Reminiscing...

Overall by allowing me to spend just a bit a time every day playing the piano and exploring many different genres found in piano music today, from classical, to comtemporary, to film soundtracks, this project has allowed me to spend more time and delve deeper into my passion for playing piano (which I had temporarily abandoned for books and the internet >_<"). Whereas before, sometimes I might try to play the piano again, but it would always be just a fleeting few minutes; although there were many pieces I wanted to play and master, I always had excuses to do other activities and never accomplished those goals of really being able to master my favorite piano pieces- instead simply wallowing in wistful bitterness of being inable to play as well as others around me (and on the interenet lol, people post some amazing piano covers/ compositions on youtube!)
I think this project was also helpful in reigniting and encouraging my interest in piano by allowing me to gain more confidence overall in my playing skills (especially in sight reading! ^^) because helping me set a deadline for myself (the end of the 30 days), I was able to become more focused on accomplishing my goal of being able to learn a piano piece well enough to record a piano cover of myself playing the piece! And in the end, to my own surprise, practicing each day really helped me improve a lot quicker and I was able to record not only 1 but 3 different songs on video! :D
Thus from just practicing everyday, to exploring the new techniques for improving my ability to play, and being able to correct myself and improve my playing after posting the piano cover videos (by watching myself play on camera and see where I was prone to make mistakes and which areas I tended to speed up and play too fast >_<"), this project has really helped me regain my confidence in playing the piano and as well, broadened my views of how music is used in film (whether they use classical works or compose a contemporary score that includes the same common melody written in various keys) and can essentially control the tone of a certain scene or how directors want the audience to percieve a scene.
In looking towards to future, I want to continue to explore more piano pieces of both classical and contemporary genres and (hopefully!) be able to master them well enough to record piano covers of myself and thus help myself improve by observing/ critiquing myself as well as be able to get other people's opinions on how to improve. In particular, I'd love if I could be able to improve my playing of pieces with faster tempos (like this one: )
credit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QVDPVpM94Y
lol, or be able to attempt the same piece w/ an orange! xD

credit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIxkecBf48

Yay!

Finally! I was able to finish the piano cover for "Wedding Dress" (Taeyang) ^^

Ok I know, the beginning was rather fast T_T and then I completely butchered the ending...plus made a ton of mistakes along the way, but I'm glad at least that I was able to play through the entire piece! I think the practice skills that I developed throughout this blog and just being able to play the piano everyday really helped speed my progress on this song in particular! ^^

:D

I finally was able to post another piano cover, this time of a surprise piece that I didn't even think I'd be able to pull off but I guess continuously practicing a piece and pacing oneself over a long period of time produces better more successful (less stumbling! xD) results that cramming all practice into one or two nights. Anyway I did a preview (the first video below) of it, but you should view my actual piano cover of the song (2nd video below) b/c its much better than the preview!
Hope you enjoy my rendition of Yiruma's (one of my favorite comtemporary piano composers!) very famous song "River flows in you"! :D (don't forget to leave critiques/comments on the youtube page if you have any! ^^)

Checkpoint: >:(

I've been practicing pieces from one of my favorite contemporary composers for a time now, Yiruma ("River flows in you", "Kiss the Rain", "Maybe", "Its your day", etc) and one of the aspects that I've constantly been running into has been problems w/ the strength of my finger muscles- my ring finger and pinky fingers are just too weak!! -_____-" Everytime I try to play a sixteenth note in between a stream of eighth notes, because my fingers are so used to the rhythm of the eighth notes, and my ring finger isn't particularly strong, I always end up skipping the sixteenth notes- which is really frustrating to me because that part where he changes it up (adds the sixteenth notes to original eighth note rhythm) adds an extra edge of excitement to the original stream of eighth notes and essentially signifies the beginning of the climax, like a change in the phase of a piece- so its terribly frustrating when I miss it- like missing the entire climax of the piece!
Because I wore out myself playing it over and over again, trying to fix that part, I finally just gave up and took a break. But while resting I was actually able to find an article online that really helped, especially this quote,

"On a larger scale a very beneficial activity is to sit in one’s favourite armchair and with closed eyes hear the whole work through mentally. Because muscular memory is not involved in this process, this is very useful in detecting uncertainties, and moreover makes us much more aware of the general architecture of the piece. A similar and related activity is to do the same, but in addition imagining oneself physically playing the piece, being aware mentally of every movement of fingers and arms, without actually moving a muscle, all the while also mentally hearing the work. It is clear that both these practice methods are very beneficial to the memory, but they also serve to reduce nervousness and enhance the performance. Indeed one can go further and, if one is familiar with the venue, perform the work mentally on that particular piano in that particular space, even for that particular audience or examination panel. If the student is not familiar with the venue, one can conjure up an imaginary venue. By the time of the actual performance, one feels fairly used to the sensation of performing the work for an audience."

credit: http://appca.anu.edu.au/Part%202/Herscovitch%20-%20APPC05%20-%20Efficient%20and%20Productive%20Practice.pdf

by introducing me to other ways of effectively practicing the piano / memorizing piece without directly being at the piano and playing. This new approach really helped me since I didn't seem to be getting much progress at that point from directly playing on the piano >_<"

Returning back to the song that I had originally started so long before but never had to chance to really become comfortable with, I decided to play "Wedding Dress" again! :D Unfortunately, I'm facing the same challenges I had with "From the beginning until now", while the first part all flows together and the main repeating melody is very strong, all other parts are a rather weak and terribly prone to making mistakes >_<"

After reviewing my first piano cover again, I decided to complete and reupload another piano cover of the same song "From the beginning until now" again (Take 2!). When I went back to compare the two, I was so surprised at how taking a break from continuously practicing the piece, and working on other piano pieces helped me develop a new perspective and style (?) of this same piece!

Checkpoint: Reflection on poll results

Also looking back at my poll I also noticed that most of the foreign composers recieved less votes, probably due to the fact that most of the music they composed are for soundtracks of movies released outside the US (although "Ponyo by the Cliff and Sea" and "The Painted Veil" were both released here).
In further exploring the impact of musical soundtracks and pieces chosen to accompany various films, I decided to try playing piece that has been in many movies before ("Lorenzo's Oil", etc) and that our orchestra actually played two years before: Barber's "Adagio". If one has never heard about it before one should definitely listen to it, especially the original orchestral arrangement- so chilling and breathtaking at the climax -its such an interesting piece because of the amount of energy is vested into to building up the tension, releasing, and repeat building up suspense the final towering climax! I've love it if I could play it as well on the piano, but for now I'm still struggling with locating chords >_<"

Last time I also mentioned that one of my favorite film soundtracks is "Oogway ascends" in the movie "Kung fu Panda" (lol who would have thought?) and today, while I was searching for music to add to my playlist (located above the blog posts) I found another piece titled "Sacred pool of tears" that's also part of "Kung fu Panda"'s soundtrack. While I was listening to it I suddenly realized that parts of it was composed of the same melody (rhythm and notes and a different major) as the one played by the eruhu in "Oogway Ascends"- just like how the score of "Up" was created by using the same melody but varying it in different major and minor keys to create a different atmosphere depending on the film scene! :D