Piano, day six

No, I'm not going to be doing "day X" for years! However, unlike drums and bass guitar I'm happy to report that (so far) I have managed to practice every day (for less than a week, yay me, give me a medal...)

So far, learnt basic C major scales (both hands, but not at the same time), very minimal music theory, how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and almost all of Mary Had A Little Lamb. TTLS isn't too hard, that's a nice simple one. MHALL is kinda tricky because I've found several different versions for the last part and none of them sound right. They feel like they either have a note missing or a note extra.

I found a tutorial on how to play Fur Elise, but it's teaching me a sequence of keys to push. Memorising a series of keystrokes is one thing, but I'd rather develop reading music and playing the notes rather than repeating a known pattern.

Hopefully that will come in time, but I like that bit of music so being able to play that will be a nice feather in my cap. I'll be away with work at times during the year, that'll be a bit frustrating but can't be helped.

Piano progress

I'm pretty sure I'd be doing better if I had a teacher, but can't afford lessons, so here we are.

Only a few days into it, so far I'm working on basic scales and working out where to put my fingers. Also, so far I've managed to practice every day since I started so that's good.

At the moment, my repertoire consists of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I've started trying to play Mary Had A Little Lamb but that's proving a bit tricky.

In exercise news, fitness is down on what it used to be, but that isn't suprising. Arm curls are down to 10kg, but bench press is at 20kg + bar (which I think is 20kg on its own, but not 100% sure).

Piano, day one

I've been very frustrated for months due to not being creative. I've tried writing, drawing, bass guitar and a few other minor projects. None have really filled me with passion or had me excited to get stuck into them. For example, each time I try and write something, I just stare at a blank screen for a while or type out something very trite and unreadable, then go do something else. Very meh.

There are lots of things I'd like to try out to try and improve being creative... but my budget is $0 and isn't likely to change anytime soon.

So today I've tried to start teaching myself piano, just from watching YT videos. Am I going to be able to play beautiful music? No. Or at least not yet, it's going to take a while. And lots of practice. That's going to be the key, focussed practice. Not easy when I'm often away for weeks at a time, but it's got to be a better use of my time than staring at my phone.

Back to work

After bulk time off over the end of last year and the start of this year, it's time to go back to work. Not feeling it...

Tank crisis No 3,653

And more issues with the fish tank.of course it's the one with the goldfish in it. Lost three of the little catfish, last two not sure of. Had to do pretty much a full water replacement to get rid of the bad water.

Lightning!

Early this morning we had a lightning strike pretty close to our place. I happened to be awake at the time (storm in progress), and the flash of light and wall of sound arrived pretty much at the same time.

Two air con units dead, so they'll need to get repaired or replaced. Luckily no damage to the internals or the electrics.

Jan 2020

First post for the year, and the decade.

Wow, didn't really think I'd be around this long. I remember watching episodes of Beyond 2000 on tv back in the late 80's / early 90's, talking about "the paperless office" and I remember one bit where they were really amazed at comparing a high-end video camera with the studio cameras and how the quality was "nearly the same".

Now almost everyone has a HD video and still camera in their pocket, along with a personal computer and fingertip access to almost the sum total of all human knowledge.

Starting the year (actually, continuing from the end of last year) by working on improving my push-ups. Started doing sets of 5 up to 40 per day at the end of November, today I've done sets of 15 up to 60 and it isn't 10:30am yet. Working towards doing 100 per day before work starts again.

No real progress on the creative front, but I did get reminded of my old Badly Drawn Cinema project. I only made two of those...