My favorite things

Jul 7, 2009

Jazz with young people

I have started to learn piano at the age of 17. Do you remember how this age was? You guessed right! I wanted to be popular.
Being the late starter, I have developed many shortcuts so that they recognize me a good piano player.
One thing is that I selected jazz piano as my target. Of course I liked jazz very much. But this is not to write my first encounter with jazz. Continue. . .



When I traveled up north to Newport Jazz festival in 1967, I had great jazz experience. One hundred pieces full band played "Begin the Beguin". The reason why I remember it is that a boy of 13 years old took solo part. His clarinet was just fabulous!

I was 23 at that time and had passed 5 years since I started piano. I was awed.
But then, do I stop playing my piano? Not at all. I started to build my style since then.

Jul 2, 2009

How I start play jazz piano

Here's intermittance. Let me tell you how I started. I know there are many people who wish to play piano deep in their heart. If you are a man, you surpress that feeling by saying to yourself "I am a man. There's no time to tease around things that does not earn me money". Being a woman may be a bit different like saying "I am too busy with kids and keep home organized".

Well the truth is that both is wrong. Music isn't any excuse. If you feel like it, you enjoy it. One day you enjoy classical music and the other day you'll enjoy listening to Beatles.

I put up an article titled at an article site, "http://ezinearticles.com" under Arts-and-Entertaiment/music. It should be on the site within a few days. Check it out to entertain yourself.

Jul 1, 2009

2 - The key to productive practice -- Spaced repetition

I cannot guess "productive practice" means. Learn to play piano is not manufacture something. But I have one idea relating to the word of "productive".

If you practice too much, you may ruin a couple of day because of the pain at your elbow. In training your fingers, you'd better realize that your little finger and ring finger are there to hold things. Their function were not defined to strike something.

Thereby if you work on those two fingers, your elbow starts to overwork and may accumulate some heat. It's like the shoulder of baseball pitcher. If you pitch too much, your shoulder gets sore.

Then you need to plan your practice. 15 minutes in the morning and evening would be best. It totals to 30 minutes, but you never try to practice 30 minutes consecutively. It easily hurt your elbow, and thereby it can't be productive in a long run.