Mel Haas - My New Hobby
Piano
The
Benefits of Playing Music Help Your Brain More Than Any Other Activity.
My Inspiration
Nadrah, the cute little girl
My Aspiration
Elite Syncopations - Scott Joplin
Genius at work
-amazing (over 2 hours)
Yamaha PSS-E30
The Yamaha
PSS-E30 Remie. $60 at Amazon
Features
and Sounds. Review.
A serious musical
instrument.
Another cute kid playing
an E30.
Our twin grandkids have fun with theirs. It can take a lot of abuse.
Alexa Music at Home
Most days we have Alexa speakers in our apartment playing
classical music. Here is a list of the Alexa commands we use, each one with “on
the everywhere group” appended: alexa prime music.html .
Listening to classical music has been a constant throughout my life
from MIT and beyond. I really got
into it in Boston with the advent of HiFi electronics. My first date with Betsy
was to a Boston Pops concert (1964).
My Yamaha PSR-E363
The Yamaha PSR-E363 $160 on
sale at Amazon
The E363 has full-sized keys and two more octaves (61 keys) than the F30 and
E30. More importantly, it has a MIDI connection to the PC for the training
program; my only hope is to train for playing. Here is a 5-year-old
learning piano with Simply Piano, a web-based training program.
A good tutorial on the PSR-E363: https://youtu.be/29iFveejMnQ
Photo of my learning setup with PC.
E363 on a keyboard stand and Laptop on a platform stand.
My
Previous Attempts
My earlier musical attempts have all been horrible. Years ago, Betsy and the kids gave me a Miracle Piano with lessons on little disks. I worked through the lessons with difficulty (my rote memory thing). The lessons stalled with a test of Mary and her lamb. I could not get the tempo right, and the lessons would not go on until I mastered it. After a few years of playing with the keyboard, which was very good, I gave it to charity. Yesterday (Beatles)
Now to Mary and her lamb
There are three aspects of my learn to play the piano
project:
A. I love piano music. Classical, Religious, and Rag. We always have classical
and some other playing throughout the house (via Alexa).
B. I am having fun with the electronics and web aspect of the project. I will
have months of wires and programs all over the place to hook up. I also enjoy
writing about the project on this page.
C. In COVID-19 lockdown, I cannot have a music teacher help me or join a group. So, I have chosen to try FlowKey, an online piano teaching program that attaches to the piano and guides via the PC (or tablet) screen.
I also use online piano YouTube
teachers.
Tim Wurm Zach Evans FlowKey Piano from Scratch
Exercises Keyboard Note Ear-Keyboard Ear-Note
There are a ton of books and videos for self-teaching. But with my senility and inability to rote learn, I need a lot of help.
I am in no hurry to play. I have no audience for a performance, and my grandkids are quite a bit ahead of me already.
MP3 Music
Here are some of my MP3 classical music files. These have been adjusted to have about the same loudness. They come from all over the place, so some are of low quality. Click on the link Music to fetch the file list (about 45 files). Then click on the file you want to hear or download. The directory D:/Music/MP3/ on the USB stick version of this site has all the files that can be copied to a phone or ear pod device.
There is an Archive of Classical Music online with over a million MP3 and MIDI files for listening and downloading.
Stations
We listen to KUSC (www.kusc.org) at home. It plays classical music all day with very few brief announcements and a very short fund-raising annoyance. We use "Alexa play radio station KUSC on the everywhere group" or just "Alexa play station KUSC." There are many ways to play the station. See: https://www.kusc.org/radio/how-to-listen/
We have four Amazon Echo Alex devices about the house, one connected to a good stereo amplifier and excellent speakers. Their sound quality is surprisingly good. We have them playing together all day with KUSC or Amazon Prime classical music.
There are hundreds of other stations that are similar. WQXR (www.wqxr.org) is in NYC, and WCRB (www.classicalwcrb.org) is in Boston.
KUSC has fewer interruptions.
Here is one that plays Mozart all day long: https://www.radio.net/s/klassikradiopuremozart.
Or say, "Alexa play classic radio pure Mozart."
https://www.radio.net/s/klassikradiopurebeethoven
https://www.radio.net/s/klassikradiopureverdi
You get the idea. See: https://www.radio.net/
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