Cheers

In the end I am so glad I made this blog and focused enough to learn a new song for my wife and family. There is something so fulfilling to me about furthering my musical abilities.

I could not wait and played the song several times for the fam already. I told my wife it was an early Christmas present. That way I am ahead of the game ;) Her final present is going to be a subscription to the B street theater for a year. So we are going to a bunch of plays in 2017!


As for next steps, I am about to purchase a subscription to Flowkey.

It is a web-based (or Ipad) program that listens to you play, checking for accuracy. It feels a little "fake" to me but I don't have time for real lessons right now. Plus, the immediate feedback may accelerate my learning. I can't keep learning a new song every 7 weeks :)

Lessons I Learned About Myself During This Blog:

1. Having an audience during the learning process is great motivation
2. I like to learn "songs" not theory 
3. I can find time when I am motivated
4. I seem to meet a time goal whenever it is (it took me 7 weeks exactly because that was my goal)

Here's to another year of learning!

Focus

FOCUS

It is amazing what a little focus and can do. I have completed the song. Take a listen: 





Full Song: "The Christmas Song" (take 1)

Over the next week I am going to sharpen it up and memorize the lyrics in preparation for the great unveiling:  

Let's look at the data. Here are the chords in the song by section 

The Intro: C6, Bb9, Am, Am7, F#m7, Fm7, Em7, Eb9, Dm7, C#9, C6
Verse (part 1): C6, Dm7, Em7, Fm7, C6, Gm7, C7, Fm7, Bb9 
Verse (part 2): C6, Bb9, Am, Am7, F#m7, Fm7, Em7, Fm7, Bb9, Ebm7, Dm7, C#9
The Bridge: Gm7, Gm7/C, Fm9, Fm7, Bb7, Ebm7, D7, G7
The Ending: C6, Bb9, aM, aM7, f#M7, Fm7, Em7, Eb9, Dm7, G7, C6 

Here they are again by frequency

Unique Chords	Times in Song
C6	6
Bb9	4
Am	2
Am7	4
F#m7	3
Fm7	7
Em7	4
Eb9	2
Dm7	4
C#9	2
Gm7	2
C7	1
Bb9	1
Ebm7	2
Gm7/C	1
Fm9	1
Bb7	1
D7	1
G7	1

19 unique chords is a lot for a song but great for my learning. 

By forcing myself to see this through (only possible because of this blog) I have learned something about scheduling projects: I tend to think about scheduling things like this as "how will I fit practicing in everyday" when in reality it is more practical to do deep practice 2 times a week. Taking the pressure to find a little time everyday off the table made everything easier. Days are not created equal and so now I am practicing only 2 nights a week but for longer sessions. It's like block scheduling and that worked for me. 

Next week I will have my final version and next steps for my journey back into piano...

The Verse

Today I started the first verse. I am a little behind schedule. How hard is it to find the time these days. I started this Genius Hour blog so I would be accountable people other than myself. That is the only way I would practice on a Saturday night this late. I have tried unsuccessfully many times to continue my piano learning in the last few years. This blog is the only thing that could have pushed me to practice when I am this tired and drained. The accountability factor is less about having to check off and box but more about not wanting to disappoint or be lame. It is powerful.

Tonight, I worked out the first verse. Here is what I have so far:

The Christmas Song Intro and Verse Part 1

I am moving at a snails pace, but I am moving.  As long as I keep trying I will find break. I will find a chunk of time and make a huge leap of progress. Just need to stay positive. I never imagined trying to learn a new song could ever be this hard. With career, kids and all my other stuff it is a real challenge. A lot of this blogging process has made be think about the reality of this stage in my life. Time is finite and maybe this stretch of my life can not include becoming the piano player I want to be. Perhaps the reality is that I can make small progress until a I reach a different stage of my life.

Can't wait to get this song down and surprise my wife. We have a rule that Christmas gifts can only be "experiences" or something we "made." No material gifts. It is not we think we are above buying commercial products (believe me, we have a ton of crap.) It is just more fun.

Once Bitten

Spiders...what are you going to do?

Obviously, life can throw you curve balls. I find it best to prioritize and move on. Piano had to take a back seat and health and career had to take over. I value stability and sometimes you have let things fail so you can be stable. I am into "re-framing."

I could frame the past week as

"I am unlucky and allow misfortunes to put me back in my work and duties" 

or 

I could frame the past week as

"I value stability and am able to prioritize and sacrifice in order to preserve long term" 

Re-framing is a type of self mind control I find super valuable.

I was able to tighten up my intro to The Christmas Song:

First take: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byy3V1Cql17cS3E3Qk1NbWhHT1k/view?usp=sharing
Second take: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byy3V1Cql17cLW1XZkpxZFZraFk/view?usp=sharing

Notice the difference? Same notes being played.

Once Bitten

Spiders...what are you going to do?

Obviously, life can throw you curve balls. I find it best to prioritize and move on. Piano had to take a back seat and health and career had to take over. I value stability and sometimes you have let things fail so you can be stable. I am into "re-framing."

