The Fucking Fire

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PSR:2

So I missed a day, but I think that this is going to realign what is becoming a confusing and admittedly computer sciencey numbering scheme.  I'm just going to run with today as Day Two.  Whatever.

I played three pieces last night, and there were noticeably less eyeball jitter.  It was just, I think, a matter of being easy at the keyboard.  

I'm really excited to include aspects of music theory practice and training into the process, but I think it's going to be a one-step-at-a-time deal.  I need to just focus on feeling easy in front of a new piece of music.  

The problem is that there are lots and lots of moving pieces:  the rhythm, the actual pitches, two hands, motif and repetition, dynamics, music theory and so on.  Some of the 'literature' I've read approaches the problem by breaking the issues into individual efforts (i.e. practice one hand at time, just the rhythm, or arhythmically), and while there may be merit to that approach I think sight reading is a whole-greater-than-it's-parts endeavor and that while some of the parts may be DeEmphasized by specialized practice, one should try to play the music without reducing it for pedagogical effect.  What I'm specifically saying here is that it's OK to, say, practice the piece REALLY SLOWLY or at tempo and error-ignorant, but that time spent practicing one hand at a time or just the rhythm and no pitches is time wasted.  I think it takes longer to learn isolated skills and integrate than to simultaneously integrate and learn.

I am personally vulnerable to 'skills practicing'.  I'll spend HOURS practicing some mundane skill in the hope that 'mastering the basics' will vaguely contribute to my overall playing.  I've wasted time doing this in lots of places: scales, Liszt Technical Exercises (a truly non-navigable forest of pieces), guard returning in Soul Calibur II, wave dashing or shield reflecting in Smash Bros. Melee.  While these atomic and repetitive practices are easy to do and uniquely educational they are dangerously dry: such activity becomes unsupportably boring after a week and a half, and that boredom risks abandonment of what was a fascinating/worthwhile task a week and a half ago.

I return to my Current Activity Darling (racquetball) for an alternative learning model.  I've been fortunate to have enough friends interested in playing with me and one who does so on a very regular basis (James!) that whenever I WANT to play, I can play with somebody.  When playing with an opponent, you have NO OPTION but to immerse yourself in every aspect of the game, and you have to deal with every mistake you might make, every technical detail, every possible maneuver, in real-time.  There's no space to isolate variables- you have to develop each skill (hitting balls very close to the wall, judging expected distances, backhands, aiming, using your feet and setting up position etc. etc.) while in hot competition.  And, with time and exposure, you just get better at these things, all at once, as a whole.  But it takes a while.  After fucking up a corner shot fifteen times or not getting to the middle quick enough, you sense that you're doing things wrong in specific places and adapt. 

I think that the same model can be applied to sight reading, that on can work on individual weaknesses in SR best within the context of the entire piece, and not a sliced up, boring version of it.  Things like reading motifs, or learning to correlate physical distances to notational ones, or proper timing and rhythm, all feel the same way at issues on the court do.  But of course all this is still very early in development (PSR:2!) and time will tell how accurate the rqtbl model really is.

PSR:1

So I actually started last night, on the eve of the day I labelled as "day zero" so maybe that was actually day 1.  Whatever.  But that's good. So.

I played two pieces- a bach Air on strings and something else, both in common time, one in C Maj and the other in b min.  I skipped the first piece in the Big Book Of Easy Ass Music because it was in 9/8 time.  I think we can all agree that 9/8 is a stupid time signature?

I can feeeel myself getting antzy for the very same reason that I've gotten antzy before- I fuck a lot of stuff up.  But mostly I fuck up tempo and staying calm.

One thing i learned from HH is that SR practice is all about moving forward, getting used to fucking up, and this is all about keeping the rhythm.  Sight reading is forgiving of missed pitches but NOT of lost tempo.  The act of Keeping Going, then I suppose, is supposed develop a sense of fluidity and ease.  So what I need to concentrate on is ease, relaxing, calming down.

I've found a piano teacher who lives nearby, in Reseda, who has actually written a book on sight reading and will give me a free demo lesson.  He's offered to have me come by tonight at 5:45 and I'm tempted to check him out, though I may do so next week so that I can get some more practice in and minimize embarrassment.  As I just said a few moments ago, I think I'm in a place where getting really stressed out is Problem Numero Uno.

Also, drinking lots of coffee is clearly going to be a concentration-affecting issue, and I've got a fucking bucket of coffee inside me already.  My ability to read WORDS has already deteriorated a little today, so I'd probably be best to wait for a little while before I waste his goodwill and free half hour.  Also, he sounded a little unpleasant. 

Well, those are all the thoughts i've got for the moment. 

Project Sight Reading: Day 0

It's been over a year since I've played the piano.  That's shitty and sad, I mean REALLY shitty and sad.  Like for years the piano was my life.  I found meaning and reason in it.  In the early days of my addiction recovery, it gave my time structure and purpose.  Why did I stop playing?  Well, there really isn't a good or really intensely communicable reason.  I moved to Studio City and started my job, and in that sea change a number of my otherwise Defining Habits were lost or dramatically changed.  Some for the good some for the bad: I stopped going to the gym regularly, but I learned to cook.  I stopped playing piano, and I became a Comedy Nerd, as comedians might say.  My Trouble is that I am tremendously binary in nature and attention and I do not do things at half speed well, and so when these new things came in they utterly replaced the old things.  

