Living in Leicester, Part 71: Write. Practice. Knit. August 11, 2010

In case anyone was wondering what I’ve been doing for the last four weeks – there you have it. The heading comprehensively describes the extent of my current activities; I’ve excluded minor details such as eating and sleeping, or, more importantly, drinking coffee. Supplemented by practising studiously and knitting in any remaining spare minute. It’s good to have hobbies where progress is visible and occasionally even audible, as opposed to the thesis where progress seems to mean deleting previously written paragraphs in a futile attempt to be more concise.

On that note (hah!) I have now been taking and thoroughly enjoying piano lessons for a whole year, with no intention to stop anytime soon … or indeed ever.

Oh, and I did a talk at the Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub. I enjoyed that a lot even though we started with an hour delay because the room the presentation was supposed to be in was double-booked with a pole dancing class and much hilarity ensued. In the end the audience gathered around the pool billiard table and the fire place, and the slides were projected between the radiator and the ventilator. Fun times! *grins*

But apart from that my days currently consist mainly of writing and more writing. And worrying about finding a job. Feeling pressured to write up faster to find a job, and then feeling pressured to write slower so I don’t finish and lose funding before I have found a job. It’s all a matter of finding and maintaining the equilibrium … and if anyone has figured out to do so, please let me know urgently.

On the bright side, my sleeping patterns have definitely improved, which is a welcome relief. Denial and sticking your fingers in your ears and going “lalala” are such a much-maligned and under-appreciated strategy, which is unfair, because it seems to be working well for me. *whistles*

What’s up next? Next week I’ll be in Edinburgh from Tuesday to Sunday, attending to a number of events on the Fringe Festival, seeing the Military Tattoo (go on, mock me, I know you want to), and give a talk myself as part of the Fringe of Reason event series. I may or may not have a look at what K1 Yarn has to offer — okay, who am I kidding, I plan to visit them and drool all over their yarn.

When I return it will be time to … *gasps* … notify the uni of my “intent to submit”, which is a fancy way of saying I have to tell them I’m serious about this, and it means they’ll expect thesis submission from three months on.
*blinks*
Denial. Coffee. Denial. Ear plugs. Coffee.
Right, where was I? Yarn … yarn is good. There cannot be such a thing as too much yarn.

Daniela,
over and out

Living in Leicester, Part 69: My Eight Stages of Learning to Play a New Piece of Music on the Piano. April 22, 2010

In the interest of science, I have decided to detail the result of months of ruthless and highly scientific self-observation. I present to you my eight stages of learning to play a new piece of music on the piano.

1. Stage: Pride
If I’m starting a new piece it seems to mean that my piano teacher thinks I am making enough progress with the pieces I am currently working on to start on another one. Unless I’ve chosen a new piece to learn all by myself in which case instead of Pride the first stage can also take the form of Smugness: look at me, I’m a dedicated learner. I learn things on my own. Yeah, that’s how I roll.

2. Stage: Anticipation
New music! How will it sound? How long will it take me? There are new things to discover, new shapes and new sounds, new combinations, new melodies – the possibilities are endless!

3. Stage: Discovery
The possibilities are endless. However, the possible matches from notes on paper to keys on the keyboard are finite, as are the number of my fingers. Two or more evenings are spent deciphering the notes, repeatedly. You would think that once you know which note to play, you know which note to play, right? Wrong. Turns out that my brain forgets the note-to-key match faster than a politician forgets his promises right after he’s been elected. Still, it’s fun because this is all about trying to understand the piece and figuring out what the best fingering would be for the individual passages.

4. Stage: Bargaining
After the stage of Discovery, I will have a very rough, very theoretical notion of how the piece is supposed to be played. I will also have a very clear idea of the extent I will be able to play it. Thus I enter the stage of bargaining: What tempo is this piece in – allegretto? *faints* No way. I’m sure it will sound just as well in … Largo. Largo is good. We likes us Largo. And I can’t even begin to think about minor details such as, erm, dynamics, pedalling … phrasing. You know, only the stuff that helps express the piece’s individuality, its meaning and spirit. It will have to wait until my fingers have conquered Mount Improbable and are capable of making a smooth transition from C# to D#. Till then I am pleading with the notes that, for example, a joyful, exuberant melody can be played equally well at a slow tempo with no concernable phrases or indeed any emphasis at all.

5. Stage: Fear and Humility
It slowly sinks in just how many elements I need to master to make this sound beautifully. Deciphering the notes is a laughably small part of it. Combining the notes of the right and left hand together, at the right time is a whole other part. And reading the notes fast enough so it sounds like continuous music instead of a slow… laboured… sequence of fingering exercises. And if that’s not enough, the pedal has to be coordinated too. While observing the phrase marks. And the dynamics. And thermodynamics. (Okay, I made that one up.)

6. Stage: Denial
It’s the only way. I continue to practice. I cannot face the enormity of what this piece demands of me. (This, obviously, is relative. We’re talking “Home on the Range”, not Beethoven’s piano sonatas.) Bit by beat, I mean, bar by bar. However, denial can only be maintained for so long. Once the fragile walls of self-defence break start crumbling, the crushing despair of Still.Not.Being.Able.To.Play.The.Damn.Thing. can only lead to one possible outcome:

7. Acceptance
More practice. Sensible, me? Oblivious to common sense, more like it. There is no way out. I will not give up. I will most certainly not take a break, take a deep breath, back down, or do any of the other things the more feeble minded less stubborn more sensible among us would do.

