Micro Obsessions

As part of a step towards some mindfulness stuff I can do at home I’ve been looking at getting a piano and learning the piano and it led me to a realisation about myself.

I have picked up lots of micro obsessions over the years like: dinghy sailing, electronics projects, software side projects, electronic music, jogging, gym. Piano is definitely a new one but one I’m hoping will stick for a few reasons.

1) Music has always been a huge part of my life

Music has always been a huge part of my life and in spite of that fact, I’ve never taken the time to learn much (or any) music theory. I’ve owned midi keyboards and instruments but (again) never known how they should technically be played properly. I have good enough rhythm to tap out 4 or 8 bar loops, edit them and copy / paste them into bigger compositions in Logic or Ableton. And that has been fun for a long time. But visiting a friend recently, he had a piano in his front room and was learning how to play, and it’s sparked this micro obsession. Why have I never learned to play properly?

I owned a Yamaha PSR 170 keyboard as a kid. Properly basic, wasn’t even touch sensitive. But it did come with a few cool features like midi (which I used to plug into my PC and record chords for songs I made on Fruity loops - the lack of sensitivity was probably an aid to my poor control!), 61 keys and a manual with an explanation of how to read and write sheet music. So I’ve known for a long while some absolute basics: what a quarter note symbol looks like, time signatures, what the C major chord is. But beyond that my music has just been made up at random with no thought to keys or chord progressions etc. It’s also, as I alluded to earlier, not really been performance based, just copy and paste.

So my goal is to build up my music theory knowledge, build my dexterity and rhythm and hand independence. I’d love to get to the stage where I can play songs I love like John Legend or Stevie Wonder. And also because of the following reason which brings me to point 2.

2) I want my children to grow up in a house filled with music

I have very fond memories growing up as a kid of the record player taking centre stage in the living room. Putting on a Southern Freeze and dancing in the living room was as much an every day activity as, say, watching the telly or playing Street Fighter on the SNES (or at least that’s my memory). And from the very limited exposure I’ve given the kids so far to music beyond playing stuff from an iPhone through a Bluetooth speaker (I do wonder if my kids will reflect on like I do with the record player!) they love it.

Today I sat down and did my first practice session in from of my measly 2 octave midi keyboard. With Ableton live lite loaded up and the simply fantastic Spitfire audio labs plugins (soft piano is my choice at the moment) I began practice some routines I’ve seen on Pianote (which from my limited exposure seems like a fantastic resource of free educational videos on learning piano). James and Bertie both sat with me at separate occasions bashing at the keys, they also enjoyed some very basic renditions of twinkle twinkle and baby shark.

What I can play is limited by the size of my keyboard and I hope, if I keep it up, to get a full 88 key digital piano. The Korg B2 is what I’m looking at at the moment. It has 88 weighted keys, some amazing sounding piano emulation as well as other sounds, looks stylish and comes with a pedal and sound over USB (effectively an audio interface from what I can tell).

The other one I have my eyes on is the Roland Go:Piano. Less keys, no key weighting but more sounds and bluetooth midi which does sounds very cool.

Who knows if piano will be another micro obsession that I move on from in a few months time, but I do hope it sticks!