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Gill the Piano wrote:That's 'Green Grow The Rushes O'. Would have thought it might be in the Jolly Bloater.

Had a look in the programme and they have it down as 'The Dilly Song'. The Happy Hake went back to the library ages ago. They also did something that had a refrain that went something like 'down down derry derry derry down down', well only 30 more counties of Ireland to include.....or room for a suffix 'deeper and down' or 'dooby doo down down'.

Well the joy of a library is that you can get the book out again and again...

I actually found the 'easy' songs in the Jolly Herring a little too difficult for me. Though Fanny Fosdyke would have no problems with them. Of course!!!

I usually wouldn't touch 'Hooked On Classics' and their ilk with a ten metre pole, however I am listening to the LSO's album A Classic Case featuring the music of Jethro Tull plus Ian Anderson , Martin Barre and Peter Vitesse playing on the album. And it's raaaaaarther good, as Jimmy Young might had said.

Keep Fit's creamed me out. I've not been for three weeks and I feel like Cecil Parkinson after a weekend with Sara Keays. Could manage a piano lesson though.....

Sidney Youngblood has made going to keep fit worthwhile though, not heard it for years!

...and that was the best piano lesson I've ever had to see me through the summer holidays. Didn't get out of there until five past four, Mabs and I were like two old working class housewives gossiping over the fence about whether Persil or Bold gets whites nice and clean...and Fanny Fosdyke was the subject. Seems she has more enemies that friends...and she is NOT qualified to teach, apart from a B Mus.

Well stop going n about her then; she has No Power!

Dave!!! This positive thinking lark doesn't work for me , i've just failed my exam 2 hours ago
Better prepared than ever, pieces almost perfect but the gremlins inside took over my hands
A restart in every piece(although played well 2nd time around).
The only positive thing i take from it is knowing that i won't take anymore exams ever, my teacher has permission to shoot me if i mention the E word again.

OHO, don't be downhearted. You can do the e**m pieces without doing the actual e**ms, and you'll know what grade you are. Nerves are a terrible thing, but your teacher would not have put you in for the e**m unless s/he thought you were ready. So go by the teacher's judgement as s/he knows you and your potential. If your nerves are bad but you do fancy another go, most docs will prescribe ONE beta blocker for the occasion, and that stills the racing heart (not completely, obviously!) and shaking hands. There's also an excellent book to read, The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green/Timothy Gallwey, which tells you how to beat performance anxiety.
Back in that saddle, boy, keep playing!

Round, spherical objects to exams. And Fanny Fosdyke would agree with me on that one, she hasn't done any teaching exams or teaching diplomas, just a B.Mus.

I sympathise with you in your situation, OHO. Now you can look beyond exams and play for YOU, not any po-faced examiner - and spend the exam fees on either going to concerts or a Denes Agay piano book. Or maybe even marijuana, Waitrose victoria sponge cakes and vice. Have you got any of the Classics To Moderns series??

Now I don't even want to do Grade 1 after an overrunning piano lesson involving a long talk with Mabel a few weeks back. Which grade did you do and how was your sightreading??

If you like you could photocopy the examiners notes and send it to me in a PM. There has to be some positive comments I could pick out.

Waitrose victoria sponge cakes ARE a vice...
Don't let this put you off, OHO; it is a stranger's report on your playing under duress suffering from nerves on a horrible hot day. Keep playing.

Indeed. Play to YOURS and your teachers' standards. I mentioned on here about Karen. If I tried to play like her in one month it wouldn't work.

Your symptoms are an obvious indication you didn't ENJOY the experience so why bother. Take a look at the piano uploads my Youtube channel. That'll cheer you up:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Pianobloke1

Thanks for the support
I will never stop playing piano, i love it too much. Dave, you're right in that i don't enjoy the experience of exams but i want(ed) to do them so i put up with it. It was grade 5, and the sight reading went like everything else , badly. I don't have problems at home so maybe Gills' idea about the beta blocker would help,if i decide to do another exam in December

Why bother PAYING some judgemental herbert in a suit to suffer yourself, eh??

Grade 5....loads of people would give their front teeth to get as far as G4!!!

It's their JOB to judge, don't forget. But what they can't do is judge whether this is just a cr*p day or whether it's always like this.

I only do the exams because i want the certificates. I already know my level, luckily my teacher is also an examiner so i know i'm grade 5 level, but a grade 2 level under exam conditions

I want the certificates too, but Mabel my teacher has said she'd do some mock exams with me some time in the future, so she would be doing it under exam conditions but without the nerves. Then I could get a certificate and do some airbrushing, or invent my own exam board or something, like The Mabel Mucklethwaite School of Pianoforte and Musicianship..

Great idea, but seriously, my goal is a diploma so i'm going to have to force myself to get over the nerves.

