Piano playing vs typing

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As I was doing my piano practice today (yes - it’s a thing) I was wishing that I could play the piano as well as I can type. Then it occurred to me that actually my typing, although fairly fast, is actually a bit rubbish. I frequently hit the wrong keys and the must used key on my keyboard is probably delete. With a document you can’t tell how many times the words have been retyped, whereas with a piece of music it is immediately obvious when you’ve played the wrong note (or no note). Piano players have to be right first time every time, which has raised them to a new level of respect in my book. And made me decide to perhaps type a bit more slowly and focus on getting all the letters right….

The return of Piano Practice

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Music lessons were one of the less fun parts of growing up for me. For a while I was learning the violin (mainly so that when I took the violin case into school I could pretend to be a Chicago gangster). But then I got bored with that. And, once that my friends discovered that all I had in the case was a violin, and not a sub-machine gun, they got bored with it too. I got out of that practice regime by the neat trick of being really bad at it. Truly, I put the vile into violin. After complaints from the neighbours in the next town I gave that up and returned to what was supposed to be my first love, the piano. A substantial part of my childhood was spent hoping that mum and dad wouldn’t remember that I hadn’t done my practice that day.

Anyhoo, as things do, piano practice has now returned to my life. This time I’m using the Simply Piano app to keep track of my efforts and I must admit that I’m rather enjoying it. I’ve connected the iPad to my new piano and so it can tell what keys I’ve pressed and track my progress. The app has lots of content, including versions of tunes I quite like. It runs on subscription, but it is much cheaper than proper lessons.

The nice thing about learning an instrument (which of course completely passed me by when I was younger) is that when you are practicing you really can’t think of anything else. You are too busy focusing on why your hands won’t do what you want them to. So if you want to escape from the worries of the world for a while you can just go in there and do battle with something that you can’t play yet but would like to. Today I had a go at playing Beethoven. Beethoven won, but I’ll be back for another go tomorrow.

Making Hauga

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We are in the final phase of our domestic renovations; assembling new furniture. We’ve gone for some Hagua units from Ikea. I quite like assembling Ikea furniture. I’ve not done it for a while and they’ve found a way to make it even simpler and quicker now. Panels just slot together and the huge number of little nails that you used to have to use to put the back on have been replaced with a few push-fit plastic things.

Ikea seem to have minimised furniture to make it cheaper in the same way that aircraft designers minimise planes to reduce weigh. There was nothing in the kit that didn’t absolutely need to be there.

Birthday carpet and piano

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As they used to say in the A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together. Today a whole sequence of DIY, decorating and carpetry (if that is a word) comes to a head. The carpet fitters are due in the morning and the piano arrives in the afternoon. And it’s my birthday.

It all worked carpets duly in place we headed out for lunch at the wonderful Bluebell Pub and then staggered home to wait for the piano to arrive. Which it duly did, right on time. Happy birthday me.

More woodwork

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Shelf slicing today. Made some shelves into slightly narrower shelves so that they fit in the newly modified unit. Quietly impressed by the way that I managed to find nearly all the tools that I needed. Pro-tip for the day: If you want a nice edge to cuts in laminated or veneered materials put some sticky tape along the line you are cutting and then cut through that. It protects the edge and reduces the damage to the surface.

Pictures from the lake

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I used my iPhone to take all the pictures of our holiday last week. It does a very good job, although all the results do look like they were taken with an iPhone. They look great on a phone screen but when you enlarge them to take a proper look you do start to notice all the processing that has been going on. Anyhoo, one added benefit of using the phone is that each picture is geotagged with the location of the place it was taken. Although, as you can see above, this is not exact. I’m sure I’d have remembered taking these shots from the middle of the lake….

Bought a piano

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I’d taken all the sensible precautions. I had number one wife and number one son present in the shop to stop me from doing anything silly. And I was only going to take a look at the thing. And then, of course, I bought it. I was expecting my family safety net to kick in and tell me not to be so silly. But instead they told me to just go for it.

There are two possible reasons for this. Either it is a really good deal and will do just what we want. Or they knew that saying no would just lead to further visits to keyboard shops, searching on eBay and earnest discussions of the best thing to get. Anyhoo, it arrives once we have carpet in the room to stand it on. Rather excited.

Back home to my biggest fans

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We drove home today from the lakes and spent the afternoon fitting ceiling fans. As you do. I’d rather like the fan makers to know that this step is actually a lot more tricky than it looks. You are supposed to be able to just slide the infra-red receiver into the gap in the bracket. But the diagram doesn’t show the thick bunches of cables in the bracket and coming up from the fan. And when you’re reading the instructions you forget that the whole thing is attached to the ceiling at this point. It turns out that it is possible, but requires the use of a lot of language I’m not particularly proud of.