Piano Finally is a podcast by an old bloke who is learning the piano, finally. I cover the process of learning the piano and music theory as an adult learner. I also review piano books, hardware and other materials from an adult learner's perspective.
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G'day, everyone. Welcome to show number one hundred of "Piano, finally"! It has taken a while to get here, but things have been pretty busy.
Musically, the biggest event was the Belong choir concert. We performed two sold-out shows at the Factory Theatre in Marrickville with a ten-piece band. Despite some early logistical hiccups with the stage setup, it was a spectacular experience.
Reflecting on the past hundred episodes, starting the piano wasn't quite a spur-of-the-moment decision. I began with a backup plan, but it has become a pretty important part of what I do. I'm finding that the old saying, "the journey is more important than the destination", is very much holding true. Saying "yes" rather than "no" to joining a vigil choir eventually led to all of this.
Where to for the next hundred episodes? I'll be adding lead sheets and popular music to my learning, making my playing more entertaining and accessible. This has given me a reason to explore new stage keyboards. I'm waiting on a Yamaha Montage M8X and am already using a MODX-M6, so expect some different sounds soon!
The choir singing will continue, Devi will be back for piano lessons, and the podcast will keep going. I'm also planning to discuss traditional software tools and electronics I use for learning.
I've also been enjoying other music recently, seeing the Pink Floyd Experience in Penrith to celebrate fifty years of Wish You Were Here, and performing off-book with the choir at the Blackheath Choir Festival.
What have I been practising? I'm working on a lead sheet version of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", and The Spice Girls' "Wannabe".
This podcast is produced on the lands of the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples, the first musicians in this place. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present.
Until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune, and you enjoy your time at the keys.
The contents of the podcast were entirely generated by David Reidy, but these show notes were created by Gemini.
Some of the links to books and other items mentioned in the podcast may affiliate links for Amazon or other providers. If you use one of these links, a commission may be paid to me at no additional cost to you. Thank you if you use a link. All reviews of products, websites and services are unpaid, and no sponsorship has been received for any content on this podcast.
G'day everyone, I'm David Reedy. Welcome to Piano Finally, a podcast by an old bloke who was discovering music because he got around to learning the piano. Finally.
Welcome to show number one hundred. It's taken a while to get here. I apologize for the last few episodes being at irregular intervals and the long gaps since episode ninety nine, but it's been pretty busy. This is the fourth time I've sat down to begin this episode, and each time something has come up. If you're hearing this, then it means that I've finally got some spare time. Actually, it's now the fifth time. Last weekend didn't work out either. So what has been going on? Well, the school holidays have come and gone, and already we're more than halfway through term three. Lots of things have happened, and the pace of things hasn't slowed down at all. Musically, the biggest event was a choir concert. We did two performances, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, and in both cases the venue was sold out. Of course we weren't playing a massive venue. The factory theatre has a seating capacity of around three hundred and fifty in the configuration the choir was using, with some standing room for, I suppose, around another hundred people. The afternoon show had a reasonable number of people standing, but the evening show was full, so I think we can call it a success. So, how did learning the piano lead to joining a choir? Once I started to get back into music, I thought I should go and listen to as much live music as I could. It's important to support performers, and attending their concerts is much better than just listening on a streaming service. Finding music meant that I signed up for a few sites that list upcoming gigs. One thing that popped up was the opportunity to be part of the Ballong choir for the vigil on the twenty fifth of January this year. I believe that you should say yes to things more often than saying no within reason. And so I signed up. The choir was organized by Nardi Simpson, who also composed most of the music the choir would be singing. I met Nardi on the first day, and she made the whole experience over the few weeks so enjoyable that even though I wouldn't have called myself a singer, it was really great. And we sounded pretty good. At the performance, I was sitting next to a woman who told me about the choirs she also sang with, and so I looked them up and found that joining that didn't require an audition. With such a low stress entry requirement, I went along as a visitor and joined up the next week. And that is how, on a Saturday in July, I found myself singing to a packed venue in Marrickville. The choir and piano have not been the only music in recent months. I've also been to see some other music. There was a Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert, Devi, my piano teacher, had another concert, and I went to see Herman's Hermits, a band that was bigger than the Beatles at one time, and the Pink Floyd experience. I'll talk in more detail about all of that in this episode or in upcoming episodes.
