The piano man

awww... look at the kitty playing piano...

Challenge: To be able to do my requirements for piano grade 3 exam in a week. 

Difficulty: 5/5.

Skills developed: Sight reading improvement. Increased piano dexterity. A renewed love for Meat Loaf.

Overview/Rant: Firstly I'll completely and honestly admit that I took this challenge out of fear of a certain Ms. Susan Bourke who has displayed infinite amount of patience at my lack of piano practice to date. The exam date is May but, as you will see, the pieces are quite difficult and need to be learned and rehearsed for months before the examination date. So I effectively used this blog as a study guide... [insert tongue sticking-out emoticon]

 Theory, scales, arpeggios and four-note-broken-chords make up for 20% of the test and are probably my strongest area at the moment. The other 20% is for sight tests and ear tests, all of which will come over time and practice. SO essentially my key area of concentration was my pieces...

So in order of difficulty...

EASY - Landler in A by Daniel Steibelt... which is unfortunately to available anywhere on youtube it seems. Well- imagine its easier than the other two... [insert smiley face emoticon]

MEDIUM - Wilder Reiter (Wild Horseman) by Robert Schumann... which I found played by what looks like a six year old... wow- how crap do I feel?

HARD - Prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach... okay... now they're taking the p*ss...

Hardest Parts: The left hand section in Wild Horseman and the entirety of Prelude. Also- watching kids a quarter your age doing it better than you ever could is a bit of a ball buster too...

Result: Well... I think Meat Loaf said it best when he said... (and we'll ignore what Susan said about the whole thing... [insert oh-dearie-me emoticon]

Recommendation: Piano is awesome- difficult if you actually try to do the grades. I can't really recommend it to anyone if they haven't studied piano before... BUT to those that quit and say "oh I wish I'd never quit..." then GO BACK TO PIANO! I quit when I was 15 and only came back to it a few months ago and it's the best decision I've made in a while.

Conclusion: I totally underestimated how much work I had to do for this exam... [insert omfg smiley face emoticon]

Special Thanks: Susan Bourke for her patience and encouragement. [insert super smiley face emoticon]

Next Challenge: It's the beginning of MYSTERY MARCH... this is where I do challenges WITHOUT telling you what they are... until after... obviously... or else I'd just have done nothing... an example, but I won't be doing, is "trying to start as many conversations about butter as possible in a week"... the challenges are 'mostly' harmless fun... [insert evil grin smiley emoticon]

Random Thoughts: Meat Loaf is awesome.

This post was bought to you by emoticons... cus a picture speaks a thousand blah blah blah...