Music Monday

I've been debating with myself for the last couple hours whether I wanted to do this post or not. Obviously I decided to do it. Mondays are going to be Music Monday. Not for me to post songs that I like, but for me to keep you updated one what's going on with me and my musical journey.

Not much to report about the guitar. I'm still working on learning E5, A5 and D5. Power Chords! Yay! It's going slowly because I can only practice for short periods at a time because it makes my fingers hurt (and go numb, is that normal? Anyone know?) and I don't do it very often. Bad KC. I'm learning guitar to Getting Started on Acoustic Guitar with Keith Wyatt. I really like the video. The instructor does a really good job of explaining everything and there's practice tracks. I just don't put enough time into the practice. That's on me. The video is great and I recommend it for anyone attempting to learn guitar on their own.

On the piano front, there's a bit more to report. I went through my piano books and picked out a few to work through. I chose a book that my brothers used when they learned piano: John W. Schaum Piano Course Book A: The Red Book. When I took lessons my teacher made me use the Bastien books but I like these Schaum books a little bit better. So I'm working through the book a few pages a day. So far it's pretty much just refresher. But I know there's some techniques towards the back of the book that my teacher never taught me.

 I also pulled out one of my A Dozen A Day books. The prep book. They're easy warm-up exercises to stretch the fingers. Also pulled out a reference type book that has every major and minor scale and their chords to work my way through. I can't believe that at one point in time I was able to rattle them all off from memory. And play them. I could probably get through them now with some straining. But it definitely wouldn't come as easy to me as it used to. That breaks my heart a little bit.

The final book I grabbed was one of my piano teacher's beloved Bastion books. Piano Literature Volume One. It's an assortment of songs written by Bach, Spindler, Mozart, the Creeper of the Month Beethoven, Schumann, Kabalevsky, Shostakovich and Bartok. The first piece is Minuet in g Minor supposedly by Johann Sebastian Bach. I say supposedly because the song was in a notebook that he gave to his wife, Anna Magdalena Bach, but it was not noted who actually wrote it. So it could be him or a son or even his wife. Anyways, there's a companion piece in G Major and they can be played together to make a very beautiful song.  I found this YouTube video demonstrating the two together. But here's the advanced version of just the one I'm learning right now.



I'm learning a beginner's version that doesn't have the little trills. I really want to work up to the version of the two songs together. So pretty. That's it for now. Hope I didn't bore you or make you go cross eyed.