The question is, can you REACH that goal without putting yourself through masochism suffering and purgatory?

dave brum wrote:The question is, can you REACH that goal without putting yourself through masochism suffering and purgatory?

Absolutely not,but isn't that what makes acheiving it all the more fulfilling? Besides the suffering will really start when i get good enough to play Liszt and Rachmaninov.My hands ache at the mere thought of attempting that.

Ah, you're of the 'no pain, no gain' school of thought....

I look upon the g2-3 sightreads Mabs has got me on as pain. But they're helping me to get confident at grade 1 level and tackle my musical bogeymen. You have lots of musical bogeymen and only your teacher SHOULD know how best to tackle them. Grade 5 can always be retaken, remember that!!

Been so busy nattering on about old 'Maggie Murphy', I forgot to tell you all (erm...Gill) what happened on Tuesday afternoon:

For the remainder of this month and August, I have two new scales, those of Eb major and C minor. They're both g3 scales. Then after two weeks, I'm to make, Blue Peter style a 'scales pot' in which I get an old cylindrical food container and put into it pieces of paper with scales I've done written on them. Then every morning I have to pick ONE out, and practice that scale and arpeggio in my morning and evening practice. Then, after x amount of days when all the pieces of paper have been drawn out and all scales revised, then they all go back in and we start on them again.

Theory, a couple of weeks ago, I was faraging in a shop in Nottingham and i came across 2 old AB grade 1 theory papers from earlier this century. I did them along with about 4 pages of the AB grade 2 theory workbook. the g1's were 10/10 throughout apart from a schoolboy error when I put in a crotchet rest instead of a quaver one. Mabel awarded me 8 for that. She also commented on my rather long winded answers to questions, for example for 'give the meaning of the 4 in 3/4', I put 'What kind of beats the top number refers to, 4 = quarter beats/crotchets'. I argued that I was simply being grammatically correct, but she said simply what kind of beats would have sufficed. Homework, finish off the grade 2 book.

A Dozen a Day, move on to group III and then, after 2 weeks name an alternative major key for each exercise and transpose each one. Done it before on group 1.

Sightreading Folk book 2, carry on (and keep calm!) to the end. I would have finished it by the second week in August anyway.

Homework, Mabs was pleased with my Bach Anna Magdalena Musette. New pieces, a Gypsy Dance in Cmin by Haydn (CTM2 p13) and (yay) Minuet in G, again from Anna Magdalena.

And at least 6 pieces from my Repertoire although at the moment (with her permission) I'm doing only 4 plus my two hymns for 'Marlowstock'. The four pieces are varied each week but they're based on pieces I've done with her in CTM 1 and 2. Perhaps even learn some more pieces from CTM 1 as there's still around 14 pieces I haven't done in there.

My piano lessons are microcosms of high energy pulses and I shall miss them over the summer holliburys

OHO, look at that book I mentioned and think about the beta-blocker option for e**m day. YOU know you can do G5 and so does your teacher so I'd consider doing G5 theory and starting your G6 pieces. Chalk up G5 practical to experience.
You're so disciplined, Dave!

Gill the Piano wrote: You're so disciplined, Dave!

Mabs knows full well I am!! Call it making up for all those years in my teens, 20s and 30s I could have had the piano in my hum-Brum little life....

The new Hobgoblin Music in the city centre has the newly published 2013 exam papers but they're £2.75 and not only am I another week away from pay day, I have a phone bill to pay before July is out. So can't get it yet.

You were up early; heat keeping you awake as well?

I'm always up early whenever Management is in work, but today is my day at the bookshop so I was up extra early for that.

So hot and bothered tonight. Piano practice is going to be 100% naturist (there's an idea. A naturist piano club in the UK)

Like Terry Jones at the organ....

Albeit slightly less obscene than Fanny Fosdyke playing the church organ in body-hugging jogpants and 'camel toe', all disguised by the ceromonial cassock, as I'm sure she will be on the morrow for 'Family' Communion.

Cassock? Blimey, that's posh...elderly t shirt & jeans for me...

She may have been given a full white cassock now the queen has promoted her to Director of Music. But Mabel's cassock (and robes) are more grandiose than Biddy O'Reilly's one anyway (so much for equality in the sight of god) so justice has prevailed. But are YOUR jeans too tight???

The last time I went to church it was for the jubilee party in June 2012 and the Director of Music was wearing jeans that actually made her slimmish posterior look like two huge blue beachballs (why I've always preferred to wear dark colours). That was the same time my wife complained to me the churchwarden verbally chided her for wanting another cake, and that one of the choir was looking at her in an improper manner (in his cassock).

I finally found out what those two huge concrete phalluses are that can be seen as you're driving west on the M40 over the Chilterns and down towards Oxford. And where they are, Didcot. Or should I have used the past tense?? I suppose the loud boom woke you up again???

dave brum wrote:But are YOUR jeans too tight??

