3RD POST

Hey everybody I'm back at it again! This week me and my daughter started off with reviewing what I had learned last week. Surprisingly I rememebered most of my steps, where my hands go and where the notes are. We then moved on to some new material. I was taught how certain notes look and what they mean. The quarter note is where you hold the key down for a"one" count, the half note is a "two" counts and the full note which is a "four" counts. This is important to know so u dont play too fast or slow. As well, I also learned how the note looks is related to which hand you use to press it. For instance if the note has the stem on the left side and going down, you will use your left hand to press it. As for the right hand, those notes have the stems going up on the right side. Its very confusing to be able to read that when you are also trying to remember where your fingers should be. There were a few times where I found myself about to hit that damn piano with all my fingers rolled up in a ball over and over again. Luckily for the piano and myself, my daughter intervened and I had a "timeout". Once I got back to it, I learned about the bar lines. These are the black lines that are in between the notes and divide the music into equal measures. They are also at the end of the song. If it is a double bar then you end there, but if there are 2 dots beside the double bar then you must repeat the notes a 2nd time. I didnt realize how much of these lessons are learning to read all these symbols rather than playing. I was hoping to play with more than 3 fingers on each hand this week, but we didn't get that far. I did however learn to play 2 more simple songs and did get pretty familiar with how to place my hands and felt more comfortable with hitting the keys. For next week I hope to add those other notes and if I turn the page in the book I see that the next lesson is adding the G and the F. That's it for now. Thanks for stopping by and tune in next week to see my progress!!

2ND POST

Welcome back everybody!! I have been busy at work with my daughter learning this devil of a piano. I mean who invented this thing with so many buttons and letters for notes that just repeat over and over? There are even pedals like a car, but believe me, pressing them does not make it stop or go. I feel like if this were a video game, my TV would have already been smashed and the controllers would be in pieces. Anyways, this was my idea and it did feel pretty good when I did something right. We started off with opening up my daughters piano lesson book for beginners level A. I learned how to sit at the piano properly, which was very uncomfortable for me (I couldnt slouch or put my feet up) I was to sit tall, lean slightly forward, let my arms hang loosely from the shoulders and keep my feet flat on the floor. If that wasnt hard enough I had to curve my fingers as if I were holding a bubble without breaking it. Really??? I also learned that my fingers have numbers. On both hands the thumb is #1 and the pinky #5. I'm sure you can fill in the rest. Lets just say I gave the piano a few #3's during this lesson. After all the boring stuff it was time to start learning some fun stuff, the notes. We started with the white keys and my daughter taught me which keys corresponded to which note(ABCDEF or G). This sounds easy, but it is actually pretty tricky, especially since they repeat again and again. I finally got to know where the keys were and how to remember their location(using the black keys above helped me alot). So far the process was pretty time consuming and I had a hard time keeping my fingers on the right keys and remembering to read the music. I had to take a couple breaks and just "step away from the piano". After some time I did get to learn two "simple" songs. One was called "A Mellow Melody" which uses only 3 keys: A, B and C on the left hand and "A Happy Melody" which uses C, D and E on the right hand. I actually read the music book to play them, but I found after a few times I knew without looking. It took some time to play pretty smoothly and my daughter clapped a couple times so I guess I'm a natural!! Im defenitley gonna have to try and remember where the keys are for next week and also how to postion myself and my hands. Im hoping that once I sit down it will come back to me and I'll know how to play those songs again. I'd really love to know how proffessionals make this look so easy and how long it took them to get there? This is alot harder than I thought and I havent really done anything hard yet. For next week i'm hoping to spend a short time recapping this week and moving on to using more fingers and not just 3 notes. Overall I feel like my daughter's feelings weren't hurt that much when I yelled at her 7 times and she told me she was quitting. Although mine were hurt a bit when she called me names, I feel like it was a great bonding experience and we can put aside our differences and continue on to lesson 2 next week. I hope you will all be back to see my progress and my wife doesnt read this. Talk to you soon.

WELCOME POST!!

Hi everyone!!! Welcome to my genius hour blog. HOW CAN I LEARN TO PLAY THE PIANO IN 6 WEEKS?? That's a great question isn't it?! lol I am not "musically inclined" per se, however, I have watched my dad sing in his band my entire life. I've always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument seeing how much fun my dad and his friends would have. They even sang at my wedding, which I will never forget. My daughter Charlee took piano lessons and was a natural at it. I thought it would be a great idea for her to teach me what she knows. Plus we get to spend some great quality time together which is a bonus. She is super excited to be my teacher. I hope to make her proud. By doing this, I hope to find out if I have what it takes to learn how to read music and play a simple song in 6 weeks. Hopefully, even afer this project, I can continue to learn and play more complex songs. Wish me luck!