But all this was a year ago, more than that, and June 15th (almost 2 months ago now) I've moved again and experienced a second sea change.  I moved to Archstone and it feels like I've moved back to college.  Lots of hot chicks with tiny dogs, lots of ed hardy shirts, wandering teenagers exposed hookahs showbiz talk and midnight shouting.  Got a new roommate, Geoff R., who's a nice guy that is so different from anyone that I've known or lived with that you'd almost suspect we live together as a result of some accident involving parallel universes and rips in space-time.  Probably the most important change is that the new place has a racquetball court, and it's very accurate to say that it's changed my life.  I play rqtbl three to five times a week- so much so that my joints ache and I've incurred 'sports injuries'.  I've lost all the weight I gained in a year of non-exercise and food-experimentation.  I don't have time to watch TV because I get home and play rqtbl.  I'm going to run with that abbreviation.  Exercise and weight loss has got me eating better, which has me trying new foods.  It's also made me more likely to want to do active or mobile things- walks in griffith park, fucking hikes, etc.  I'd like to play tennis.  Also, my apt is (dramatically contrasting my beautiful and opulent Vallyeheart apartment) badly lit, furnished low to the ground and deskless, facts that drive me outside to engage in any Focused Task.  I really ought to buy a lamp or two.  

I've gotten lost in Bloggly Reflection.  To rejoin- I want to get back into the music game.  I've thought about what the best way to do this might be for a little while, and I've concluded that learning how to sight read Is It.  Reason being that despite having played piano for years and years, I've developed a lopsided musicianship.  To employ Diablo II as a metaphor, I've invested most of my skill points into the Technique and Expression skill trees, just enough to get to the next ability in Music Theory, and none at all in Sight Reading. I've sort of deluded myself into thinking that this is OK because I have, in fact, gained quite a bit of skill and self-awareness by following this path.  However, it's left me VERY LIMITED in what I can do now- without the music theory, I don't really know how to play with other people, and without the sight reading, it takes me a really long time to learn to play new music.  I'm accustomed to learning HUGE pieces over MONTHs, not short ones in minutes, and without a teacher guiding and reinforcing the process of Huge Piece learning, it's difficult to muster the resolve to sustain the activity.  

Learning to sight read bears with it a number of ancillary benefits:

- It's a skill I can export to ANY instrument, specifically the guitar

- It's something that I can do on a regular basis, to fill time, and after work

- It's a doorway to learn more music theory (recognizing chords, patterns, etc are key to it)

- Unlike technique practice, which is unilaterally dull, it has potential to be gratifying and fun

SO, after all that talk, here's the REASON FOR THIS POST:  I've got a plan.  

It's simple.  I'm going to practice sight reading every day or every other day, and think about it.  I'll write a blog post on it, if I think of anything meaningful.  I'll practice at least fifteen minutes at a go.  Mostly, I just need experience- long experience. I think what has stood in my way before has been unhappiness over it or stress about it, and I'm going to very actively try to keep my internal stress level low.  It's not going to be about performing for anybody, it's going to be about learning from scratch and maybe learning about myself.  

I'm sort of shocked at the lack of good sight reading material available.  Lots of disreputable looking, probably-written-in-1994 ebooks, physical books aimed at the extreme beginner, etc.  For a long time I've lagged on actually trying it because I feel a little lost and undirected, and I've more than once had the thought that I'd give it a better go If Only Someone Would Show Me The Right Way.  But that's kind of fucked; it's an excuse to quit.  I think Merlin Mann's right, that the best way to start something new is just to Do It.  Esp. something like this, wherein skill and expertise is really rooted in Long Experience.  I'm going to do my best to be patient and know that it's ok to suck at it, even to suck at it for a LONG TIME, to not allow that to distract me from the specifics of learning.  So I bought a spiral bound book of about a billion Easy Classical Standards, and I'm going to try some after racquetball tonight:

PSR: Day Zero.  

As a note, it took me a second to decide how to title this post.  I knew what I was planning to express, and began by titling it 'Sight Reading' which is probably the most succinctly descriptive title I could have produced.  But perhaps not the most accurate.  I looked at 'Sight Reading' and sadly reframed the activity that I'm desiring/planning as -frankly- a blog post: five to twenty five minutes of meaningful-at-the-time reflection; not an Active Process.  Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say LiveJournal post as so many blogs these days engage in active or ongoing processes, though my blog is squarely within the genre of reflexive recording. 

I realized, while pausing mid-titling, that I COULD make it an active process.  That perhaps the scope and function of my blog as it exists now could change and extend into the future.  Whats more, actively recording the process in blog posts would supplement the plan with both structure and reinforcement in the same stroke- i'd be responsible to my 'readers' as well as myself, and it provoked the thought/opportunity of including RULES into this process (which you see above). 

Sort of an aside, I'm writing this note about selecting the title BEFORE writing the post or rules.  

So I've opted to register the project in my brain as a Project.  Something with Form Function and Feasibility.  A long term Task and not a short term Whim or vague Desire.