"A bulwark never failing..."

[alexr_rwx]

I have a strange fixation on hymns and church music. When I played trombone in highschool band, I really enjoyed it when we played chorales to warm up. So I'm hacking away with this new midi keyboard and downloading sheet music to learn to play, and that's primarily what I'm finding... (although: any suggestions for beginner pieces, cola_fan, agonistes, or rockstarling, or anybody else?)

Also: mashup coming soon, with two familiar tunes that you didn't realize were made of the same chords :)

Also also: the music theory course for Fall seems to be all full up. Drat and double drat. There are books about this sort of thing.

Comments

[neurochemistry.livejournal.com]

I remember that those classes tended to fill up quite quickly. Books ar quite good for these types of things or there is always Georgia State!

I have always been a sucker for Bach. Throughout my years of piano lessons, I always was working on some Bach piece or another. One reason he is so good is that you actually have ot use your left hand.

[agonistes]

Pick up an old hymnal -- Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, &c. We might have an extra one lying around the house.

And...oh shit what was the name of that. Um. I may be thinking of J.S. Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook -- easy pieces.

But if you really want to work on left hand issues -- because you'll need to -- scales, scales, scales, scales, SCALES. And arpeggios. Multi-octave. And broken chords. And finger exercises.

It has quite literally been fifteen years since I was playing beginner stuff, and the music I had back then is not things I play when I play right now, so if you want to borrow my older books -- complete with stickers for when I did a good job when I was much smaller than I am now -- let me know, and I'll see what I can dig up.

And as for music theory...my dear friend, I think you and I need to go on a field trip to a delightful, magical land called Hutchins & Rea. Best place to pick up Associated Board texts in the metro area. And they'll have other things to browse through.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Mm, hymnals... that dramamamalama kid has a few, and can probably yoink one next I go home :)

Thanks for the advice, yo!

[cola-fan.livejournal.com]

Second the Bach. I've still got one of Alan's old Bach books from which I learned a few pieces.

Graduated exercises are good for something simpler. When I was taking composition, my teacher had me work through the Diller-Quayle and then started me on Mikrokosmos, the later of which is really cool.

Look forward to hearing the mashup.

[gtv42.livejournal.com]

Stumbled upon this page while on a Wikipedia binge: http://www.easybyte.org/

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Oh Em Gee, Gregg, thank you! :) That's perfect, like exactly what I wanted!

[gtv42.livejournal.com]

Here's how it happened: I said "bbl" to a friend on IM. A half hour later, I said, "Bach." He said, "Brahms." I thought, "Huh. I didn't know there was an s on the end of that; I had been thinking Brahm's Lullaby, not Brahms' Lullably." This called for some Wikipedia. I started at Brahms' page, then went to the page about lullabies and realized I couldn't remember the tune of Brahms' Lullaby. The EasyByte page was linked to from the lullabies wiki entry, and I thought, "Hey, Alex was looking for a page like this."

And lo it came to pass.

You're quite welcome; anytime.