Learning Piano

A few weeks ago I was looking through the basement when I found my dusty old MIDI piano from Yamaha. It then occured to me that it had been well over a decade since I last played. I picked that bad boy up and brought it to my bedroom.

Here's my Piano in all of it's old, yellowed and dusty glory.

But after twenty minutes of pushing a few buttons here and a few keys there, I realized I had no idea what I was doing. Thankfully, the internet was on my side. I found two really helpful websites I want to share these to you guys.

The first website was Piano Nanny which has starter, intermediate, and advanced "studies". Each study includes various lessons and a quiz at the end to make sure you understand the material before moving on to the next one.

That's when I stumbled across Yousician. How I see Yousician is kind of like a realistic version of Guitar Hero. It offers a version for Piano, Guitar, Bass, and Ukelele (Ukelele!) and I'm sure they're going to add other instruments in the future. How it works is easy: You download their app onto either a computer, tablet, or phone, and you play your piano. The app will pick up what you're playing and show you how your timing and accuracy to notes are. It made playing piano really easy and fun! I almost hate the memory of going to the piano ladies at the music store when I was little now, because of how inefficient it was.

The only downside this website has is it's free version has limited time every day (You have to wait every 12 hours or so) and there are a few almost "commercial breaks", where they tell you you should totally upgrade to the paid version for unlimited playtime.

I'm still looking around for other really great piano learning websites, and if you know of one, feel free to post it in the comments, guys! There are a few I haven't played as long as I want, but if I feel it's worth mentioning I'll update you in a future post!

Welcome to my blog!

I'd like to address what my blog was originally created for with a little backstory of who I am.

Since as long as I can remember, I've always been obssessed with learning, particularly things that were scattered and hardly related. It started with learning French, and then German, and then Russian and sign language came along before I started learning braille, morse code, bird calls.

I think once the bird calls came I sort of lost it.

I stopped learning languages and started learning other hobbies. I drew, I took pictures. Art has always been something I loved. I started to express my art in cooking and baking. I learned to knit, just because I felt like it one day. The same day I decided to become ordained, just because I felt like it.

I hiked and signed up for secret shopper websites. Learning and living differently became a bit of an addiction at this point. I took courses in computer courses, while self teaching computer coding. I know Java and HTML. I attended seminars on psychology and religion.

And then I really lost it.

I attended synagogues, temples, churches, services of varying religions and learned about the area. I sat with a monk for a few hours and learned more about myself than I ever did sitting at home for the same amount of time.

I realized with all the crazy stuff I put myself through. All these events, I should be writing a blog. And so I started it to log my future crazies. I'm currently in my final semester of community college, before I'll be moving on to uni. I'm also working toward not one, not two, but three other certificates.

Like I said, my life is full of crazy moments, and I'm prepared to log my newest ones.