...got my kiss records out: player piano Archives

May 14, 2006


	piano crisis mode go! A few weeks ago now, my teacher started off our Sunday afternoon lessons (because Sunday afternoon is the quaintest time to have a piano lesson) by telling me matter-of-factly: "We have a recital coming up. What do you want to play?" That she's back teaching is remarkable in and of itself, just a month or so after giving birth to twins who now scream and howl on the other side of the... Posted by xtop at 09:16 PM \| Comments (1)

April 12, 2006


	to tame the savage stoner For weeks, while I've been transcribing Fur Elise and thinking about it not playing, just thinking I've imagined how it would sound coming out of the piano at YJs. The thing is fire engine red, or was once, and is beat to shit. Sitting beside the keys is a broken hammer from a heretofore unknown key, the surface is stripped off of keys, the ones that aren't off white or... Posted by xtop at 10:17 PM \| Comments (2)

March 25, 2006


	the encouraging words of steve sanders Posted by xtop at 02:36 AM \| Comments (0)

March 20, 2006


	not even wrong Just at the moment I totally got Für Elise completely down, at least the more famous first part, I bought the sheet music and learned that I was doing things completely wrong. I can't equivocate it to anything in real life, like learning to tie your shoes wrong or holding a pen the wrong way, because you're still tying your shoes and writing, no matter how stupidly you're doing it. I never... Posted by xtop at 11:54 PM \| Comments (4)

February 28, 2006


	"Oh I wish I were already there, instead of here, playing this song" This week's pieces: Fur Elise, Happy Days Are Here Again, Surfin' Safari, March Militaire, 2nd Study of Duvernoy's Opus 176 Fur Elise has always haunted me, like a really pleasant thing that reminds you of awful things. Mostly what it always reminded me of is that I can't play piano. It's effectively the first piece of piano music that I knew, whether it was from the Charlie Brown specials or that McDonald's... Posted by xtop at 04:45 AM \| Comments (3)

January 08, 2006


	a jewish, long island glimmer of hope I forgot to mention this before, but I think it merits its own entry. This past Thursday at my lesson, my teacher showed me exactly how one plays rapid-fire notes in quick succession, by having the fingers kind of roll along, each one hitting the same key, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. Of course, when I tried to do it, it sounded like I'd swallowed a handful of ludes before the lesson, and what came... Posted by xtop at 02:06 PM \| Comments (0)

January 05, 2006


	one note forward, two sixteenth notes back The metronome is my friend. I understand this now, after a year or more of obstinately regarding the little clicking robot who sat next to me on the piano as a horrible menace whose only goal was to destroy all remnants of creative interpretation and improvisation. I didn't get into piano to be turned into a music churning machine, in lockstep with the time signature, I told myself. And every time I... Posted by xtop at 10:59 PM \| Comments (0)

November 18, 2005


	the major lift, the minor fall So, I must admit to acquiring a rather swelled head through the progress of Friday night to Saturday morning. I was told what a great show it was and how good my photographs were (but then who really talks shit in a gallery? I usually save my snark for outside, too) so often that I came to believe it. Yes, I am a brilliant man. After a day of gallery duty, bathing... Posted by xtop at 06:57 PM \| Comments (5)

September 29, 2005


	moonlight It's now been over a year since I first started piano lessons, a dream I'd long held in my head and only acted on out of...well, I dunno. It occurs to me I'm slightly confused as to what drove me to fulfill that half-baked notion of being a piano player, however crude. Most of my life, I never played an instrument at all. When my dad died, I got a huge box... Posted by xtop at 09:50 PM \| Comments (6)

June 21, 2005


	the love triangle in F Major Scale So, after an extended absence due to my teacher roaming around Eastern Europe in choir formation, I had my first lesson in awhile this past Sunday. It being Sunday, that typical day of Catholic guilt grown to a festering head, I was full of shame because, in the weeks without a weekly lesson, I have not been practicing as much as I should have. I slink in, metaphorical tail between actual legs... Posted by xtop at 10:53 PM \| Comments (1)

March 29, 2005


	"Rommel, stop it" I don't know if it's a hard and fast rule, but it may be safe to say you can judge a piano teacher by the house in which they teach. My first teacher's house was spare, but in a homey fashion, with plenty of knick-knacks spread about, bookshelves that held stuff I've actually read and some lived-in clutter. My new teacher, my comparison, looks like she just moved into her apartment, and... Posted by xtop at 01:18 AM \| Comments (2)

February 13, 2005


	it's not you, it's me I've had women break into tears in front of me before and it's never a good thing. Especially when that woman is my piano teacher. I arrived slightly early for my lesson and she told me to go ahead and warm up while she ate something. So I sit down and go through my warm-ups, while I can hear her and her husband chatting quietly over food just beyond the curtain... Posted by xtop at 10:38 PM \| Comments (5)

January 04, 2005


	"can i try that again?" I never have dreams about showing up naked to school or sitting down for a test and realizing I forgot to study for it. My anxiety dreams tend to revolve around haunted houses, falling and losing things. So Im confused, sitting up here on stage in front of a piano, my hands shaking like blurry exposures and the songs Id spent all week practicing suddenly gone, inaccessible, while 20 strangers, my teacher... Posted by xtop at 11:56 PM \| Comments (4)

November 16, 2004


	some say love... Its quarter to midnight on a Monday and Im downloading a copy of Bette Midlers The Rose to my hard drive. There can be no other culmination of a week of incessantly playing the song in my dining room, hitting the fifths, working the pedal, my tongue firmly secured between my teeth as I fret over the upcoming ritardando and screwing it up so that I must go back to the beginning... Posted by xtop at 12:26 AM \| Comments (4)

September 24, 2004


	i'm going to hit you if you mess this up, okay? When I flawlessly perform a piece from my book, Adult Adventures in Piano (Adventures!), I get a star on the page. Once I get got a star on my chest for being so good. Sadly, I live for these moments, these quaint little validations that I am not, in fact, a total clod. In the vein of getting stickers as a reward, piano lessons are a lot like grade school, where your... Posted by xtop at 12:43 AM \| Comments (2)

August 17, 2004


	nancy boy! nancy boy! If you ever want to feel like an utter moron lacking both coordination and the capacity for rational, expansive thought, take piano lessons when you're no longer 6. You will question your ability to recite the alphabet, to tell your left from your right, to move your hands and feet and talk all at the same time. The first reaction I always get when I tell people is, "Are you serious?" When... Posted by xtop at 02:21 AM \| Comments (11)

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