The end of my day can’t get here soon enough to suit me. I’m about fit to split. Energy. Excitement. Enthusiasm. All those and more. Two reasons why I’m eager to leave the office today:
- My piano gets tuned tonight – finally. I can’t wait to hear how much better it sounds once all the strings actually resonate with their true frequencies (or at least as close as we can get them). I’ll be much more likely to sit down and play on a regular basis after it doesn’t hurt to listen. It’s amazing just how much an out-of-tune piano can turn even the most avid player away until things are set to right again.
- At long last I’ll be acquiring my Xbox 360. Thanks to an anonymous benefactor (whose namelessness is driving me batty), I can now join the ranks of Halo 2 (and soon, Halo 3) players on the killing fields in higher resolution. It’s rumored that there’s water on Warlock. I aim to see it.
I can’t wait. 5:00 is so far away…
Tags: halo, halo-2, halo-3, Piano, warlock, xbox, xbox-360
My piano was made in 1940. It’s really in remarkable condition for something that’s 67 years old. I’ve seen newer pianos that look worse than this one.
It was funny – the first piano tuner I got ahold of today launched into a 10-minute lecture when I asked what his company’s rates were for tuning pianos. Most of the information was stuff I already knew, things like how the strings are somewhat elastic and stretch over time, how the sounding board has to be checked for cracks in these older pianos before actually tuning, and how older pianos often can’t be tuned all the way up to their actual pitches because the sounding boards (and other parts) might not be able to take the stress of 26+ tons of pressure (each string apparently holds about 200 lbs. of pressure, which was about the only bit he relayed to me that I hadn’t know before). It was actually pretty amusing to listen to him because he was completely unstoppable. I am still making phone calls, though, and have another who returned my call who actually sounds more promising than this big music company I called.
I also have a line on some piano teachers in the area who can take advanced students. Now, I just have to somehow swing the money from my budget (not that the lessons are really all that expensive, but when you’re paying on a mortgage, every dollar counts).
Tags: marshall-and-wendell, music, Piano
I got my piano last night. My folks delivered it, and then four of us guys got to wrestle the beast into the house. It’s an old Marshall & Wendell upright that’s in pretty nice condition. I don’t how how old it actually is yet, but I hope to determine that tonight when I get home and can look up the serial number. And the fun thing is that the piano just happens to match the look and feel of our house, so it looks like it has always been there.
The piano is badly in need of a tuning, so the search is on today to find someone in my area who’s competent, reasonably priced, and willing to drive to my home out in the country to do the job. There are half a dozen different companies listed in the phone book who do piano tuning, so they’ll all be getting a call from me at some point today.
I’m also now on the hunt for a good piano teacher. The last time I was able to take lessons was in the spring of 1998, so it’s been nearly nine years. Most of the playing I’ve done since then has been tinkering. I haven’t had a piano of my own, so I’ve only been able to play whenever I was in a location that had a piano in the living room or on the church platform or the university music department’s practice rooms. Naturally, I’m pretty rusty, but I’m looking forward to getting back into playing on a regular basis and taking my practicing more seriously than I ever did when I was younger. I’ve missed being able to play good music. Also, some of those piano books I’ve had my eye on for a while now (e.g. a good George Gershwin piano book) are starting to look a lot more tempting.
I do need to sit down and make out a list of goals for specific areas of my playing I want to improve upon, since I know whatever teacher I ultimately end up with is probably going to want to tailor lessons to suit my personal objectives.
It feels nice to have my music literally at my fingertips again.
Tags: marshall-and-wendell, Piano
Being a piano player myself, I’m always somewhat partial to music that makes primary use of my favorite instrument. I’ve also always been a sucker for slower, more lyrical music. So it should come as no surprise that I really like the music of Fernando Ortega. For Christmas this past year, I requested a few of his CDs, since I didn’t have any in my collection yet. I was especially interested in two of his songs – “Grace and Peace” from The Shadow of Your Wings and “Our Great God” from Storm – but I didn’t specifically request them because I didn’t see any reason to be picky. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I received two of Fernando’s albums, both of which were the very ones I had been most interested in. Both albums have been active in my music playlist ever since.
Tags: christianity, fernando-ortega, music, Piano
I’ve been learning a thing or three about simplifying my life.
I’m one of those people who’s curious about and interested in just about everything. This has always been both a blessing and a curse because it has always made it difficult for me to figure out what subjects and hobbies to pursue. It’s the sort of thing that gave me trouble in college because I couldn’t decide which major to pick, so as a result I graduated with one major, three minors, and enough knowledge in other fields to technically have given me at least two other minors. It’s the sort of thing that has always made it difficult to use my free time well because I want to do too many things with those minutes.