8. Cautious Relief
Eventually, a melody or a song emerges. Or rather, is forcefully pushed and dragged and shoved and coerced into existence. Feeling scarred, battered and bruised and ever so slightly victorious I will now proceed to play the piece ad nauseam just BECAUSE I CAN. Of course, once I mastered (in a relative sense) a piece of music, a new piece will appear on the horizon, ie. the page in front of me. Luckily learning a new piece is a bit like giving birth (or so I have been told) and the rush of endorphines of being able to finally play this piece in a not entirely atrocious nice way immediately make you forget the pain and suffering and fear and insanity … and look forward to learning the next piece. Fun and adventure awaits!

Note: In order to make it through all of the eight stages without significant loss of sanity, confidence, self-esteem or will to live, a good enabler teacher is essential. Without lessons I would be perpetually stuck between stage 4 (Bargaining) and 5 (Fear). I’m privileged for having found the perfect piano teacher who even in my most atrocious performances always finds something to praise (I don’t know how he does it!). He always manages to pick up and then rebuild the shattered remains of my confidence for which I will be eternally grateful.

Living in Leicester, Part 68: And Then There Was Music January 29, 2010

The first month of 2010 is almost over and once again I ask myself, where the hell did all that time go, when am I ever going to finish, and what on earth will I be doing afterwards? Granted I did decide to relax and recover over the christmas holidays – a plan that was met with only partial success – but it’s still rather scary how fast January went by and how little I have been able to do for my PhD. That’s not to say I was lazy: there was marking, a talk to prepare, a teaching course portfolio to create, but all the while my PhD has been more or less in hibernation. Ah well, next Tuesday I’ll present another study during an internal seminar, finish the current marking batch (oh joy!) by Thursday and then I will hopefully be able to focus on writing up.

And now to something completely different. I may have mentioned before that I am learning to play the piano, and that I am rather enjoying the whole process. That may have been an understatement. I am officially obsessed and madly in love with music in general and the piano in particular. I am spending an obscene amount of time practising each day (an hour and a half by now), and when I’m not practising I’m listening to classical music wherever I can, learning music theory, and generally just obsessing over classical (piano) music. If I can’t listen to music or can’t practice I feel like something is almost painfully absent. Apparently there was a roughly piano-shaped hole in my life I hadn’t noticed up until now … and I am as much surprised by this as anyone else. Or maybe it was just a vaguely music-shaped hole and I was lucky enough to find the right instrument?

Whatever the reason, it’s quite an overwhelming experience – I practice for hours, and sometimes I will go back to the piano after having had a practice session earlier that day. I learn musical theory for fun even though I won’t be needing (i.e., being able to use for playing) some of that knowledge for quite a while. I even try to practice on an acoustic piano every now and then so I get used to the different feel of acoustic and digital pianos, though Sven is strangely reluctant to let me buy a second (acoustic) piano for practice, pffft.

Is the aforementioned obscene amount of practice somehow related to the also-aforementioned lack of work for my PhD? Quite possibly. The perceptive reader might be tempted to point out that I could cut down on piano time and work more on my PhD, at which point I would invite the perceptive reader to try and keep my from my piano practice, if they’re feeling brave. Or suicidal. And on that note – back to uni work. Need to work fast, so I have more time for practice later…

Living in Leicester, Part 66: Playing the Piano, or: Practice, Practice, Practice December 9, 2009

It’s now a good four months since I started a great new adventure into a world hitherto unknown to me – I started learning to play the piano. My previous experience in playing an instrument was limited to playing the recorder (german: “Blockfloete”) from the tender age of 10 to 12, without reaching any level of acceptable proficiency.

However, for probably decades I had always *wanted* to learn the piano. Embarassingly enough, this was mostly based on wanting to be able to play one particular song – for those who are interested, “Neverland” by Suzanne Ciani – and … err, nothing else, really. This was the full extent of my motivation. I did say, it was kinda embarassing… When a friend – *waves to Iris* – started talking about learning to play the violin this decade-old dream of thought of mine popped up again, followed by the thought, “oh, what the heck, why not give it a try” and I went to look for piano teachers in Leicester and had my first lesson at the start of August.

To say it’s been a revelation would be an understatement. After the first lesson I was excited, after the second lesson I was thoroughly enjoying myself, and after the third I was completely hooked. Whatever I was expecting when I started taking lessons, I certainly did not expect to be completely blown away like this by the sheer enjoyment of learning and playing the piano. In the first three or four weeks I tried to practice half an hour a day, but for the past couple of months I’ve consistently practiced a good hour a day. Okay, so maybe I am developing an obsession … never mind the hours and hours – alright, make that days – I’ve spent on listening to classical music and catching up with what I’ve missed out so far.

A good part of the credit for enjoying this so much goes to my piano teacher, who is very nice, extremely patient, and terrifyingly knowledgeable. He’s making a point of mistakes being a natural part of the learning process, which admittedly is a very alien concept to me. *grins sheepishly* I really like that I don’t only learn about the technicalities of sightreading and playing, but also how to enjoy and appreciate music. On a side note, I’m fascinated by the fact that I don’t mind much talking and teaching in front of 12 or even 120 students, but playing a piece I practiced at home during the lesson reduces me to a nervous wreck. Go figure!