Things I’m learning[3]
So I’ve been talking about learning to sing, and it being really hard. Drilling is boring, I’ve learned this from a lifetime of not drilling on the piano because it’s boring. That lifetime has been punctuated by spells where I’ll suddenly start drilling scales and arpeggios every day, and then I start to reap benefits from it (of course) so I get addicted to it and I keep it up, day after day. Until the day when I don’t do it, and then I stop doing it again for like years.
My very first piano teacher, Miss Matula (who I still have nightmares about, but that’s a story for another day), gave me a set of scales, and wrote fingerings in, and I still have it, over 50 years later. My favorite piano teacher, Mr. Drum, showed me an arpeggio drill he did. He showed it to me in C, and I learned it in C, and I did it for a while, but then I left for college and everything about playing changed. But in the past decade, I learned those arpeggios and scales in all 12 keys, so I’ll sit down and do them in a key, and keep track of it on an old analog watch. I go forward from C through the sharp keys: 1 sharp for G, 2 sharps D, etc., until 6 sharps for F#, then I switch to flats and count down through the flat keys until 11 is F and 12 gets me back to C.
Anyway, the drilling really pays off, but it’s hard to look forward to, so I’m developing a new approach, where I find songs to do that incorporate the drills I need, both vocally and instrumentally, so I can get better at both at the same time. And ways to do the songs I love where I can achieve both the singing and the playing, have them both be good without overshadowing each other.
It’s pretty fun, so I’m doing a lot of it. I’m trying to get over the feeling of sucking, to keep going even though I sound like crap, because I do start to sound better over time, but you never get there if you don’t just keep going even though you sound like crap.
Well, this is pretty useful. I thought I had gotten rid of these ads in gmail, but they’re back, so:
Thanks for reading my story! I’m marie, and I develop games for ToMarGames. On my last birthday, I attained official elderhood, and I am using this Medium to help me notice the things that I am still learning.
