Keyboard Skills Self Evaluation

I enjoying playing Piano quite a bit, I love to simply let my mind and fingers wander, and if I like the sound of something I play it repetitively until it becomes second nature. This is how I have always approached keyboard skills classes. The techniques that I have acquired have mostly been learned through hammering and noodling about during all times of class, when I should be learning scales.

So for the exam, I did not vary my practice style too much of not practicing and just playing, but enough to get some actual work done. I choose Ring Dance, because I liked the tune, and it is fun to re-harmonize. It is an easy enough tune and only took like 10 minutes to learn, although I never did get it up to tempo. I was going to practice it more with a metronome, but I found that all the different chords you could harmonize the first section with, was much too interesting to pass up playing. So it stayed at a nice comfortable 110, but I did figure out some cool ideas for my own enjoyment.

I am pretty bad at scales. I learned the wrong fingerings for everything when I first was supposed to learn them, and never corrected them. Luckily the flat key scales are among the easiest, so I just went over each one once, to make sure I knew the right notes, and left the fingerings to fate, sometimes I luck out, other times not so much. Jah Bless in the exam, fate was on my side.

Danny Boy was fun, and if I had put more effort into I am sure I could have probably could have pulled a lot of enjoyment out of it. However I was kind of torn on how to practice it. I switched back and forth between paying the melody and chords strictly in time with the proper rhythms and chords, and just put the metronome on like a drummer and just trying to play the tune. My exam performance came out as a mix of the tune, but wasn't particularly inspiring sounding. Maybe next time.

Sight-reading was easy I remember.

That is all.