Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Remembering part of what I'd wanted to include in the previous entry before it got so long...

While hanging out in my kitchen, we got to talking about, among other things, how dmk knew me before I grew my beard, when I was still a beginner on guitar. Somehow this resulted in my having to tell bill_in_germany a couple of stories about Ray, my second roommate, the paranoid one. (Not to be confused with Joe, my first roommate and roommate of shortest duration, or Roger, my third and fuzziest roommate (aka "Rogest", 'cause there was nobody more Rog than him)). Entertaining memories of the University of Dallas.

And last night and this morning I spent a little more time on the piano. Between attention-span problems and just not wanting any more frustration at the time, I decided to just play tunes I know instead of working on getting that thumb cross-under smooth. (Hey, any student needs some time to work on fun tunes as well as the disciplined practice time learning the next bit of technique -- gotta keep it fresh and keep the enthusiasm up.) But I did decide to brave a simple left-hand part -- I picked the first "two parts on one guitar" tune I'd ever learned (and still the only one I do halfway decently [Edit 17:15 -- I just remembered, I can also do the first half of J.S. Bach's "Bourée" on guitar.]), for the same reason I'd picked it on guitar so many years ago: the bass part is bog simple, so it's just coordination rather than split attention plus coordination. It's a German lute piece called "Tanz" (which I'm sure isn't a unique title), and the left had part just goes D-A-d over and over. (I think of it as "the thumb part" on guitar. And it's just the bottom three open strings in dropped-D tuning.)

Three notes, rythmically simple, it was still enough to cross me up, but not impossible. So call it a confidence-builder. But it's an interesting brain-sensation to play it so far ... Like "Norwegian Dance From Hungary #1", I'm remembering the physical sensation of how my left hand moves on guitar, translating that to a fret-and-string combination, converting that to a note, and finally making my right hand move to play that note on the piano. But when I do it for "Tanz", my left hand is actually moving in completely different ways than the left-hand sensations I'm remembering to pull the melody out of my brain. This will, of course, get easier as I practice the tune so that I'm just remembering how to play it on piano instead of remembering it on guitar and translating nerve signals on the fly. And it'll get easier when I get better at going directly from hearing an interval in my head to knowing where to put the next finger without thinking about the guitar equivalent first. But I confess that I'm dreading the learning curve for reading for piano, turning dots into muscle movements for both hands at the same time.

Playing the tune that started this current round of piano interest is different, because even though I composed it on a guitar, I wrote it down recently enough that I can still see the dots in my head if I want to. And playing the ubiquitous saltarello or "Lamento di Tristano" are different because I've attempted each of those on harp before (and I think I tried the lament on hammered dulcimer once), so they're not bound to guitar proprioception in my brain any more. But it'll be interesting to see what happens when I try "Rights of Man" or "Swallowtail", and mandolin muscle memory enters the mix. Hmm. And I should try a tune I know entirely on recorder, just to see what that's like. Ooh, brain experiments and music at the same time, what fun. As long as I'm not being graded on my lab notebook.

Annnnnd ... there goes the attention span again. Time to step away from the keyboard.