First ever piano lesson

Yesterday, I had my first ever official piano lesson with the Reverend Franz Moeller. I chose Franz because I knew that he was prepared to get out and present recitals and I was keen to have a teacher that understood the repertoire from a performers point of view. We had a preliminary meeting last week so as we could meet each other, I could play and give him some idea of where I was at so as he could devise a pathway for me. Because I have tertiary level training on the classical guitar and understand and read music well already, I told him that I felt I needed reining in and assistance with honing an orthodox piano technique. He was straight on to it and I arrived for the first lesson this week to discover he had purchased 3 books for me to start work from. "The Joy of First Year Piano Technique", "The Children's Bach" and "Duvernoy's Elementary Studies Opus 176". We worked mainly on getting an even legato sound using the scale of C in both hands and varying dynamic levels. I found it very difficult to play softly and evenly and I think this is due to the slightly unorthodox way my hand sits at the keys. I say that because during my first practise session this morning, following yesterdays lesson, I am already making a change to my hand positions to get the thumb pointing more directly up towards the back of the key it happens to be on. This has enabled me to get more curl in the fingers, more control of the dynamics and follow through with the thumb more efficiently as Franz mentioned that I needed to do. Fantastic progress already!

Padrucci!

I have obtained a lot of my scores from the fantastic Petrucci Music Library website and the other day I stumbled upon an iPad app named Padrucci that brings the library directly to your iPad foregoing the need to use a secondary application to store your scores. Brilliant! Not so brilliant at first actually, but now doing what it should; see my comments below!
I have also discovered a couple of useful videos recently too. The first being a series of 4 lessons with Seymour Bernstein based on his best selling book "With your own two hands".  He goes deep into the mechanics of playing the piano both from the pianos point of view and the human playing it. One tip he suggested, that made an immediate difference to my playing, was to consciously relax the underside of the forearms as there is a natural inclination to tense this area particularly if the going is getting a little difficult. Most edifying!



The second channel I think might be worth your while checking out is Paul Barton's "Classical Piano in Thailand" of all places. This guy really knows his stuff and is a pretty handy player too. I first discovered him by accident really when I viewed his lesson on Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu.



After an interesting and quite lengthy historical explanation of the piece and his views on why Frederic refused to publish it he hops in to how to play it. This explanation included some very useful diagrams such as the following explaining how triplets in the left hand fit with semiquavers in the right hand which is an integral part of this Impromptu. Bloody good stuff and I will be checking out more of his videos.

The final part of this lengthy and feature filled post is that I had the unexpected opportunity to play a brand new Kawai Baby Grand and it was a pleasure and I would have liked to have spent a lot more time playing it. The lucky owner is an acquaintance of ours who runs the local newspaper with her husband. It looks like she and I will be sharing the same piano teacher starting in March and I will let you know more about that soon.

Composition on the iPad 2

I am pretty excited because yesterday I discovered Symphony Pro. A very capable app for the iPad allowing me to write music anywhere, anytime. The developers have cleverly implemented the touch screen interface in a quite intuitive way to get the dots on to the stave with a finger. Alternatively, you can use the internal keyboard or an external keyboard, which I have done using my Yamaha S90XS with the Apple camera connection kit and a USB cable from the To Host USB port.
Incredibly, you can import pdf, jpg, gif, png and bmp files and the experimental sheet music scanner will have a crack at converting it into an editable MusicXML file. At this point in time it is not always successful but does put the file in to a format that allows you to then send it to Sibelius or Finale for further work. As I use Sibelius the Dolet plug-in needs to be installed to read the MusicXML file.
As well as MusicXML, you can export in PDF (B&W and colour), MP3, AAC, MIDI and as a Symphony file to share with other Symphony users.
This app is new so it has frozen on me a couple of times but the developers are resolving these issues very quickly. The app costs $15.99 here in Australia and is worth every penny. When I first got an iPad 2 I had no idea how much I would be using it in my musical life but it has already become an essential tool as I keep many of my scores on it using OnSong and now it has become even more useful!

Newcomer - Edison's Tune!

Newcomer - Edison's Tune by Ramsnake

I wrote this piece to mark the birth of my first grandchild Edison James Cornwallis Thomson on the 11th of January 2012. It happens to be a good exercise in arpeggiated octaves too! You can get the dots from Score Exchange here!

Pianomania!

 

I have just finished watching this fascinating documentary that I am sure anyone who is into the piano would also appreciate. The main film itself is wonderful but do watch the extras too as they are a viewing experience in themselves!

At the center of the film is a collaborative work between Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Stefan Knüpfer Steinway's virtuoso piano tuner. Bach's The Art of Fugue is to be recorded and Pierre-Laurent Aimard has decided in favor of concert grand piano Nr. 109 for the Bach recording.  In order to prepare the piano succesfully for Aimard, Knüpfer feels he needs to to study instruments from the time of Bach leading to experiments with sound absorbers made from felt and with glass sound mirrors. But as fate will have it, the number 109 grand piano is sold to Australia a few months later; and that is not the last obstacle that gets in their way. Knüpfer and Aimard meet regularly and at times the tension is so thick it can be cut with a knife with Knüpfer saving the day with his sense of humor and incredible patience. In the end a highly succesful recording is made and already downloaded by myself I may say. One afternoon, a rather sleepy artist in jeans and sneakers shows up. It is the Chinese star pianist Lang Lang, who will be giving a guest performance in the Viennese concert hall. Still suffering from jet lag, he has to choose an instrument to play. His overcrowded tour calendar leaves little time for individual settings. Instead, and almost shyly, he asks for a heavy bench that will hold up through his extroverted style of playing without sliding around. The Piano superstar completes his performance in the large hall in a dark suit and wild hairstyle. The bench holds up, and he receives thunderous applause. I was less enamoured with the sketches of the comedy duo Igudesman & Joo always parody the elitist music world. Together with Knüpfer they come up with some of the craziest scenarios for the next show. The film also features on of Alfred Brendel's last concerts at the Grafenegg Music Festival. Knüpfer prepares the piano for him while the star pianist gives his directions humorously.

Pianist Magazine

I discovered this great magazine recently and have been looking forward to finding the new edition each month at the local newsagency. Having recently, purchased an iPad and enjoyed the reading, audio and video experiences it so ably provides, it occurred to me that it might be considered an ideal platform within which to view a magazine like Pianist that provides scores. I am delighted to report that an iPad version is indeed available and well worth subscribing to as the rates are significantly less than the printed magazine and that there are indeed sound files for all the scores!

Andy's Song

I wrote this recently in honour of a pillar of our arts community who passed a way recently. You can get the dots here.
Andy's Song by Ramsnake