WieWaldi "You don't need to be a chicken to know when an egg is bad"

You hear that, Nightowl???? He's calling us too chicken to admit we're bad eggs. Some people 🥶 Dont worry - our revenge will be sweet! 😱

Ok, enough teasing.

WieWaldi Good ear 👂👍 (...) You are developing an ear for blues and how it should sound.😎

YES! I always said she has a very good ear for rhythm and harmony. So lucky to be musical... and she has the nerve to talk about MY musical jeans! She should look in the mirror!

Whoops, that was more teasing.

Ok, teasing really over now.

WieWaldi I play the next lick and feel like a toddler again with my LH.

Exactly! I found that with my current lesson too. I started with just the LH and it was easy enough. Added the RH blues scale - whoa, that was hard... but ok, after two days it's going smoothly. I got this hand independence thing, no problem! Yeah, until I add a very miniscule new variation, and the LH is completely out of whack again. Rinse, repeat.

I'm a long, long way from true improvisation, because I still need need to spend a lot of time mastering each small change before it sounds smooth. It was so nice to hear your 8 minutes of true (ok, almost) improvisation. I didn't see you use any notes or turn a page etc, which tells me that you are really getting to that stage now. Even though I suspect you still need to spend a little time getting each new lick into your fingers, right?

          Sophia Even though I suspect you still need to spend a little time getting each new lick into your fingers, right?

          absolutely

            WieWaldi No, I didn't do any video editing except moving the camera.

            So, do you mean you stopped playing and recording, then moved the camera, then started playing/recording again? I noticed the camera angles changed but thought maybe you had two cameras set up. I heard slight variations in tempo, but it was the different camera positions that really caught my attention.

            "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                Nightowl No, I use only one camera. My camera is on a fixed tripod and I film in good quality 4k (3840x2160). Then I tell my video software to slowly zoom in for some time (and pan a bit). Then I go back to total view and repeat. This is not that much of work, but let the video look nice. And indeed, the attention intension is to make it look like a multicam setup. 😇

                Edit: bad English🙄

                  9 days later

                  From classical to blues, yeah, baby! Here it is, Easy Blues lesson 2. This one was quite a bit shorter than the first lesson and my concentration wasn't as thoroughly shattered, so it didn't take as long to learn. Sorry about the bonks and thumps, I was too lazy to clean up the sound 😃

                    Sophia This piece seems a bit disjointed - the first minute is a bit dull and seems to go nowhere, but around the 1.10 mark there is a nice note run before it morphs into a new piece completely. That said, it's a blues lesson rather than a named piece, so that's probably why it doesn't follow the usual format of the short classical/folk melody pieces I'm used to playing from the method books. Anyway, it's another lesson under your belt. 🙂

                    "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                      Ooooh yes, I was thinking exactly the same.... the pieces just don't add up. I actually left out the first "lick" which was that left hand pattern combined with the blues scale. YUCK, my poor ears. I agree with you all the way - the "mother of all turnarounds" didn't quite fit in the piece and I tried to stretch it out a little to try and tie the "rigid" pattern with the "jazzy" one. I think you are right that this is not a single piece, it's just individual exercises. 👍🏼

                      Yup, another lesson done 😃 I think I'll tackle one of the eight pieces next, that should be fun!

                      Sophia This one was played really well. The transition from straight to swing sounded a bit bulky, even with the use of the turnaround. But I remember very well, the lesson is what it is. Christian didn't tell exactly how to softly move over, he simply had another line, he played it in swing. Period. But you showed in a very impressive way, you truely mastered this lesson and you are free to move onto lesson 3. I will be a very smooth and calm one, with a wonderful ending.
                      My takeaway of your recording - my positive takeaways is that someone can easily also learn some classical music from the classical era, despite spending a lot of time in blues lessons. This gives me confidence in one bright and shiny day I'll be able to do so, too. My other takeaway - my frustrating takeaway is that I am only 7 months ahead of you. I mean 7 WieWaldi-months, this translates into about 2 Sophia-months, two short Sophia months while Sophia is still learning Beethoven and Chopin along the way.
                      tl;dr: congratulations for mastering the Peter Gunn Theme lesson. It was - as always - a joy to listen to your recording and see your cute tomcat on the screen.

                          Thanks WieWie! Yes, true, Christian just shifted from straight to swing, so I tried to use the MOAT as an in between. It didn't go too smoothly... but better than nothing.

                          I decided to take a break from the Easy Blues course to learn "Before You Accuse Me". I think that's around the level where I am now... it's such a nice and gentle piece.

                          WieWaldi ... someone can easily also learn some classical music from the classical era, despite spending a lot of time in blues lessons.

