Sunday afternoon piano blogging

Yesterday afternoon was rainy and windy, with temperatures in the 30's. Basically, my least favorite weather. With Sue gone to work, charming customers and colleagues alike at Costco, the kids and I spent the afternoon indoors. For a couple of hours, we rotated between playing Mariokart Wii, reading books to Rowan, playing a new game on the computer, and playing piano.

My assignment at piano lessons this week is Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2. No, not the full thing... in fact, to say it is simplified does a disservice to the word "simplified"... but Alfred's did indeed distill it down to bare essentials, and in fact, made it pretty easy. I've reached the point in Alfred's to where "pretty good" is good enough, and since I am not striving for (nor attaining) perfection, what I recorded is good enough. For me. For now. So here it is.

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (Theme) - Aw2pp

Box.net link


By now, you know this recording process. I play something, record it, play it back with the laptop connected, etc. Jillian, in between Marioakart Time Trials, watched me do this. Asked me to explain myself. And was all over recording her own stuff. So she tinkered with one of this week's assignments, and asked me to record it.

"Are you sure, Jillian? It doesn't sound like your best work."

"I know, Daddy. I want to hear my mistakes." Well then. Here is Jillian, and an in-progress version of Little Indian Brave.

indian brave by jillian 4-5-2009 -

Box.net link

By this point, Jason was interested. In fact, he took the process a step further, by asking if we could put recordings of ourselves on the iPod. "You bet, Jay!" So Jason busted out the following, his version of Jillian's first composition, which is called "Dance of the Dolphins" (formerly "Dance of the Unicorns", but remember, "Daddy, I am so over unicorns!").

dance of the dolphins - Jason

Box.net link

Then, of course, Rowan wanted a piece of the action. Unfortunately, we never recorded any of her excellence, but here is a picture of it. You'll notice little brother Joey is helping her with the pedals, since she can't reach them just yet.




Speaking of Joey, he has his own piano.



- Aw2pp, who sure is happy we elected to finish this Bonus Room now instead of later.