But life these days has become incredibly full, so I’m learning to trim things. It’s a tough process because I don’t really want to trim things out of my life. But I’m learning that I really can’t do them all, even less so now that I have the obligations of a family and livestock and a property to keep up. I’m figuring out how to identify those things that are truly my passions and those that are simply my interests and hobbies.
I’ve more or less eliminated everything but my music, my writing, and Halo. I’ll be getting a piano around Christmas, so I’m eagerly anticipating getting back into lessons and picking up where I left off. I miss visiting my music, and I’m itching to really nail some ragtime and start learning how to play by ear and improvise. It was something I was just starting to learn when I had to give up lessons several years ago.
My writing has quite possibly surprised even my love of music as my number one passion right now. There are so many stories to tell now that I can hardly keep track of them all. I have a blog to write to, a flash fiction site to run and occasionally contribute to, an anthology project in its planning stages, short stories to write and submit, and at least one good novel idea in the making. I’d love to see my name sitting on a bookshelf somewhere and be able to give up working a ‘regular job’ in favor of becoming an author.
Of course, there’s always Halo. I don’t have as much time for video games as I used to. I do miss being able to play, but there are only just so many hours in a day. What free time I have is given to relaxing and to some writing. But I still have Friday nights reserved to join the guys on Xbox Live for some Halo 2 multiplayer action. Somehow this first-person shooter has captured my devotion, even to the point of joining up with one of the most renowned and respected clans involved with the game.
These are my passions, the hobbies that I am fanatical about. All the others I have had to set aside for the time being. Perhaps one day I’ll have time for some of them again, but if not I doubt that I will even really miss them that much. There are certainly plenty of other things to hold my attention.
Tags: halo, halo-2, multiplayer, music, personality-types, Piano, video-games, Writing, xbox-live
One of the things that a musician must learn to do is how to make their music sing. It’s one thing to be able to play the notes and master the rhythm; it’s an entirely different thing to make it sound musical. There are tempos to be followed, crescendos and decrescendos to give the music its own brand of vibrancy, staccatos to give it that extra pizzaz, and dozens of other musical elements that, when included into the performance of the music, give the song a life of its own.
That was one of the most difficult things for me as a fledgling piano player to master. For a long while all I could see were those notes on the page. My fingers were having a difficult enough time just finding all the right keys, let alone giving them personality. But that is what the master piano player, the teacher, is for, to push the student beyond their capabilities and stretch to accomplish new heights of musical expression. The teacher shows the student how the formulaic rhythm of the piece can be more than the sum of its parts, more than just technique. When the performer pours his heart and soul into the composition, suddenly you find that it has a life of its own. The technique of playing has found the artistry of expression, and a new creature springs to life from the fingers of musician at the keyboard.
As in music so it is in writing. Composing stories and tales involves much more than mere technique. I’ve always been something of a grammar Nazi, a strictly regimented enforcer of the ‘rules’ of the English language. In high school I devoured grammar and spelling books to the point where my classmates hated having me proofread any of their work. Invariably, I would return their manuscripts, covered in red ink where I found spelling, grammar, and syntax errors, and they would groan as they worked to revise them.
At the time I thought that was enough to become a good writer, if I had so chosen. Yet, now I am learning that technique alone is not enough to produce an interesting and captivating story. There is an art to writing, something that should be blatantly obvious to anyone who has read a novel or short story. But it is something that is not readily seen or understood until one takes on the challenge of creating a story of their own. It becomes apparent in short order just how difficult it is to weave that level of artistry into a story – to select that just-right word or phrase, to establish that perfect setting, to weave that stunning character profile – that refuses to let the reader put the book down and simply walk away. It requires practice and effort to create something so sublime, and often it takes a master teacher to help guide the fledgling writer along as they seek to better their craft.
One of the things that I have loved so much about networking with other writers is this ability to share and compare notes, to share some of the scraps of our writing in hopes of gaining honest, constructive criticism. This criticism is sometimes hard to swallow – none of us like to be told that our work is less than perfect – but it is invaluable in the longrun to becoming better writers and authors. It is a risk to share these things that are so dear to our hearts, but it is, I believe, a risk worth taking.
Here’s to helping one another along to becoming masterful artists in the art of wordcraft.
Tags: artistry, english, grammar, music, Piano, Writing, writing-technique