The choir I am part of has two main concerts each year, along with a number of smaller performances, usually in collaboration with other choirs. This year's mid-year concert was on Saturday the eleventh of July, the culmination of six months of rehearsing and planning. The rehearsal on the Thursday night before the concert was the first time we had performed with the band that would be providing the instrumental music. We practiced with Kane, our accompanist, at normal rehearsals, but the concert included a ten piece band of drums, brass and keyboards. It was a very different sound to our normal rehearsals and great fun getting everything to work together. We had been warned by Kane that the band would probably be quite loud, and he recommended musicians' earplugs for hearing protection. I brought a pair, but as the bass two section is right at the back, I didn't really need them. On Friday night we had a rehearsal at the venue, the factory theatre in Marrickville. The site has six different performance spaces. We were in the largest, which has a smallish stage, a bar at the back, and a flat seating area. A small elite seating area with cocktail tables had been set up at the front, and even at the higher price, these were the first tickets to sell out. Musically, the rehearsal went well, but logistically not so much. The company that had been hired to bring the stage equipment turned up with a truck that was much too small to carry the choir stands. Luckily, another company was found that could deliver the equipment and take it away again after the performance, but it meant rehearsing without the stage setup. Saturday morning became setup time. The new company delivered everything in the morning and set up went smoothly. I think they've won our business for the future. We finally got to have a rehearsal with everything in place, starting at twelve PM. We ironed out the sections where different choir members came forward to dance or to sing solo in some of the pieces. The soloists for At Last and Son of a Preacher Man were both spectacular, as were the dancers for Abricadabra and MacArthur Park. The first public performance was at 3 PM. The plan was for the choir to mingle with the audience as they arrived and then make their way onto the stage when a particular piece of background music was played. Great plan, but so many people were having fun meeting the audience that the start was about ten minutes late. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel. I've sung in public before, on the stage of the Sydney Opera House of all places. That sounds impressive, but it was for the national anthem at the start of a school speech day. This was the first time anyone paid to hear me. I was fine, no nerves. I suppose six months of rehearsals and a couple of weeks singing along with the practice tracks in the car meant there was nothing to worry about. And so it was just great fun. The time between the afternoon show and the start of the 7 PM performance flew by, and the second show went just as well as the first. I'll include a bit of one of the performances at the end of the episode. So was it all worth it? Yep. Learning the piano is fun, but it's solitary. The only person who really gets to hear my playing, at least at the moment, is Devi, my piano teacher. Singing with the choir, sharing with the other members, and now with an audience is completely different and really enjoyable. I'm so glad that finally getting around to learning the piano has led to all of this.
A century I was going to write a long piece about everything that has happened over the hundred episodes of the podcast, but if I try to do that, then this episode won't be coming out anytime soon. Besides, everything that has happened is in the episodes themselves. So here's just a quick reflection. It wasn't quite a spur of the moment decision to start learning the piano. I really enjoy learning new things, and music had been missing for many years. I'd been listening to it, but not making it, and so I thought I'd give it a try. I began with a backup plan in case it proved to be a poor choice, but it wasn't. And now, hundreds of hours of practice and many thousands of dollars later, it has become a pretty important part of what I do. I'm finding that the old saying the journey is more important than the destination is very much holding true. My destination was to be able to play the piano well enough to be mildly entertaining, and to learn enough theory to understand what is going on. The theory is fine, but I'm nowhere near close enough to be an entertaining player, except in an ironic way. But the piano led to choir singing, not somewhere I would have thought possible when starting out, and that has turned into something I look forward to each week. Where will I be at the end of the next hundred episodes? I have no idea, but I'm looking forward to the journey, and I hope that you'll come along with me.
