Musical Goals

         I’m not a very patient person when it comes to learning music, or accomplishing any “hobby” activity for that matter. If I can’t sit down and learn at least part the song I looked up, I get frustrated. For I while, any song that I would look up on the computer, whether it be guitar chords or a video tutorial, I could play at least a rough version of the song in one sitting. If I could accomplish that, I am satisfied and continue on learning the piece. But, as time went by, I realized that most of the songs I wanted to learn would just be impossible to do in one sitting. So, in order to be sure that I would learn the whole song I’ve had to set goals for myself.

 My first encounter was when I first started watching Downton Abbey, I’m sure most ( if not all) of you have either seen or heard of this TV series. I’m not a huge fan of the series, but I absolutely LOVE the opening theme song! So, as I usually did when I heard a song that I wanted to play, I looked up the piano tutorial for the song on Youtube. I never found a tutorial—I guess it was too new, but I did find a recording of a guy playing it from sheet music. I started looking around to find where I could at least find the sheet music…. I’ve become very good at this. J  After searching for the sheet music I finally found it and found some loop-holes in order to be able to print in out (no I did not to anything illegal, I just couldn’t print off the page because it was in the form of a picture), anyway. So, that night I printed it off I decided that I was going to learn it by the end of summer. After several months of wrting out the letters of the notes, memorization, and practice I was able to learn the whole thing by my deadline which I am very pleased about it!

 

After I completed that theme song, I gained more confidence in my playing abilities and decided to learn another one. At the time I was dreaming about being able to play a song titled, “What Love Is This” by a Christian artist named Kari Jobe. It was a no-brainer that this was the next one I was going to learn. Just like the previous song, I looked it up on the internet, found the sheet music and started the same process of learning. This time I’m determined to have in memorized by the end of the school year, and I would love to be able to play the whole song completely by memory. It’s a huge task, considering the song is much harder than Downton Abbey, but I’ll get it someday!


If It wasn’t for deadlines and setting goals I would get nowhere quickly, but thankfully I found a way that works for me!

Going Back

After all the years of learning different instruments, I did eventually go back to the piano. Almost every day, I hear my mom playing the piano or I hear some beautiful piano pieces in certain songs.  As I listen I can picture what their hands are doing and how to create that melody myself, so one day I decided to sit back down at the piano and try to plunk out a melody.

From the piano lessons I took many years ago, I didn’t get very far in my playing abilities. I understood timing and reading music, but reading the notes on a page then interpreting it on the piano was a struggle. Now that a lot of time has gone by and I haven’t been practicing my music reading abilities (or lack thereof), I can no longer take a sheet of music and play it without some help of a pen to write down the letters of the notes. It’s funny how I’ve forgotten the letters of the notes on a page, but never the letters on the piano itself. But at least I remembered something, right?

Even though I couldn’t read music, I still wanted to play… very much. I knew that if I only learned the pattern of the notes and memorized them I would be able to play it with no problem. That is probably the only reason I was able to learn the music during piano lessons. If I couldn’t get it, my teacher would play it for me and then I would able to play It, with no problems.  So, I looked up a video of a simple song, written by a young girl and I would ware out the “play”, “pause”, and “rewind” buttons to memorize how to play the song.  I would watch one about one measure of the tune on my laptop that sat on my lap as I sat in front of the piano, and then played it myself. Yes, it was very time consuming, but I was having loads of fun doing it! More fun than I would have had relearning how to read music and then finding the sheet music. I also think this was a lot easier for me, because I can learn a lot from ear.

I began to continue with this method of learning songs, by looking up a video of someone playing it.  I soon realized, however, that with some songs only provided the sheet music and no videos of anyone playing it in a way that I could learn it myself. Nevertheless, I was determined to find a way to learn these songs, but I’ll save that story for another time.   

Another Christmas Gift

I continued to listen and fall in love with bluegrass music (specifically Gospel bluegrass). I started expressing some interest in another instrument of bluegrass… the mandolin. The mandolin is an instrument that is used in classical, traditional, folk, and bluegrass music. For those of you who don’t know, it’s basically acts as the “drums” in bluegrass music. By its short, rough chop the mandolin creates a counter beat with the upright bass and keeps the fast-pace rhythm of the music. The chop is when you mute the strings to create a sound of only your pick hitting the strings without playing any notes. However, the mandolin is mostly known for its fast melodious tunes used in solos and background music to the vocals.

Some of my favorite mandolin players are Sierra Hull and Celeb Lindsey. Both of them have been playing since they’ve been very little and, in my eyes, have mastered the instrument! Sierra Hull is a singer and songwriter, who learned the mandolin when she was little and has never stopped. She formed a bluegrass/country band who now tours, performs and enters in contests. She has several CD’s out and she is planning on continuing this adventure. See here to hear some of her music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vlfL00J1eY

Celeb Lindsey is the main mandolin player of the Lindsey Family Band. They have been playing as a family for over ten years now and have been producing CD’s and performing all around the country since. As they put it, they play “Toe-tappin’, Heart-touching, Home-grown, Southern fried,   Jesus-lovin’ music”. Celeb has been playing since age six and his talent is clear when you hear him play! You can hear some of his incredible picking here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoJJAqhqatM&feature=c4-overview&list=UUiwVcLh8wf1scEeOjlQ-3Ww

 

  Christmas came once again and the last gift I opened was a mandolin (a gift that I was not expecting to recieve at all!). I cannot express my excitement! Having one of the instruments of the music I love in my hands was more than I could take. It was a very surreal moment that I could actually be able to play the music I loved the most. I also learned this instrument by videos on YouTube (both by watching how-to videos and just watching others play and trying to replicate them) and from the “teach-yourself-how-to-play” music book I got alone with it. I am nowhere close to being as good as these two people I’ve mentioned, but I hope to pick it up again soon and start practicing again and hopefully get much better at it! This instrument definitely puts a smile on my face when I hear it!