                          Yes! I honestly think it's good to get a solid basis and this includes a bit of classical music for sure. Hebele did this with the lovely Minuet in G and I cheated with something I already learned in the past 🙂 But seriously though, once I wrap up Alfred 3, I will definitely continue on a classical path as well, ok, I don't want to become a concert pianist, but my end goal is to become an intermediate* player and stay there forever. There, I finally said it out loud 😃

                          )* Intermediate on a "classical" scale, not our bloody to eternal beginner blues/boogie levels 🤠

                              WieWaldi My other takeaway - my frustrating takeaway is that I am only 7 months ahead of you. I mean 7 WieWaldi-months, this translates into about 2 Sophia-months, two short Sophia months while Sophia is still learning Beethoven and Chopin along the way.

                              It's true! Sophia lives in a different time dimension to the rest of us bloody beginners! She began Alfred's book 1 a couple of months after me, then zoomed through book 2 and has nearly finished book 3! All this while tackling the blues course! It's enough to give normal folk an inferiority complex! Don't worry WieWie, I share your pain and will not let Sophia forget that her MUSICAL GENES (which I rarely mention) are doing the heavy lifting for her!

                              "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                                  Sophia You made my day 😂😂😂😂😂

                                    Nightowl Sophia lives in a different time dimension to the rest of us bloody beginners!

                                    Us bloody beginners? Us? Hey!!! How do you dare and promote me down. I am a total beginnerTM. And I am moving forward, not backward. This means, I will go on and become a mediocre beginner one day. And I won't stop there. No, I have set my goals very high. I want to become something better, like an exceptional mediocre beginner.

                                        Sophia I will definitely continue on a classical path as well, ok, I don't want to become a concert pianist, but my end goal is to become an intermediate* player and stay there forever. There, I finally said it out loud 😃

                                        I am on that boat too. After beginner stuff, I'd like to think there is much more to keep it exciting. I am not very interested on advanced pieces and I will never get there anyway. But I do want to gather enough skills so I can noodle on the keys, play fun stuff in classical/blues/jazz/pop etc. I wouldn't mind if they have to be "intermediate" arrangements.

                                            Right! Being an exceptional mediocre beginner in blues means intermediate in classical terms. I read somewhere that this is a level that's attainable for 100% of mankind... assuming we are all human, that means we can totally do it!

                                              Sophia That's brilliant, but also quite disturbing! 😱

                                              WieWaldi My sincere apologies WieWie, it was never my intention to demote you. You are the BBK (Bavarian Blues King) and there is nothing mediocre in the way you play. 🙂

                                              hebele Same here, I think intermediate level is a nice place for hobbyists to be. I don't want to spoil my hobby by trying to attain skills that are probably out of reach anyway.

                                              "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                                                      Sophia The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion, I'll never ever become an intermediate pianist. Face it: I still stuck at total beginnerTM, and I invent more and more beginner levels. I invent them faster than I progress. Meaning I will be stuck in beginner levels for the entire eternity. Even the eternal beginner level is unattainable for me. 😭

                                                      Nightowl there is nothing mediocre in the way you play. 🙂

                                                      This! 👆You are darn right. I am not just mediocre... pah! I am exceptional mediocre! *proud*

                                                          Nightowl You are the BBK (Bavarian Blues King)

                                                          Hmmm....
                                                          BB King?
                                                          WieWaldi likes this.

                                                              WieWaldi Yes, WieWie, this title was already conferred on you previously (see my post 12 days ago). I gave you a crown already. 🙂

                                                              "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                                                                10 days later

                                                                Sophia I decided to take a break from the Easy Blues course to learn "Before You Accuse Me". I think that's around the level where I am now... it's such a nice and gentle piece.

                                                                Oh yes, I remember this song very good. Actually, I thought this might be one out of 8 boring pieces in sheet music form, and they don't sound that good than the not so easy ones. But learning it was really fun, it was spot on my current level, no stretch, just perfect. Bar 5 and especially bar 9 had been a hassle, but with stupid repetitions and a metronome (I played the bars in an endless loop) I got it.
                                                                And I didn't know this was covered by Eric Clapton before. I wasn't even aware, Clapton is a blues artist. Ok - rock and blues guitarist. This is a really nice side effect to our hobby - diggin' the internet about the stuff we play, about the artists that made the songs great. And I always thought, his monicker "Slowhand" comes from his soothing and calm playing. Hahaha - no. It was because he used very thin strings on the guitar to be able to bend the tones more. And then they were more likely to break. And they broke. In a life concert. And while replacing it, the crowd was waiting and started slow hand clapping. And then somebody of the band said: "Look, here comes slowhand again 🙂"