Three Flats

I haven't said much about the piano lately, so here's an update. I'm now playing melodies on the piano in E-flat major (three flats on A, B, and E) on the treble cleff straight out of the hymnal. I can't play in this key very *fast* yet, but I can play in it well enough to start practicing.

I'm getting better at moving and reaching up and down for higher range, too: I can now play things that I can't sing properly, because my vocal range isn't wide enough. For congregational singing, I have to wrap the higher notes of some of these songs around into the same octave as the lower ones, or some days I just can't hit them at all. But on the piano I can reach over and actually hit them. It's cool.

Finally, I think the previously mentioned course book is about ready to start me in on chords in G Major (one sharp on F); until now I have played chords only in C Major (all white keys except for marked accidentals, which do occur e.g. with the G⁷ chord), but I think that is about to change. G Major is pretty much a breeze now for playing melodies, so chords in that key is a logical next step. Soon. Later this week, perhaps.

D Major makes four key signatures.

I'm now playing (on the piano) melodies written in C Major, G Major (one sharp on F), F Major (one flat on B), and D Major (sharps on F and C).

This last key is technically a two-sharp signature, but it effectively means sharps in three places, since the same melody often hits both middle C# and also the next C# above it, in addition to the F# between them. Obviously that's possible in the other keys as well, and there are additional occurances in the bass cleff, but playing just melodies I didn't run into that often in those keys; in D Major, I do.

Also with this new key signature I for the first time am no longer using the crutch of introducing myself softly to a new key signature by highlighting the notes that are sharp or flat. I just started finding two-sharp pieces in the hymnal and playing them directly, and I found that I am able to do it.

Playing in this key is a little slow going at first, but not too bad.

G Major -- for real!

A while ago I started playing (the melody line of) works written in G Major, but with the F# notes highlighted. Today I started playing (the melody line of) works written in G Major, without the benefit of the highlighter, and it isn't nearly as much harder as I expected. Really, figuring out the fingering when the melody goes up and down beyond where a hand can reach is still the hardest part, and I'm getting better at that, too, insofar as I no longer precalculate the fingering and mark finger numbers over the notes. Sometimes I still stumble when the fingering is hard, and sometimes I hesitate longer than I should between notes, but the key signature is barely even an issue any more. (It will be again when I add in the left hand, because the bass clef will add another place where F can be, but if it's no more an issue there than it was on the treble clef, I should be playing comfortably in G Major by March, no sweat.

I've got some hymns in F Major (one flat on B) highlighted already, so maybe next week or so I'll start trying to play some of them.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned yesterday, practice with chords in C Major is ongoing.

Ah, more material.

I now have another book of piano music I can play, when practicing chords. This is right at my level, at this point: the first several pieces are all in C Major, with the right hand doing mostly just the melody, and the left hand doing chords, mostly chords with which I am already familiar. (This is not a coincidence; the book was designed to go with the piano course book I am using.)

These are fun to play, because I can actually play them, but they do stretch me a little at this point, and the practice is good.

One Sharp

With the assistance of a hymnal, photocopier, and highlighter (my mom's idea), I've begun to practice playing in G Major. For the time being I am playing just the soprano part when I do this, but once I get comfortable with it I will attempt to add in other parts. Eventually I'll want to wean myself off the highlighter and play straight from the hymnal, but one thing at a time.

Actually, two things at a time: in addition to practically every occurrance of F being sharped, this is also giving me a real workout in terms of shifting to the right and back to the left when the piece moves up and down. My piano lesson book has only just begun to introduce such position shifts, but of course most real music has a bit more up and down to it. In practice, I think this is going to take me longer to get used to than the key signature, but I'm working on both.

Intervals, chords, notation, and superscripts, take one

Now that I'm starting to play chords, I'm trying to understand some of the traditional nomenclature and concepts surrounding them. (If I'm going to play counterpoint eventually, I'm going to have to play harmonic chords quickly and easily first. I figure one of the steps along that path is to be able to see a chord on the staff, know what it is as a unit, and play it, without thinking about the individual notes. That means I've gotta understand the structure of the chords, at least the common ones.)

So I was trying to understand what makes the G⁷ and D⁷ chords what they are, versus the C and F chords with no superscript. After some Q&A with my dad, combined with some deduction and calculation of my own, I partly understand it.

My dad's first instinct was to say that G⁷ and D⁷ contain "a seventh that wants to resolve". This was way over my head, but after some pressing I got him to explain that the ones with no superscript are "Major" chords, and that they start on the note whose name they bear, C being the first note in C Major, F being the fourth. (They are typically played with the notes out of order, but fortunately I have enough math background to understand equivalence classes, so we didn't get hung up on that.) Dad also showed me the "fifth" major chord in C major, G, and revealed that there are no others, just those three.

Some counting reveals that the three major chords, starting from their named letter, go up four semitones and then three. This, apparently, is what gives them the "major chord" sound. (They do sound similar to one another, when compared to the other chords.) Further investigation reveals that forming a major chord in like manner starting on any note other than C, F, or G forces the use of a black key, i.e., in C Major it means an accidental. Hence, there are no other major chords that fall within the key of C Major, because any others would violate the key signature. One supposes that in a different key signature one could form major chords starting on different notes.

