I don't have adequate light to read score sheets and can't hear audio from my smartphone (I use it to watch instructional videos). There were also reference books piling up in that area, but I bought a table stand at the thrift shop and it's tidier now.
I'll pick up a clamp-on lamp and smartphone speakers tomorrow. Hopefully that'll put an end to my squinting and leaning over.
Still, I was able to practice So What and some free scales exercises I found at PianoLessons.com before it got too dark. Will try again tomorrow.
Time meditated today: 40 minutes
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5
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Today I've read two short books on the Circle of Fifths and how it pertains to scales, keys, chords and modes. Reading is passive learning though. To make this information stick I should: 1) work these formulas out for myself using pencil and paper and 2) lay my hands on the keyboard and physically play these scales.
I see how I'm trying to rush the learning process. Like everything else lately.
It's as if I'm not in control of my own life, but instead being swept along in the current of social obligations, urgent tasks, unconscious complexes and other invisible forces.
It's been said that meditation is the most rebellious thing you can do because you stop: stop running the hamster wheel, stop buying and consuming, even stop thinking. The inner self becomes still. That inner stillness becomes an anchor throughout the entire day. It's a feeling of serenity and control – something I lack lately because I haven't meditated with my usual diligence.
So from today forward I'll report how much time I meditated that day (in a single morning session) and score the session out of 10 (10 being optimal focus and intensity).
Here's my first entry:
Time meditated today: 20 minutes
Quality of meditation (out of 10): 3
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Today, as I experimented with various finger formations for the So What intro, the importance of doing scales and arpeggios is really hitting home. My fingers are slow and clumsy. Practicing scales can make them nimbler.
Yet there is more to scales than just how to move your fingers gracefully up and down the keyboard. From scales you build chords and melodies. They seem completely foundational in music theory and in practical application of playing the keys. So far, I've avoided them because they were in violation of an early rule I established, that is to avoid non-musical practice. And for someone as myself with tendinitis, practicing scales look painful!
I'm wondering if I should study proper fingering and the theory of scales before proceeding with So What. Then I can make educated decisions on how to move these cumbersome hands of mine.
The left hand fingering that goes from 0:12 until 0:20 of So What definitely requires a plan. I'm trying to be as economical as possible with hand position changes while adhering the rule that the thumb and pinky don't touch black keys. It's tricky though.
Such strategizing of 'what finger goes where' feels a bit like a puzzle game. I guess you lose when you embed the wrong pattern into muscle memory.
Tonight I want to kick back and read my new book, but I better write this blog post first, lest I fall asleep while reading and break my promise.
My new book is The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece by Eric Nisenson. I'm reading it to keep me motivated to learn So What in its entirety. Practicing a song takes mind-numbing repetition, and I succumb to shiny new object syndrome far too easily. I hear a catchy chord and I want to learn it. Before music was passive, ambient. It provided a soundscape, nothing more. Now it's full of possibilities. I want to learn a chord from this song and from that.
When Frank Black wrote music for The Pixies, he excluded “boring” parts of a song's structure like the bridge to the chorus and predictable time signatures. He wanted just the good stuff. That's how I want to learn: cherry pick great-sounding chords from various songs and mash them together into a medley. But I'll resist.
Time for some reading.
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I'm progressing along with the intro of So What. The Piano From Above animation has given me a huge push, but it feels like cheating. Now I'm referencing the sheet music instead. I want to sight-read at least as much as I want to master this song.
I should mention that the second chord Cb/F/C# really tweaks the tendinitis in my right elbow. Like, I'm feeling the music right down to my medial epicondyle! That and some of the music reading games I'm playing are leaving me a bit sore. Wearing the arm braces help, but I don't always put them on before practice.
Time to sleep and consolidate today's new information.
I have a friend at church who plays piano and sight-reads. He was the one who recommended I learn sight-reading first and above all else.
Yesterday he played a musical piece for some youth singers in Sacrament meeting. Mid-way through the song, he stopped. One of the music sheets he was sight-reading from was missing! Since he didn't know the song well and relied heavily on the notation, the singers and congregation waited in frozen silence while the accompanist fumbled through sheets of paper to find it.
She did find it, two or three inexorably long minutes later, and the song was finished without further incident.
After Sacrament meeting I commended him on his performance and graceful recovery from near disaster. He chuckled and shrugged it off. Then from my pocket I pulled out the crumpled sheet music for So What. I pointed at the first chord and asked him what the root note was, and if he could give me “the formula” for determining that myself.
His reply? He didn't know because he never learned chords! Here's a man who can play a complicated musical composition by sight-reading alone, and yet he doesn't know chords!
I wake up to John Coltrane every morning. He's my alarm clock. I choose Coltrane because he attacks with his saxophone. In many songs he roars in the first few seconds. My favorite release from Coltrane by far is the four part A Love Supreme because he's a little more restrained. It's an album that sounds and feels like a monumental achievement in music history, even to these untrained ears of mine.
Throughout the year and a half that he stayed with Miles, he worked on his style, trying, as he later told Wayne Shorter, to start in the middle of a sentence and move in both directions at once. In effect, the result was an outrush of arpeggios and semi-quavers spiralling up from the line.
That explains so much about how Coltrane played the saxophone. His time with the Miles Davis Quintet informed and honed his approach to music. It makes me reflect on my own scattershot approach to learning music. Instead of starting in the middle of sentences, I'm reciting the ABCs. It's been a humbling process.
I look forward to being able to communicate intelligently with music. To finding my own voice.
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On August 17, 1959 one of the best selling and most critically acclaimed jazz recordings of all time was released. What serendipity that on the same day, 60 years later, I finally played the opening chords to this epic classic!
Yes, my latest Fiverr gig was completed and the midi file of So What (the first 28 seconds of it anyway) was delivered. I opened the midi file with MuseScore software, but that only shows me the musical notation. Musical notation doesn't indicate what octave the treble and bass clef notes are in, or what the root of the chords are. I want animations of the keys and chords being played, like this:
Screenshot of Piano From Above. Photo by Derplet, available under the CC-BY-SA licence.
Turns out I need software called Synthesia... and $29 US to unlock the ability to view your own songs. Fortunately for cash-strapped me I found a free open source alternative called Piano From Above. Once I opened the midi file with Piano From Above, I could see falling notes like manna from heaven. I finally see how to play those otherworldly opening chords from Bill Evans.
Turns out I was playing the bass clef and treble clef in different octaves, thus never getting the harmony right.
Until today.
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Long boring car rides are a great time to study. While the other passengers gabbed about minutiae, I sat quietly and stared at the difficult-looking piano chord diagrams until they gave up their secrets.
Image by 
Screenshot of Piano From Above. Photo by Derplet, available under the CC-BY-SA licence.