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...