Out of Pod Experience

Some of you may remember me briefly mentioning a desire to play the piano next fanfest. That desire has blossomed into a fully formed effort to make that a reality. I have found an old Casio electric piano in the attic and my mom helped me figure out the right adapter for it.

Keep in mind I have no formal experience with a piano beyond playing "merrily we roll along" and I did a poor job at that.
I am however an individual who has become well known for learning things very very quickly. Below I will list the songs I hope to be able to master before fanfest next year.

Storm's Coming - Jeff Beal
Notes:


The East: Doc's Song - Rostam Batmanglij
Notes: http://a-note-of-madness.tumblr.com/post/67389467278/song-docs-piano-song-composer-rostam


While I am still struggling to find energy to do the most basic of things I will persist in practicing at any opportunity that I am presented with. I have consulted with my peers and have concluded that I will be proficient in these 2 songs in 1 month at the earliest. 1 month meaning practicing at least once a day for no less than 45 mins. Worst Case Scenario I still see myself being more than ready by FanFest next year. I already have the mental schemas developed to type with a keyboard proficiently, it isn't a stretch to think that I can re-appropriate those for the purposes of playing a piano.

If it were not for people such as yourself that have challenged my abilities I would not be where I am today.

If you learn a little music theory, I think it really accelerates learning to play an instrument. "Music theory" is a big term that sounds like something hard, but it's really not. It's just the idea of which notes sound good when played in sequence, and which ones sound good when played together (i.e. chords). It doesn't matter what part of the keyboard you play them on-- the pattern will sound good, anywhere.

If you're an analytical type (like most EVE players), music theory is really fascinating. The reason certain notes sound good played together as chords is because their waveforms harmonize. For example, if one sound wave has a frequency of 24, and another has a frequency of 36, periodically the peaks and troughs of their waveforms with intersect. The the shared frequency vibration is reinforced and amplified at that exact nano-second. That's where you get harmony.

And for some reason, the human brain finds certain ratios between frequencies pleasing. For example, the waveform of the note A followed by the waveform of the note D is pleasing. But A followed immediately by B gives a feeling of discord or tension. It has to do with the mathematical ratios between the waveforms of the two notes. The ratio/distance between two notes played in sequence is called the interval. Scales are certain sets of intervals.

The ancient Greeks worked all this out intuitively, and defined what are now the standard notes (waveforms, and intervals between them) found in Western music. Ancient Asians developed a different set of waveform intetunings and intervals.

Anyway, if you learn just a little music theory (why things sound "good" together or not), you can improvise and create on your instrument, rather than just memorizing songs by rote. And you'll find that you can pick out the notes of a song by ear. Ralph Denyer's The Guitar Handbook has a great guide to music theory. He explains it for starting musician's better than anywhere else I've seen.