Jul 19 2010
Piano Project
Today I started a new project: devoting an hour a day to the piano in the hopes that one year from now I will have honed my rusty piano playing skills. I’ve been playing since I was about twelve years old, had an amazing teacher in my late twenties (Julliard graduate, trained with Glenn Gould, played at Carnegie Hall, taught me a bunch), and then got a little too busy to play. Now I’ve got a little more time, and am eager to jump back into it!
While I always enjoyed playing, I never devoted an hour a day to it, so I’m eager to see the results!
This morning I chose the songs that I’d like to start working on (and stumbled through them):
- Debussy’s “Dr. Gradus ad Parnassum”
- Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”
- Chopin’s “Prelude”
- Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody”
I was going to post a before and after of the songs, but the before would just be too annoying.
I also searched for a modern composer and discovered Steve Reich, who wrote a lot of repetitive, layered songs (which I love) like “Different Trains:”
Unfortunately for me, his major piano piece involves two pianos – I may just have to get it anyway and see if I can work some piano/electric keyboard combination out. Here it is, “Piano Phase:”
[...] wasn’t very descriptive about the Chopin piece that I mentioned attempting yesterday, but it’s the “Prelude op. 28 No. 24 in D [...]