviewed. As it became apparent that he was a fan of J S Bach I became more interested and even more so when I heard that he had achieved some notoriety in the classical music world for a tirade against program notes. I think this post made on Jeremy's most interesting blog back in May 2007 is the one in question. Do take the time to explore it further as he is quite prolific on many subjects and I have added it into NTLTLP's blog list so as I can continue to read what he has to say. I conducted a litte further research and found this review of Paul Elie's Reinventing Bach, yet another book that is going to end up in the queue on the iPad, for which he has also attained some interest.

Bach and I

Like many, I have always been fascinated by Glenn Gould. I cannot remember when I first became aware of his existence but I am sure that it was sometime during my years as a guitarist. I loved to play the Bach transcriptions most of all and one cannot be into Bach and not discover Gould!
Although I enjoyed a long, fruitful and passionate relationship with the guitar, I had always been frustrated that the repertoire was so limited in breadth and quality compared to the more mainstream instruments.  Eventually, as you would well know, if you have visited here before, I ended up giving the guitar a way entirely and choosing the piano so as to give myself the opportunity to explore that instruments huge repertoire and particularly to explore the vastly greater availability of music by Bach. In the last half year my abilities have improved enough so as I could spend time exploring 3 Inventions and 2 of the Preludes and the Cm Fugue from WTC 1. This has been most rewarding and definitely further aded to my technique. Apart from choosing to play Bach because I love to, I am also particularly doing so to gain the greater degree of hand independence that playing contrapuntal music provides. This is so as I can apply it to my ability to improvise which is probably my raison d'etre for being a musician in the first place.
Back to Gould. When he plays you can see how deep he gets into that expressive space as he sings voices, sways his upper torso around and conducts himself with his left hand if it happens to be free.

That is the place I also strive for when improvising and if I know a non-improvisatory piece of music well enough to do so also. These mannerisms of Gould's have caused so much controversy over the years but for me it merely adds to the experience of watching and hearing him play. I empathise very much with his need to physically express the music. This has been another frustration I have had with the classical guitar as the movements required to play it are all so small and the sitting position so constrained that much of the time I felt it tempered my ability to express the music I was playing in the way that I wished. Standing up and playing and improvising on the electric guitar suited me far better and I am constantly on the move as I am unable to stop myself from physically manifesting the emotion I am feeling as I play. Although also a little more constrained as one is sitting too, I find the piano far more liberating than having to keep control of a guitar on the lap. Ironically, considering I have dedicated so much effort and time to the guitar over the years, I think the piano is actually a more suitable instrument on which to express myself musically.
The main reason for the post though is to let you know how much I have been enjoying reading Kevin Bazzana's biography "Wondrous Strange - The life and art of Glenn Gould". Apart from gaining great insight in to Gould the man and his activities during his life, the experience of reading it had been added to immeasurably as I have it downloaded to my iPad mini. This remarkable device allows me to instantly explore as I wish beyond the book when I ever I read something of interest that I would like to more about. It is far lighter than the standard iPad and it has become my constant companion.

Inkling! - Possibilities?

I have just completed my most recent composition which was inspired by the news that I might have a second grandchild on the way. Hence it's title and the tentative nature of the main melody. Just yesterday the news was confirmed so the timing is perfect. If you are on the look out for new things to play all my compositions are available here and this particular piece can be viewed and downloaded from here.

Denmark - A heads up to Chick Corea's Spain

I composed this tune for Jazz quintet in 2010 and posted about it here that year also. I have since reworked the piece for solo piano which I have presented here. There are a few slips and I need to learn to build my solos and control the tempo but this piece does really needs to romp along a bit. The staid correct and much slower effort I originally recorded just did not cut it in that way. So warts and all this is my take on how to decorate the changes from Chick Corea's Spain. The dots for both the original quintet version and this version for solo piano can be obtained here and here respectively.

It has been exactly 4 years since............

....... I embarked on this learning the piano journey. If you have been following this, of late extremely intermittent blog, you might remember that formerly, I was a classical guitarist and made the decision to eschew that instrument in favour of the piano. In the main, I did this as I had always been so envious of the wonderful repertoire that the piano offered in comparison to the guitar and wanted to gift myself with the opportunity to explore it. And OMG? Talk about opening a door! Well, I am claiming that I have now made the transition from guitarist to pianist and this blog will now be set alight with a far more regular posting regime as I show you proof of the fruits of my endeavours. As well as thoroughly and utterly enjoying exploring the classical repertoire, I am also attempting to become a reasonable jazz pianist too as I have finally realised that improvising is fundamentally my raison d'être for playing music. I found the guitar a little limiting in this respect adding a further reason to make the switch to the piano.
My first offering is a piece I composed in memory of one of our local Arts community luminaries, Andy Ducker, who passed away a year or so ago. It is called "Andy's Song" and is an improvisational like melody based on an ostinato like arpeggiated chord sequence in the key of F minor. I also use it a lot for improvising using the F minor natural, C minor pentatonic and chromatic scales. Even if I say so myself, there is something special about this piece of music and I never tire of playing it. You can get the dots for it here.

This was recorded on an iPhone 5 running in IOS 7 Beta 2 using a Glif tripod adapter from Studio Neat mounted overhead using a microphone stand. Enjoy!

Brilliant!

Play it again!

It's been too long! I can barely believe it has been 6 months since I lasted posted here. That is just appalling. It's not like I have given up playing the piano or anything like that. Far from in fact as I an as keen as ever and have progressed well since I last posted. More on that for another day as this post is about Alan Rusbridger's great new book "Play it again". In the main the book is about Alan's extraordinary quest, being an amateur pianist, to learn the horrendously difficult 1st Ballade of Chopin within a year! Interspersed with much detail relating to this onerous challenge is some other most interesting reading as it just so happens that he is also the editor of one of the UK's most prestigious newspapers. The Guardian! Alan has chosen a pretty momentous year news wise to mount this marathon learning task for himself as it is the year the Guardian and others collaborated with Wikileaks to report the leaked US State Department documents, the phone hacking scandal and the Libyan crisis occurred. This has meant that a  session of only 20 minutes was possible early in the morning and often he was not able to fit it in.

The book is such a great read and most informative as along the way as he speaks to many other teacher's and pianist's, both professional and amateur, about their take on the piece and how to practice a work of this level. 

Well worth your while to grab this book if your are in to the piano in anyway at all!