I could frame the past week as

"I am unlucky and allow misfortunes to put me back in my work and duties" 

or 

I could frame the past week as

"I value stability and am able to prioritize and sacrifice in order to preserve long term" 

Re-framing is a type of self mind control I find super valuable.

I was able to tighten up my intro to The Christmas Song:

First take: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byy3V1Cql17cS3E3Qk1NbWhHT1k/view?usp=sharing
Second take: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byy3V1Cql17cLW1XZkpxZFZraFk/view?usp=sharing

Notice the difference? Same notes being played.

Practice Has Begun!

Ok everyone the piano practice has begun!

Reflecting on ISTE's Standards for Students Computational Thinker 
5c Students break problems into component parts, extract key information, and develop descriptive models to understand complex systems or facilitate problem-solving.

I broke the song down:

There are 4 sections with several chords in each section: 

The Intro: C6, Bb9, Am, Am7, F#m7, Fm7, Em7, Eb9, Dm7, C#9, C6
Verse (part 1): C6, Dm7, Em7, Fm7, C6, Gm7, C7, Fm7, Bb9 
Verse (part 2): C6, Bb9, Am, Am7, F#m7, Fm7, Em7, Fm7, Bb9, Ebm7, Dm7, C#9
The Bridge: Gm7, Gm7/C, Fm9, Fm7, Bb7, Ebm7, D7, G7
The Ending: C6, Bb9, aM, aM7, f#M7, Fm7, Em7, Eb9, Dm7, G7, C6 

I am going to represent my progress by not only tracking my progress through the song but through the chords I have learned. Using a Google Sheet, I aggregated the chords by writing a function that took all the unique chords and put how many times they are repeated. 

Unique Chords	Times in Song
C6	6
Bb9	4
Am	2
Am7	4
F#m7	3
Fm7	7
Em7	4
Eb9	2
Dm7	4
C#9	2
Gm7	2
C7	1
Bb9	1
Ebm7	2
Gm7/C	1
Fm9	1
Bb7	1
D7	1
G7	1

Wow, there are 19 unique chords!!! Also, I can see that Fm7 is the most repeated chord.

So I started practicing the intro and at least got the chords down. Here is my progress through the song so far (green being done):

The Intro: C6, Bb9, Am, Am7, F#m7, Fm7, Em7, Eb9, Dm7, C#9, C6
Verse (part 1): C6, Dm7, Em7, Fm7, C6, Gm7, C7, Fm7, Bb9 
Verse (part 2): C6, Bb9, Am, Am7, F#m7, Fm7, Em7, Fm7, Bb9, Ebm7, Dm7, C#9
The Bridge: Gm7, Gm7/C, Fm9, Fm7, Bb7, Ebm7, D7, G7
The Ending: C6, Bb9, aM, aM7, f#M7, Fm7, Em7, Eb9, Dm7, G7, C6 

Here are the chords I have learned: 

Unique Chords	Times in Song
C6	6
Bb9	4
Am	2
Am7	4
F#m7	3
Fm7	7
Em7	4
Eb9	2
Dm7	4
C#9	2
Gm7	2
C7	1
Bb9	1
Ebm7	2
Gm7/C	1
Fm9	1
Bb7	1
D7	1
G7	1

So, I have learned just the intro, however, I have learned half of the chords including the most frequently used chords.

Check out the audio clip here
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Byy3V1Cql17cS3E3Qk1NbWhHT1k 

Next week, I will test my sight reading and see if that has progressed as well...

Genius Hour Project: The Christmas Song

The Story

My story starts with piano lessons when I was 8 years old and ends now when I have completely abandoned the music I loved to play.

No!!!  The story is not over yet. My love of piano music has always remained strong and is something I think about constantly. A new story begins now...

Christmas is coming around the corner and that time of year is usually marked with me wishing I had gotten back into piano so I could play Christmas songs with my family. The dream is we are all around the piano singings songs with a fire warming us in the background.

My wife's favorite songs is "The Christmas Song." You may know it as "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire"

So my mission is to learn "The Christmas Song" by getting back into playing piano for my wife and family.

Setting The Table

First, I needed to set the table for success. I cleaned out my garage so I have a place to practice:

Before:

After:

Next I purchased a subscription to Piano Marvel

Piano Marvel allows me to connect my piano keyboard to my computer. I can then test my sight reading (just like a phonics assessment :)) and taking lessons with immediate feedback.

Third, I made a schedule of regular practice time.  WAIT! My life does not allow for regular practice time. So, I made a schedule for irregular practice time. Irregular practice time means I can practice here and there and in between this and that. We will see how that goes :(

Baseline 

According to the Standard Assessment of Sight Reading I have a raw score of 182.  I will test every week to see any improvements


Also, I have no idea how to the play "The Christmas Song"......YET!

Plan

Each week I hope to provide progress data, audio clips of me playing and insights from trying to keep a passion alive in today's world of distraction and over working.  Here goes nothing...