welcome to camp telophase

I'm taking a piano for beginners class through extended education at the university at which I work. Tonight was the first class. I showed up 20 minutes early as I wasn't sure I'd be able to park in the closest lot and I'd never been in the building before. It turned out to be a maze of a building - actually three buildings in one - but I found it.

It's truly a beginner's class, meant for those who have never had music training before. I have, but it was so long ago - middle school for violin and one semester of piano in undergrad - that I need to be refreshed from the start. Which I am all happy with, as one of my biggest problems with learning anything is that I tend to rush through or skip the beginning steps and end up stuck in the middle somewhere, unable to go much further because I'm weak on the basics.

So today we learned the finger numbers - thumbs 1, through pinkies 5 - and plunked out some boringly simple melodies (and if the rest of the class is like me, doing fine on our own but failing miserably when the teacher plays an accompaniment XD).

The classroom is similar to the one I had back in undergrad - each student has a keyboard with headphones that connects to the teacher's, so the teacher can listen to each one individually or all at once, and we can listen only to ourselves, or we can unplug the headphones and lsten to everyone.

My biggest problem is really slow tempos. I can play fine when I'm going faster, but I lose count in the slow ones.

We also have a copy of Amazing Grace with the finger numbers listed out so we can play. The tempo is my biggest problem with this s well - faster, I'm fine, slower and I lose the melody in my head.

myrialux has a basic MIDI keyboard we're going to hook up to my computer this weekend after the move, so I'll have something to practice on.