Sunday, October 2, 2011

I think I am going to murder myself via my music choices.

I have been taking piano lessons since I was about twelve, so it's been, what? Eight years on the piano?  I really like to play, too, I wasn't one of those kids whose parents forced them to participate in activities.  I chose to keep up with my lessons in college, believing that if I didn't have someone behind me the whole time telling me to practice I would probably only practice about once a month (which is sadly true).  As much as I enjoy playing it, I just can't seem to practice often enough.

Over the past year and a bit, I decided to play songs by composers that I have admired since I started the piano, the major one being Chopin, but this year we have moved to Grieg.  I am supposed to learn three pieces a semester, and this time around all of them are by our dear Edvard.

I got a book of his Lyric Pieces and I was glancing through it to see which pieces I wanted to learn.  I hadn't heard of many of them, so I was playing little bits of them on the keyboard, just messing around really, when I landed on the Elfin Dance.

I really like it, I do, and I decided I wanted to play it. I am not very good at playing fast songs, but I decided, just this once, to try and improve myself.

Then I saw his Scherzo.  It has a lovely triplet-over-straight eighths rhythm which I am particularly fond of, and when I sounded it out I decided it was going to be my second piece.  Then, I looked it up on YouTube.

And it says, very blatantly at the top, that it is supposed to be played hella fast. Which I somehow missed on my first read-through. But the middle is nice and sweet, and I decided not to back down from the challenge.

Just this Thursday I got my third piece, which my instructor picked out for me, his Arietta, a nice, slow song.

So, yeah. It will be a challenging semester, if nothing else.

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