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learning to play nyckelharpa
Oct. 17th, 2012 09:46 pmMonday evening was our second lesson on playing the nyckelharpa. The other students are all experienced musicians. I am not. This means that I showed the greatest improvement from the previous lesson of two weeks before. However, this does not mean that I could keep up with them. Even with the two tunes we had learned the first week the best I could manage was to sort of hit some of the keys at the correct time, but not the entire tune at once at the speed they were playing them. Therefore soon after we started working on a third tune, which the others started learning the previous session, the second teacher took me upstairs, where she taught me the third tune one-on-one.
It is amazing how much more I enjoy the one on one learning than the group session--I really can't keep up with them--all they are learning is how to apply a skill they are already good at (playing music) to a new instrument. I am trying to learn how to play music in the first place.
The new tune is a lovely one, but more complicated than the two from the first class. As a result I couldn't really hold all of the bits in my head after we went home. I had written down the letters of the notes, but I am not really certain that I got them written correctly.
Last night when I went to practice I could do both of the first two songs I learned, but I was just too tired to actually manage to work out the third. Tonight I gave it a try a bit earlier, and was getting something closer to right on that third tune, but couldn't quite remember it all, and was getting less and less convinced that I had written it down correctly. Therefore I consulted my good friend, Google.
The first thing I found was a person playing the tune on the nyckleharpa. This is useful, because I can watch the fingers and be reasonably certain that yes, he pushes the same keys as my teacher does for this tune, but I am just not yet fast enough to follow what someone else is doing (which is frustrating, since I can learn dances that fast--why is playing music so much harder than dancing?)
Therefore I went looking further, and managed to find a web page that has sheet music (plus a midi file, which sounds right to my ear). However, I can't actually read sheet music, yet, though I know which lines go with which letters. Therefore I took a copy of the sheet music into CorelDraw and wrote the letters over each dot, then printed only that layer to get a lovely decorative series of letters rising and falling in time to the music. ( This I can play to! )
It is amazing how much more I enjoy the one on one learning than the group session--I really can't keep up with them--all they are learning is how to apply a skill they are already good at (playing music) to a new instrument. I am trying to learn how to play music in the first place.
The new tune is a lovely one, but more complicated than the two from the first class. As a result I couldn't really hold all of the bits in my head after we went home. I had written down the letters of the notes, but I am not really certain that I got them written correctly.
Last night when I went to practice I could do both of the first two songs I learned, but I was just too tired to actually manage to work out the third. Tonight I gave it a try a bit earlier, and was getting something closer to right on that third tune, but couldn't quite remember it all, and was getting less and less convinced that I had written it down correctly. Therefore I consulted my good friend, Google.
The first thing I found was a person playing the tune on the nyckleharpa. This is useful, because I can watch the fingers and be reasonably certain that yes, he pushes the same keys as my teacher does for this tune, but I am just not yet fast enough to follow what someone else is doing (which is frustrating, since I can learn dances that fast--why is playing music so much harder than dancing?)
Therefore I went looking further, and managed to find a web page that has sheet music (plus a midi file, which sounds right to my ear). However, I can't actually read sheet music, yet, though I know which lines go with which letters. Therefore I took a copy of the sheet music into CorelDraw and wrote the letters over each dot, then printed only that layer to get a lovely decorative series of letters rising and falling in time to the music. ( This I can play to! )