I can still walk, so presumably not. Nobody's business but mine what I wear, anyway. Nobody comments!

T shouldn't be worried by a man looking at her if he's wearing a frock. And what she eats is her business, etc.

I shall miss The Cloud Factory at Didcot...it won't be the same with only one chimbly puffing out clouds.

Well, churches on council estates attract just as many rednecks as pubs on council estates, including in the choir and on the electoral roll. But not in this case on the organ. Gertie Murphy has ambition. She wants to be playing at a nice country church in Warks or Worcs, or at an old church in a nice-ish suburb like King's Norton, King's Heath or Harborne as soon as present organist either retires or kicks the Bouquet

Organists are in such demand I should have thought she could take her pick!

She told me she occasionally plays at St.Laurences Northfield (her nearest Government church) so that's where the money's on as soon as a permanent vacancy pops up.

What the hell is a government church?

Gill the Piano wrote:What the hell is a government church?

The Church of England/Britain, which of course is tied to the British Government with Elizabeth as it's ayatollah (cook and bottle washer).

Just seen this on Helen's Twatter feed. It made me chortle a bit:

https://twitter.com/drhingram/status/493831740226805760

She tweeted summat at the weekend about being Bitten-on-the-Boob and how it sounded like a sleepy village in the Cotswolds. Reminded me of Much Binding in the Marsh, (in Carry On Loving) Much Snogging on the Green, or Monty Python 'Wains Cotting' the sleepy village in Dorset, probably twinned with Bitten-on-the-Boob.

Listening to music from the 1980s makes me feel so old and over the hill (compared with classical and songs from the 20s and 30s). I'm listening to the 12" remix of Jan Hammer's Crockett's Theme from Miami Vice and I'm expecting a tap on the shoulder from the Grim Reaper. Pity as it's a good work.

There's a village called Marsh in Buckinghamshire. And a house there called Much Binding...

I'm glad it's the Church of England; better that than some others I could mention.

Having a tough time coming off my antidepressants...and I'm not actually FEELING depressed. I'm noticing changes in my body (like a teenager going through puberty sort of thing) that I'm finding quite shocking after seventeen years of taking these chemicals. One of those (nicer) changes is that I seem to be getting further with my music studies because i can concentrate on things better. I seem to be whizzing through Book 2 and things Mabel is telling me is staying in my head rather than getting lost in the chemical induced haze. It's just the other changes i can't cope with. The woman who lives two doors away is a biology student, perhaps I should tell her. I daren't tell my wife and I just CANNOT tell my GP as I'm coming off them against her advice. But it's like a new Dave Brum is taking shape from the wreckage of the old one....and i know not how to deal with it, which is banjaxing me mega style.

I now know just how Eddie Cochrane felt when he wrote 'Summertime Blues', he was missing his piano lessons too....

Are you coming off them very very gradually? Don't rush things.

Gill the Piano wrote:Are you coming off them very very gradually? Don't rush things.

Yes, in seven stages. I'm at the end of stage 2 now, I enter Stage 3 next week. I also take anticonvulsants and they don't cause me any nasty side effects at all. Maybe I'll start noticing soon that I don't have horrible dry mouths and I need to consume bucketloads of Twinings and wake up in the morning with a wet pillow because I've dribbled all over it (usually in tannin-coloured saliva).

I'm scheduled to be off them altogether by New Years Day.

That'll be a party and a half then!

I'm normally at my lowest at that time of year, so it's a case of just being low on my own instead of the chemicals pulling me down further. Stage 3 begins tomorrow, 40mg per week.

Piano update: I'm now on my second HW piece (Bach's famous Minuet in G) and because I like the piece it won't take me long to learn it. So I've set myself another piece, something called Dialogue by Miasovsky which tests you on intervals and hand positions. It's one of the pieces in Book 1 I haven't done yet.

Tonight I finish Sightreading Folk book 2, one thing I'm finding it difficult to do is playing and counting in minims in 2/2 time, which is okay for simple unsyncopated rhythms but syncopation in that time is rather more difficult for me to grasp. The use of quavers in that time I'm trying to focus on at the moment as if it's SQs in /4 times, (1-ee-and-a 2-ee and a).

The Marlow gig is less than two weeks away now and I'm 99% match fit for it. Now I'm going to have to prepare for actually meeting Mrs.Green in the flesh!

Scary...

..And that's just the thought of Sightreading Folk book 3!

I suppose you are nothing like the sort of person you portray yourself to be on here??

And now for some breaking news..... I am in the process of learning a third hymn. And, surprise surprise, it's a Welsh one, Cwm Rhondda.

Unfortunately I won't have learned it in time for Marlow. Maybe four bars of it.