Entry #7 - March 28,2014

This week, I've learned one more song and part of a part of fur Elise. I've found that the second and third parts of fur Elise are a lot more difficult than the first, but I believe I can still do it. I've learned a Lord of the Rings song which makes me super excited because I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan. The final product is progressing along quite well. I will probably start editing the video now because I have enough footage to work with unlike before. The new songs I am learning always keep me excited because when I'm playing the songs, I can "feel" the song in a sense. I've also learned all of the chords. I found it easier to take a systematic approach to memorizing the chords rather than individually memorize each chord. I find that some of the songs that have more than 3 chords are too difficult for me at this current point which bothers me. I'm still happy with my progress though because I've memorized all the chords (though I need a piano still to say what notes make up a chord). Not to many things interesting came up, but I did, at one point, try to create my own song. It was very loud and dissonant.

Source: "Beginner Piano Chords." : Master Chord List. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
These are the major and the minor chords that I learned for the piano. 

Entry #6- March 21, 2014

A lot of things have happened since the last update. I actually started to learn and play songs. As of right now, I can play "London Bridge is Falling Down," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," and the first bar of Fur Elise. The final product follows with my piano practice because it's a video about journey of learning the piano, so I'm constantly working on my video along with new songs. It's always exciting for me to learn new songs and to see the variation you can have with essentially just seven notes. I'm also excited because I've progressed faster than I thought I would and it's always exciting to be able to play multiple songs. The things that bother me are kind of trivial because it's mostly the fact I keep hitting the B key instead of the A key sometimes and I'm not really comfortable with working the pedals. I'm really happy about my progress so far. I've learned songs faster than I expected. At first, I thought playing Fur Elise might have never happened, but I've already started to learn to play it.

Source: Verlag, Henle G. "Beethoven, Für Elise WoO 59 – Do You Strike the Right Note?" N.p., n.d. Web.
This is the part of the song "Fur Elise" which I just learned to play. 

Entry #5 - March 7, 2014

Over the course of this project, I have found a multitude of websites that have been extremely useful for me. found Wikihow when I was confused about a couple of musical definitions. So, I looked them up and I found this website that has all the major chords and explains each musical term. Through this website I've learned about root notes, perfect fifths, octaves, and a whole bunch of other musical definitions. The other website, True Piano Lessons, was found when I was looking for other websites that could help me learn about the piano. I found it very similar to zebrakeys.com but it's lessons were slightly different than those in Zebra Keys. So, I started using both websites to learn about playing the piano. They both come with practice sheet music for when I play the piano at home. Both of these websites have been extremely useful in learning about playing the piano and music in general, especially wikihow. It had a surprising amount of depth and explanation for many of the musical terms I didn't understand.

"How to Play Major Chords on a Keyboard." WikiHow. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.

http://www.wikihow.com/Play-Major-Chords-on-a-Keyboard

"How To Play The Piano." How To Play The Piano. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.

http://www.true-piano-lessons.com/how-to-play-the-piano.html