Keep A List Of All Pieces Ever Learned

I have created a spreadsheet to store the name of every piece I learn on the piano. I am still on my very first one at the moment, but I reckon that is the best place to start. The number of songs in this list should eventually form one of my key goals in learning piano. I will put the list up here when it gets a few songs in it.

Building a Classical Music Library and Day 4

One of the points pushed by the Suzuki method is Saturation. Listen to as much classical music as possible. It says ideally before birth, but I can't help them there. To this end I have put a bunch of my music on Google Music into a play list called Classical. There are over 200 songs in there. Most not piano - at least not the major part - but still good stuff. I am listening to Ode To Joy at the Moment. Full orchestra - bit of a leap from the single handed version that I am picking my way through, but useful all the same.
I will add to this library periodically and more importantly listen to it as much as I can.

About an hour of practice today. Both hands for the first time. Difficult at first, but got there in the end. Moved on to the rhythm lesson on Garage Band.

The Suzuki Method - Takeaways and Day 3

The Suzuki method is mainly aimed at children - maybe exclusively so, but I think there are some interesting things that I can learn from it anyway. I am 42 - bit older than the target audience for Suzuki.
This Wikipedia page has details of the method for various instruments. This is my filtered bullet list of the steps I should be incorporating into my learning to get the most (fastest?) benefit:

Saturation - listen to classical music. Particularly piano in my case. Collaborate with other 'musicians'. Alright I am not a musician yet by any stretch, but I still have friends and family who play instruments. So I can make some headway on this one.

Avoid tests - suits me fine. I just want to play for fun, so no great need to be tested for now.

Use well trained teachers - I am going to give this a miss for the moment. The reason being that I want to try the technology solution first - i.e. Garage Band and the built in tutorials in the instrument. I am sure that there are tons of tutorials on the web also, but I am not even bothering to look yet as I have enough on my hands. I am not afraid of doing lessons at a later stage though if I think it will be beneficial and I can make the time.

Play in groups - I can get started on this as soon as I can hold a tune. My son is a bass and guitar player and a singer. Plenty of scope there.

Retain every piece of music every learned. I like this idea. If you go to the trouble of learning it, then you should not waste it. Easy to do now as I only have one piece I can (almost) perform.

Frequent public performance - builds confidence etc. Well this is a stretch for now. I need to sound not brutal before I put anyone else especially a member of the public through my playing.

Day 3 -
Practiced for about 50 minutes today. Slow progress, but enjoying myself at the moment.

The Suzuki Method - Maybe Not and Day 2

I had this idea in my head that the Suzuki method for violin involved the use of coloured strings so that children who did not yet know what a G was could know what a G-String was and so learn to play a violin. I can't however find any reference to coloured strings on this page from wikipedia about the method. Maybe I was mistaken, but anyhow what has this got to do with the piano? Well I am finding it difficult to tell which key is what. They all look about the same. Well the black ones are different, but at this stage of playing I am not yet even using those. So a sea of white that I have to examine to 'find my place' is all I see every time I start playing. So I am going to decorate the keys with small stickers - my four year old daughter can provide any I require. The symbols won't mean anything of course, but at least when I establish where I should place my hands for a piece I will see where I am. Going to give this a go anyway and see how it works.
An alternative to this would be to write the notes of each key on the key itself or at least on a sticker on the key. I may do this later, but for now I will stick with random symbols.
Oh and what happens when I am playing on another piano and don't see a bunch of grapes on middle C? I am a long way from having worrying about that right now. Nobody is going to let me near their piano.

Day 2 went well. Have moved on to trying Ode To Joy at half speed. It is not much harder and I reckon I would have gotten over 90%, but my mac decided to update itself, so end of Garage Band until it does (about an hour).
I practised some scales too. Getting the changeover when your thumb does the jump so that you can cover the 8 notes of an octave with 5 fingers is tricky, but getting a lot easier.
I definitely got my 15 minutes done today.

Day 1

I got a Yamaha keyboard for Christmas and I am going to learn to play the piano. First off I am going to use Garage Band on my mac and follow the lessons. I got a MIDI cable from Thomann along with the keyboard to connect to the computer. At the end of each lesson is a tune which you learn to play along to by repeating it and getting scored each time. I am going to stick with each one until I can get above 90% at maximum tempo.
The first lesson has a pretty basic chord progression tune. Just hit 3 keys in the correct timing and you are done. I didn't spend too much time on this one.
The second lesson (Right Hand) is a much simplified version of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Simplified to the point of only using one hand and you don't even move the hand. 5 keys, one under each finger. On slowest tempo I am getting close to 90%. More practice required. I will slowly move the tempo on this up to full speed and then move on.
As the name of the blog suggests I am going to try to get at least 15 minutes of practice in every day. This is not much, but every day should make it a reasonable test of whether or not I can do this at all.