So where to for the next hundred episodes? I have no idea given how much has changed over the last hundred. On the piano front, adding in lead sheets and more popular music will certainly make a difference to what I'm learning, and it fits well with where I want to end up with piano playing, being able to play music that is entertaining and more accessible than some of the classical repertoire. Beautiful though Chopin's music is, there is a reason that K-pop Demon Hunter's Golden is on the music charts, rather than Nocturne's Opus 15. Lead sheets and pop music also give me a reason to play around with some new keyboards. I found Narf Sound's YouTube channel and heard what you can do with some of the stage keyboards. And that was enough to get me interested. I have a Yamaha Montage M8X that I've paid for and are waiting for delivery, and a Modi X M6 already here. Why both? Well musically they have the same instrument, with a couple of minor exceptions. The big difference is that the montage weighs twenty-eight point one kilograms, or the Modi X is six point six kilograms. Guess which one I can carry around. It means that I can use the montage with its weighted keyboard to practice and take the Modi X with me if there's an opportunity to play somewhere. I can also transfer sounds between the keyboards. So you can expect to hear some different tracks from the classical pieces I've been playing at the end of the episodes. The choir singing will continue. We've started rehearsing the pieces for the end of year concert. The repertoire is mostly songs the choir has performed in the past, and is much more bass friendly, at least so far. There's even one track, just for the bass and tenor sections. Devi will be back with more piano lessons after the October school holidays, and I'll keep going with the singing lessons. We reprised some of last concert songs for the Blackheath Festival, and found that the notes I'd been having trouble with, pretty much anything above middle C, were no longer a problem. In fact, up to the F above middle C is generally okay once I've warmed up. So the lessons are working. The podcast will continue, though I can't promise it will be weekly. I'm going to aim for that, but if I have to skip a week here and there, I won't stress about it. I'll try to avoid longer gaps though, unless I warn everyone first. I'm hoping that will stop the questions from students every Monday when I turn up at work. I'm thinking of adding some discussion about the technologies I'm using to enhance learning and playing. Not AI technologies, but more traditional software tools and electronics. I'm using them a lot more preparing things for the choir and the new keyboards, so I think that might be interesting. I also want to thank everyone who has contacted me over the past hundred episodes. Knowing that there are people out there listening is a great boost. And to all those students who ask for a shout out on the podcast, here it is. I hope you continue to enjoy the shows.
I went to see the Pink Floyd experience a couple of weeks back at the Joan in Penrith. They're a cover band and the performance was really good. It's fifty years since the release of Wish You Were Here, so they did that album for the first half and then other Pink Floyd music for the second half. The group has two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer, two vocalists, and a keyboard player. The keyboard player carried a lot of the sound with emulations on their keyboard. The monthly Sunday choir rehearsal included a mini concert just for members and friends. Various members performed, not just songs, but some poetry and storytelling as well. The bass section sang a song specially composed that boked fun at the ridiculously high note ranges that were in some of the pieces in the last concert. I participated in that. We also had about sixty members of the choir perform at the Blackheath Choir Festival. I sort of felt obliged to go as it was so close to home. We sang four numbers and were, apparently, the only choir that sang off book. Everybody else was using written scores. All that practice has paid off. And of course, piano and voice are continuing on Mondays. This week is the last piano lesson for the term, as Devi is heading off overseas to do a whole pile of exciting musical things. I've got four pieces to keep me busy while she is away, two classical and two pop. These will be perfect for the new keyboard, which I'll talk about a lot more in the next episode, or when it actually turns up from the shop. And in case you're wondering why even this episode is late, the fifth time rather than the fourth, when I sat down last Saturday to begin recording, there was a power blackout, and by the time the electricity was restored, I had to leave for the Pink Floyd Experience concert. That's pretty unusual, as there didn't appear to be a reason, no bad weather or anything else obvious, and the electricity company's website was no help. If you'd like to contact me, email is the best way. You'll find me at David at pianofinely.show and the website at www.pianofinely.show. In both cases, pianofinely is all one word. The show is also available on Spotify and as audio only on YouTube. You can subscribe via any popular iOS or Android podcast application or from directories such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. I also post an excerpt and link for each episode as an Instagram reel. If you're learning an instrument or learning to sing, let me know where you are in your journey. What's going well, and what are the challenges? How are you managing your time? And what are you enjoying the most? This podcast is produced on the lands of the Darug and Gundangura peoples, land that always was and always will be traditional Aboriginal land. They were the first musicians in this place, and their song lines stretch back tens of thousands of years. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening to the vodcast. And so until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune and you enjoy your time at the Keys.
So what have I been practicing? I've finally got back to a somewhat regular practice schedule and has started working on a lead sheet version of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. I'm also starting on Tears for Fears Everybody Wants to Rule the World, but that's not ready yet. I'm still working on getting the rhythm and opening chords right. I'll also include some of Wannabe by the Spice Girls, a slightly different arrangement that the choir sang at the concert. I'm having trouble getting the Yamaha to connect to the computer for the recording, so the Pink Floyd may not be on the end of the podcast. I'll have another go when I finished recording the voice. If it is there, it was recorded directly from the Yamaha Modi XM6 keyboard using a combination of the CX Grand Piano and a DX7 electric piano. The choir recording was made using an iPhone in the middle of the audience. The sound quality is not the best, but you'll get a feel for what the choir sounds like.
