My learning experience has been as I would like to describe a rollercoaster. Some weeks I felt great about my achievement and some weeks I struggled to learn or perfect a song. I think I’m pushing it too much and I started to be frustrated that this is a difficult skill to master, but it’s not impossible. I think it made me realize how practice makes perfect and if I want to be a good player this learning project can’t stop now. Now it’s time for me to also return to Mexico so this is also a goodbye letter. I promise I will keep on learning, in fact, I already searched for private instructors, and I want to improve my game. But this learning project creates the perfect foundation for me to keep on growing this skill.
Let´s recap
- This time I’ll finally sit and learn how to play piano. I did in fact, sit and start learning, I still follow that channel because it had a lot of practice videos, but I think there were too many of them I didn´t watch them all.
- How to read notes. I thought it was going to be easier but new notes appeared with every music sheet and when I thought I knew them all, a new symbol appeared and I had to look it up. It takes time to read them but it’s part of the process, I think you first have to study the notes and then study them on the piano, so I’m not stressed about to be able to read them firsthand.
- Am I a TikToker now?. TikTok ended up being my favorite app to upload my progress, I think it’s easy to use and upload videos. It offers a lot of tools you can use to edit and make your video cuter, and you can reach a lot of people there.
- Getting somewhere. This webpage became one of my favorite resources to look for music sheets. You can always have the free page and then if you think it’s a good inversion you can pay for the rest of the music sheet. As a beginners I think it’s convenient because I don’t usually learn 5min of a song, so just playing the first part is okay for me.
- Was I doing it wrong? Short answer; yes, I was doing it wrong. I learned the importance of rewatching my videos so I could notice the mistakes I was making in my so-called technique. I think that if I had a price instructor they would have noticed this the first time. So if you learning on your own, make sure to keep a record so you can always go back and identify your mistakes.
- Are we into Pop now? I had a problem following this. I liked the song but I didn’t learn the whole thing. I think this also happens with our students, it’s so easy to lose interest even on the thing we seem to like that day. Motivation is key and apparently, I didn’t feel so motivated to continue with the song because the next week I learned a different song.
- Piano pedal and the Studio Ghibli. I found motivation in something familiar and close to me. I watched this movie when I was little so I felt nostalgic to learn this. I also learned from online sources how to add some spice to the songs using the pedal.
- Almost there. I found out there were a lot of elements in this song and it made it slow to learn. I couldn’t finish the song but if you follow me on Tiktok I promise someday you will hear me playing the final version.
- More classic. the last song of the semester, it made me feel proud to achieve a classic song. I know it was the beginners version but still, it satisfied me to listen to a famous piece being played by my beginner self.