Jolt Country

Okay, I am now one carrying it from it's current owner's house away from getting a free crappy keyboard. Note that I haven't the foggiest idea how to play piano, keyboard, or really anything... excpet the snare drum back in grade school. Oh, and I used to do a mean "hot crossed buns" on the recorder, too. But otherwise.

But it's free. And, after my utter failure to learn the guitar, I think this is an important step in the ongoing process of pretending to be interested in self-improvement.

But I don't want to take lessons. A big part of what did the guitar in for me, I think, was going to a lesson every week, and having every other student studying before or after me be fourteen years old. So is self-instruction feasible? I mean you've got to learn, what, the chord structures right? And I guess how the notes relate to the keys. I can already read music... kinda. I don't suppose there's some guitar tab equivalent?

But after that it's just a matter of practising until your fingers are fast and accurate enough to do what you want them to do, yes? So I could theoretically just find some webiste or book or something that demonstrates the basics, and then just practice and shit? Or no?

I "taught" myself how to play keyboard. And it made me into a terrible keyboard player. (I went into it knowing and having been taught the oboe, tenor and baritone saxophone, though.)

I don't know if you've ever downloaded one of the songs performed by "Beaver" on this website. I did all the keyboard parts for it. They are obviously the work of someone who is just laying chords down that sound good to him. There isn't a whole lot of technical skill there.

On the other hand, the four of us eventually did a cover of King Crimson's "Starless." It's a fairly complicated song in terms of what I had played before, but actually, probably on the lower end of things for King Crimson itself. It took me a while, but I was able to learn how to play the keyboard parts for the song (it's around 8 or 9 minutes in length if I remember right). So teaching yourself won't totally mess you up from getting slightly "competent."

Of course, what I should have done after laying down "Starless" and getting as good as I could get on my own was get lessons. I regret not doing that.

I love playing the keyboard. I wish I was better and that I had more time to play. I did develop some bad habits on my own (the guy who plays guitar in Beaver is a musician who took music at Syracuse U and everything, and he was able to comment on things that I did that were wrong) but it wasn't anything that I felt that I couldn't break. Everyone's songs start off terrible at first, but stick with it. It's worth it.

Well, I've got the board. It's sitting in a corner in my bedroom, covered in the dust it collected in my friend's parent's basement, unplugged on it's stand in front of it's little bench. Mocking me. In Japanese.

Well, I just spent the last however-many hours sitting in front of the keyboard, which I'd in turn set up in front of my computer, plowing my way through an online piano tutorial obviously written for housewives, little kids, and possibly the elderly. If the guy who wrote it had told me to give myself a big hug or a pat on the back for finishing another goddamn lesson I would have thrown the damn keyboard through the monitor. But hey, I kind of have the basics down.

I've got to say it seems easier than the guitar was. I found some sheet music for Melloncollie and the Infinite Sadness, and while I'm not playing it well by any stretch, I can at least make it sound like the song on the CD for stretches. Which is more than I ever managed with the guitar.