It all began with Louie's birthday a couple years ago...
Louie -- she's my gal. It was Louie's birthday coming up, and I had heard her say she would like to have a piano to learn on. She had had lessons when she was a child. I rented a old upright from a local piano rental outfit. I think it was $21 a month.
Louie was pretty busy that year, and she didn' have a lot of time to mess around with the piano. I got kind of curious about it and began just dinking around with it. I had had a piano around when I was growing up, and had spent some time picking out tunes with one finger, but it had been many years since I had had a chance to spend any time with one.
I have messed around with guitar since I was 14, so I knew a little about how chords and scales are built, but not a whole lot. The piano seemed a lot nicer than a guitar since it had all the notes laid out sequentially.
When I decided I wanted to learn a little more about this thing, I started with chords. I got a book that had all the chords in it and learned all the whole-note chords, A thru G. I learned the all in the "first position", that is playing the 1, 3, and 5 note of the scale.
With the chords, I could play tunes like I had been used to on the guitar -- pounding whatever chord went in each measure, and playing melody with my right hand or singing. This worked out pretty good, but didn't sound a whole lot like "real" pian playing.
Poking around on the internet, in some archive of a music news group, I found some guy over in England, named Jon Harrington, who seemed to know a lot about blues and boogie style piano. He had written a piece called "The Tao of Piano Playing", which I have shamelessly duplicated here, if you would like to read it. I thought it was helpful.
In another archive thread I found people talking about who were the greatest blues and boogie pianists of all time. This was very good. It gave me some ideas on who to try listening to. Here is the list they came up with, along with some others I have found:
Greatest Blues & Boogie Pianists of All Time
I have (here goes my big excuse!) a stigmatism, so it has always been difficult for me to read across a line. Reading from a book is difficult unless I trace the line with my finger, and reading across a ledger sheet is impossible without a straight-edge held beneath the line I want to read. I have a lot of trouble reading notes off of those five lines and spaces. I have to actually count the lines and spaces to figure out what note it is. I needed a way to learn piano without learning to read music. What's so unreasonable about that?
Somewhere around this time my dad showed me a Workshop Records catalog. They have all kinds of instructional audio and video tapes on many instruments, even piano. I ordered a couple. I like them because I can watch them anytime I want, and play and replay them.
I have been working on a number of bass patterns for the left hand, with the idea that the more I do them, the more hard-wired they will become. I need to be able to be able to do them without having to look at the keys (duhh!) and while my other hand is doing something. That part is going to take some time.
I read somewhere Pete Johnson used to place a cloth over the keys and play through it. That is a kind of fun thing to try to see how good your hand and brain are getting stuff down.
The first bass progressions I've worked on are:
The Jimmy Reed (?) Shuffle: 1&4, 1&4, 1&5, 1&5 - repeating at I, IV, & V
The Boogie - 1,8,
Another thingie I recently discovered on the internet is Piano on the
Net, a free on-line course which uses Apple's QuickTime software to
teach Piano and Music Lessons, including Jazz. Good basic theory lessons.
The advanced lessons get into a little bit of blues stuff.
Biograph Records -
Excellent selection of CD's with tunes from blues, boogie woogie,
ragtime, stride, and jazz piano. Many cuts from original piano rolls played
by Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Scott Joplin, Eubie Blake, Earl Fatha
Hines, James P. Johnson, George Gershwin and others. Lots of good bio
information on artists.
Went and saw Victor Borge at Purdue Hall of Music. He is hilarious.
Attended a ragtime festival in Frankenmuth, MI. It's a pretty good drive, but was very good. Bob Milne, Sue Keller, and 2 other performers.
Listening to Tori Amos, soundtrack from Crumb, the movie. Crumb has excellent music on it. Two tunes I want to learn are, Last Kind Word Blues and A Real Slow Drag by Joplin. Book on Scott Joplin.
Picked up a couple books of hymns. Am learning "In the Garden" and "Just a Closer Walk". Would like to learn some Christmas tunes by December, that I can maybe play with Eric. Need to aggree on which ones. Shoiuld see about borrowing that Christmas Songs book from Mom.
Borrowed a neat from Howard on music theory. It's from Workshop Records. Promises a 4 year music theory education in 2 hours. It's good, but I don't feel like I should get a diploma yet. Good stuff on circle of fifths, chord construction, and scale construction. Presented in a way even someone starting out would get some good out of it.
We have actually had a few activities. The first official activity was to
go over to Geetingsville, Indiana, to hear Bob Milne do a ragtime
concert. Ben, Kathy, me, and Ben's brother and mom attended. Milne was
fantastic. I am not sure if he is mor inspirational or depressing to a
person at my level of learning.
Our second Piano Club thing was to go to Indianapolis to see hear Hans
Mahler, Horowitz's piano technician from Steinway, speak. He was very
interesting. What a great shill for Steinway! He was a very good story
teller and had lots of fascinating anecdotes about Horowitz, Gould, and
others. I won a Steinway commemorative CD of 3 great pianists playing the
same pieces, illustrating how differently music is interpreted. I bought a
copy of his book and am enjoying reading it. Am thinking of visiting
Steinway in the fifties when we are in NYC next week. Steinway has a
cool web site where you can take a virtual tour of their factory, but
the actual tour is supposed to be even better. Duh!
When I was in NYC
earlier this summer, I found a book
by Noah Adams of
NPR, titled, "Piano Lessons: Music, Love and True Adventures". It is
almost impossible to put it down. I got copies for Piano Club.
This fall, a number of us in the club will be in Las Vegas and plan to visit theLiberace Museum. We drive right past it almost every year we're out there, but have never hit it when it was open. It should be fun.