first practice sesh

A couple days ago I had my first practice with my mentor. I played through a couple of my songs and we went through them, making notes. Some of the changes we had to make involved tempo, dynamics and articulation. I was speeding through some areas so there was less musicality and shape in the song. My original dynamics were too few and hardly noticeable but now it's definitely improved. When it comes to articulation there was just a couple spots where the written in articulation didn't fit the song so we changed a few things here and there. The good thing about music is that it isn't written in stone. You can change it to your will and add your own musical flavour and essentially make the song your own. I'm looking forward to continuing with this project as I will be growing as a musician, it's nice to keep playing even though I am no longer taking lessons and not required to practice.

my mentor

One of the requirements for this project is that we find a mentor to help us and guide us through the semester. They are supposed to keep us on track and give us pointers in the areas where we need help. I had a few potential candidates in mind including my former piano teacher and my band teacher but I decided to ask another of my teachers, Mrs. Hildebrand. She organizes and leads the practices for our school worship team that I'm a part of and is already helping me with that so it just all works out. I will be sitting down and playing my songs for her and she'll tell me where to improve and different dynamics and articulation techniques to do. As you know I've been away for awhile and so I haven't been up to par on my practicing but I'm trying to get back on track and am hoping to have my first video up as soon as possible.

picking songs

One of the first things I have to do to start my project is choose songs. This will make or break my project for two reasons. The first reason is that I want to enjoy playing the songs I play as well as choose well known songs that others can appreciate as well. The second reason is that I don't want to pick anything above my skill level but make sure that they will also challenge me. I have the sheet music for a few songs already that I got from my former piano teacher but I also found another blog where I can print basic sheet music for free. Here's the link: http://pianolicious.blogspot.ca/ I've started practicing and I hope to have a video up as soon as possible, however, I will be gone for a little while because I am going on a mission's trip with my school so that might delay things a little bit.

the first movement

I am finally starting my passion project. After much difficulty and changing my mind many times I have decided to do it on playing piano. I will not be learning how to play the piano, I have been playing for many years. In fact, this is the first year since I was 6 that I haven't been taking lessons. I quit piano lessons because I just didn't have time, I wouldn't be practicing enough so I was not progressing and I gradually got more and more frustrated with the material, but it is still important to me that I keep it up and don't lose my skills entirely. I haven't been very good at that on my own, I'll sit down and play every once in a while but I feel like this project is perfect because it will motivate me to play often and work hard to play well.

My goals for this project are to master a few songs and upload videos of me playing them. I am planning on creating a YouTube channel and I will share a link when that is done, as well as links to each separate video that is uploaded. I would also like to set time aside each day if possible to practice, and get back into a regular practice routine. This might be difficult because I am involved in other activities outside of school but I will do my best to make it happen.