My goal at the beginning of the year was to be able to play “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. This week I started the task. Throughout this semester I practiced different songs building in difficulty until I got to where I am. When I sat down at the piano, I was excited to start learning. Although I tried my best throughout the semester, I was only able to play the song with one hand. I couldn’t train my brain to think about two different hand movements while also keeping time and hitting the right notes! My respect goes out to all the piano players out there because this is a tough instrument to play.

When I started playing this song I found a website called Sheet Music Direct. This website sold sheet music for around $5 unless you got a subscription to the company. I was not keen on spending $10 a month for sheet music so I went for the free trial to test out the website.

Honestly, it was not my favorite site. The sheet music was good, but it gave no context on how the song should sound. This is a debatable concept because if I was good at reading sheet music I probably would have had a better chance of appreciating the website. One part that I did appreciate from the sheet music was the letters shown on the notes. I know where all the keys on the piano are, but reading the sheet music is still difficult and a slow painful process so I am glad the note letters were provided in the music.

So then I had to do some sleuthing. I found a few different videos that taught me how to play this song, but the one I found is from YouTube linked here. YouTube is possibly one of the most useful tools to use when teaching students. There are so many different videos put on the app, so as long as the teacher has an idea of the videos being shown to the class, YouTube is a tool that should be utilized constantly.

With the help of the YouTube video, I was able to play the melody of “A Thousand Miles”! This was a difficult challenge because when I first sat down to play, the song was almost unrecognizable. I even had some of my friends ask if I should choose a different song! I don’t blame them though; it was not going great! I decided to take a break and go on a road trip to Walmart (that store makes everything better)! When I came back, I gave the song another shot. This time I focused on one section of the song, (1:20- 1:55). This part of the song gave me so much struggle! But after a lot of practice (and a few tears), I finally got the section of the song, and after that, I was off to the races!

This was the practice week but be ready for the performance next week!

Thanks for reading!

You’re a Gem