I met with Kathy Cooper, pianist/keyboardist extraordinaire, yesterday for my first weekly lesson. First lessons are always more of a conversation, getting to know each other, finding out what kind of learning and teaching styles of each, etc.
She's a very lovely person, down to earth and instantly easy to get to know! I feel very confident that we are going to work well together.
To start off, I'm working on my sight reading skills as well as my left hand autonomy. As a guitarist, my right and left hands have done different tasks for years but on the guitar, they are always working together on the same "thought". On piano, often your left hand is doing something completely different from your right, sometimes at a different tempo as well! This is very confusing and hard to overcome.
Slow, as Kathy said, is the way to conquer it. Nerve wrackingly, painstakingly, excruciatingly SLOOOOOW. ugh.
Next up is to keep working on sight reading a song. I've picked Supertramp's Goodbye Stranger on the Elec. Piano to continue with for now.
Then she mentioned getting a program like Finale (a sheet music/notion software that will allow me to hand notate staff or through my USB keyboard, writing notation as I play!) to help me learn songs by ear and to write music, as well.
That old friend of mine, now deceased, Buddy, used to use software like this often. In fact, in 1989 I played him a song I wrote in the much ridiculed (by him) key of D major. He took the basic theme and chord progression and added a few "dave" flourishes (he loved dave grusin and david foster). Originally he renamed my song Laura's Song (i was dating a girl named laura at the time). Then it became, somehow, Buddy's Song. But now, I think it's mine and I'm taking it back! Not sure what I'll do with it yet but Maybe I'll finish it somehow, rewrite it back to what I was originally thinking so long ago. It's a good place to start at the very least!
The song by ear that I'm working on is, Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country". I've long loved Bob's songwriting but rarely like his performances. I love a few, but I really enjoy what other artists do with his work. In particular, I like Mark "E" Everett's (Eels) version the best. He plays it on the piano in Bb with a deep soulful approach instead of the original's "folkie" sound. I hope to use the Finale software to help notate it.
Oh, and just for fun, I just learned the, very basic, piano part to Dave Brubeck's Take Five. Easy but a lot of fun. The harder one is going to be Vince Gauraldi's Linus & Lucy. A song everyone knows but few realize how hard it is to play, at least for a novice. We'll see how that goes, eh? :)
Well, I have a month of lessons scheduled now and a few months to wait for my 73 or 88 key piano keyboard, I hope to accomplish some goals and see some real progress. I'm very lucky to have this opportunity and will do my very best.
If you'd like to contact Kathy about setting up your own lessons, I can only recommend it.
Kathy Cooper
501-612-9904
Lessons provided in Little Rock at Calvary Baptist Church in the Heights.
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