An Instrument of Bluegrass

One of my favorite styles of music has grown to be Bluegrass. Five instruments, Southern vocals, and an always joyful, upbeat sound! One of my favorite instruments to “zone in on” when I’m listening is the fiddle.

Fun fact for today: The violin is called a “violin” when playing classical music and it’s called a “fiddle” when playing folk, bluegrass, or country music. There is no difference in the appearance of the instrument.

Because I loved the sound so much, I began to have a desire to learn the fiddle. I soon found out that my great aunt owned one. We had already planned a trip to go visit my mom’s side of the family down in Louisiana when she said that we could borrow it for a while. We brought it home, and I started learning some simple tunes and notes through music books and lessons on YouTube. I heard several times that this was a tough instrument to learn and took years of practice to get good at, but that made me want to tackle it even more.  It was a challenge that I was determined to accomplish within the year.  I continued to practice and I soon found out that this was probably the hardest instrument I set out to learn. But I learned enough to play violin instead of guitar for one certain song in church during that Christmas. 

I enjoyed playing the violin, but did not feel like I was very good at it. I continued practicing after that Christmas, but then began to feel stuck and discouraged that I wasn’t getting any better. I’m a person who wants to see fast results when I start learning a new instrument (or in anything for that matter), and I quickly found out that the violin was not an instrument that I would get a fast response out of. I was able to do basic bowing techniques and learned mostly by ear, but I think the main thing that made it difficult to learn was having my fingers and hand in a position higher than what they normally are when playing guitar or piano. I accepted that the violin was not the instrument for me, but I continue to love the instrument!

A Guitarist Journey

The desire for learning the guitar began when one of my best friends growing up learned how to play. The more I heard her play, the more I wanted to learn. One Christmas, I received a guitar from my parents and immediately asked my friend to show me a couple chords. Soon, I switched from taking piano lessons to beginner guitar lessons from my teacher. A couple months later, she told me she had taught me everything she knew on guitar. She gave me a good base to build off of, and I started teaching myself different songs and learning what I needed to know as I played.

A year or so later, the man who had been the guitarist at our church got deployed to Iraq for over a year. This opened up an opportunity for me to take his place, so before he left I started learning songs and the chords needed to play them. I’ve continued to play in church for five years now and I enjoy every second of it! Being able to praise God with my instrument is something I will continue to do for the rest of my life!   

I continued to teach myself, but then an opportunity came up to take lessons again from a friend of the family who is an excellent, experienced guitarist. I learned SO much from this man; he taught me many different techniques, chording patterns, different styles of playing, and introduced me to flat-picking and how to read it (which is just plucking one string at a time to make a melody instead of strumming all the strings at once).

I not only learned from teachers, but also learned a lot from YouTube videos. All I had to do is search for what specific thing I wanted to learn and I easily entered a world of personal lessons. This new found resource has been the main supply of material for me to learn all of my instruments. There are series of lessons that will take you from being a beginner all the way to an advanced player.

There is still a lot more that I would like to learn, but I’ve come a long way since that first day I strummed a chord. I would like to learn more scales, become better at flat-picking and build strength in my fingers to be able to play more bar chords. I will still continue watching videos of instrumentals and teach myself the chords and fingering until I can recreate it. This is more often than not what you will find me doing for fun in my free time!

If you have ever thought about learning the guitar give it a shot! Take a few lessons and soon you’ll be strumming your favorite song or writing your own music!

Why I chose music...

        Why? A question I expect many people to ask. Out of all the topics I could blog about, why music? In short, music is very special to me.  It has the ability to pick me up when I’m down and express my feelings and thoughts for something that I cannot put into words.

How did this love for music start? I’ll start at the beginning.

My family loves music and is very gifted in that area; this love for music has continued down to me. At a young age, I started taking piano lessons. This began a journey that led to learning many other instruments and serving others with my new found skills. I began falling in love with the sound of black notes against white pages and the satisfying feeling of creating melody through my fingers.

At first, I didn’t have a strong interest in music in any way, but when I started taking piano lessons I quickly learned that I had an opinion on the music and instruments I liked and didn’t like. As the months went on I struggled more and more with reading music. Having to tell which dot on five lines was the “C” sparked no interest or enjoyment inside of me at all. But my parents said I had to finish at least one more year of music theory before I could move on to something else—little did I know that I would use that knowledge for years to come. 

Instead of continuing on with piano, I made a request to finish my “one year of theory” not on the piano, but on the recorder. Yes, the recorder. The instrument that everyone had as a child, but no one ever seemed to actually learn. There was a class at a homeschool co-op I attended, and through that class I fulfilled my year of theory. Then I retired down my recorder, but I did not stop playing music.

The next adventure in my musical experience was hidden away in my basement. Mom pulled out her flute she played in band when she was in high school, and I began thinking it would be fun to learn. A friend of mine had taken flute lessons and had been involved in a homeschool band. I thought that sounded fun, took a few flute lessons, and signed up for beginner band. I loved band so much I continued playing for three more years and skipped right into advanced band with several friends. As much fun as band was I really had a desire to learn how to play the guitar. After completing a handful of lessons I continued teaching myself how to play. Having stuck with playing guitar to this day, it’s become a true passion of mine. I haven’t found another instrument quite like it.

I realized as the years continued that I loved music and it was something I could pick up easily. I learned and played a lot by ear, which has been a gift and a difficulty, but I’ve grown to embrace this talent and enjoy it in different ways.