Similar counting reveals that the 7-superscript chords go up four semitones and then six, so they are similar to one another in exactly the same way that the major chords are similar to one another. I have not yet determined, however, how the 7 superscript denotes this. My dad said it means there's a seventh, but Wikipedia says a major seventh is eleven semitones, which is way more than six, so I'm not clear on the connection. Perhaps once I see some chords with other superscripts I will be able to deduce a pattern.

Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course

For Christmas one of the things I got was a learning-to-play-piano book that is intended for Adults. The difference between the kids' primer I was using and this is much greater than I would have thought. The kids' primer I had already nearly exhausted, although I had only scarcely begun to look at chords. This book, within the first few pages, already has me playing melodic and harmonic seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths. I think the fourths and fifths are not perfect, since at this point I am still using almost exclusively the white keys, but nonetheless, it's still significant progress over the single CEG cord the other book taught me. And it's a much thicker book, ninety some pages. And it explains things better.

I'm really gonna get somewhere with this one.

Chords... sort of.

My mom heard me playing one of the primer pieces this evening and remarked, "Wow, Nathan, you're playing chords!" Well, sort of. Almost. "Chord", in the singular, is more like it at this point -- specifically, CEG. Hey, you have to start somewhere.

I'm also getting a bit better at playing explicitely marked accidentals (even if the note repeats within the measure and isn't marked again the second time), and at shifting my hand from one position to another (mostly, from thumb-on-C to pinkie-on-C and back; these two positions seem to cover most situations at the difficulty level I'm playing at at this point).

I still need to learn to read durations. I can play the notes with (approximately) the correct durations, when the piece is easy enough that I can find them in time, but only if I know the piece (and therefore know the rhythm). So learning to read the durations is an important upcoming goal.

Okay, we're ready.

Last night, my mom said, "Okay, I'm ready to open Christmas presents." I think that's the first time she's been the antsy one. (Usually it's Dad or Hannah. Of course, Hannah no longer lives here (though she stops by to visit several times a week), and Dad had just finished shopping the day before.) Maybe it's because most of us finished shopping early this year. I got (what would usually be) my hardest shopping done last summer, because an opportunity just fell in my lap, and I think mom got started pretty early too.

I do have something left to wrap still, but my shopping has been done for nearly a week, and Sarah (who is easy to buy for) was the last one I finished; the hard shopping has been done for even longer. Normally about this time I'd have either Dad or Hannah left to buy for (both of whom generally tend toward "hard to buy for") and would be resigning myself to doing something suboptimal for lack of better ideas. Not this year. It's been a good year.

I've been playing Christmas songs, in addition to the primer material and some hymns, on the piano. Mom's been playing Christmas songs too. She plays them much better, of course. But I play them better than I did a week ago. I'm still having a bit of trouble with Joy to the World though, which is one of my favorites. And of course I have scarcely even looked at playing harmony parts yet.

The primer book has started me in on chords, but only in the most introductory fashion, i.e., the left hand has one chord (usually CEG) to play and only plays it when the right hand, which is playing the rest of the song, plays a certain note (usually C). Gotta start somehow, I guess. Maybe next week I can advance to playing two chords.

Piano After One Week

Actually, it may have been a week and a half. I neglected to jot down the initial date.

The story is that for several years I've regretted that my parents never made me take piano lessons as a child. Lots of kids are required to learn an instrument. Some resent it, and some don't, and some grow up to play as an adult, and some don't, but if they learned as a kid, they have the choice to play as an adult or not. So I'd been wishing I'd been made to learn to play. I don't want to play formally or anything, just for my own enjoyment, messing around at home, I'd like to be able to sit down with sheet music and turn it into something audible. There's a piano in the living room, after all. It's not a fancy or expensive piano, but it plays notes okay.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago this subject came up in a conversation with my mom, and she said, "So, why don't you learn?" I started thinking about it, and she dug up a couple of my kid sister's old piano primers, and I've been sitting down at the piano for about ten or fifteen minutes a day for a week or so now.

It's actually coming along rather faster than I expected. I expected to be three months getting to where I am now. Indeed, I expected to play nothing but scales for two weeks. But I'm tearing through the primer three or four pages a day, and supplementing it with a piece or two out of the hymnal. (I have at this point to select pieces carefully. They've pretty much gotta be in C major for now. I can play accidentals if they're explicitely marked on a per-note basis, e.g., the sharps in A Mighty Fortress.)

I don't want to give the impression that I'm some kind of piano whiz or something. I haven't even started to look at chords yet, and I have trouble reading timing fast enough to keep up with it. I can play timing well enough to suit myself on tunes I know (except when I have to pause to figure out an interval; I get quicker at this every day), and I know how to read the note durations in theory, but I can't yet read both the intervals and the durations fast enough to play them that way.

Still, I'm learning quickly. Two days ago I couldn't play anything with intervals much larger than two white keys (i.e., I could only skip over one key, discounting the black ones, which I still mostly ignore at this point) unless I sat there and counted for several seconds between notes. Today I'm jumping from C to G and stuff without messing up the timing (on hymns I know). That's progress.

I'm looking forward to learning how to play chords, and to learning to play with a key signature other than C major. I wonder which one the primer will have me do first?

So for all those adults out there who have wanted to learn to do something but thought you were too old... maybe middle-age isn't too old to learn new tricks. I'll post about my progress periodically.