Resolution Number 9

Rusty

2010-04-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

It really has been since November that I have played Rock Band Beatles and/or blogged about it. In honor of Maundy Thursday (mostly becuase it meant today Good Friday is a day off work) I went at it again. I refuse to lower the difficulty to anything less than Hard. So, I am only racking up three stars for my attempts. However, last night, I completed the Abbey Road album and unlocked a challenge.I think real life should really think about how this challenge thing works in games. I find it curious that kids -- many of whom do play games with challenges to unlock -- might take a lesson from this notion. You must reach a level of proficiency before moving oni. Although it is external motivation. Hmmm. Maybe that is the problem. I do admit that I look at the stats regarding my progress in the photograph accumulating fraction and am a little dismayed.

Because I was also consuming a beverage in a tall glass whist "playing" (sometimes I really do trip out on the fact that this is a plastic guitar) I think I wasn't necessarily helping my progress. However, I did use the opportunity between songs to quaff a bit and look at the graphics on the screen. Our recent upgrade to a flatscreen HD if not huge TV has enhanced the view a bit although we now have adapted to that enhancement I think. For the Beatles fan, there really is quite a bit to see in the game. I was a sort of casual fan -- had favorite songs and would skip over ones I didn't really like (most of Ringo's I must say). But the graphics of the Beatles themselves are really quite good, and the picture montages and the like that come up in the middle of the songs are fun to watch. Especially if you are having a little drink, as I said.

The solos and riffs on Hard are not quite that one to one correspondence to movement in the right and left hands, but sometimes it is close on one level. So once again, I was impressed with the complexity of their music. It would be interesting to hook the TV up to a better sound system (this one on the new TV is better than on our old set) but I need to save that for a time when I am on my own I think. My playing was tolerated by the other three mammals in the house (2 cats + human) probably only because it was limited.

How many instruments?

2009-11-28T16:04:00.000-08:00

The purpose of the Resolution Number 9 has been partially successful.

I have finally had a major breakthrough -- as my piano teacher in California called it -- with the Ravel. I can get ALL the way through to the last page without the stumble on the B minor, second inversion arpeggio on the third page (why THAT is so hard, I have no idea). So being ever one to sabotage my own success, instead of sticking with the piece and finishing it, I have been playing the real guitar again. Not the bassoon, of course.

This means I have been building up callouses on the left hand, which is not pretty, but necessary. The thing that is different than previous bouts with the guitar, however, is that I have learned a bit of focus and intent with regard to practice. And this from choir rehearsal. "Everything is everything," I guess.

But we are entereing the time of year when it is permissible to play Christmas music on the piano, which is only going to gum up my original project. Still, perhaps the whole thing is about starting down a road, "the long and winding road," I guess, and to have some fun. I am not done with Guitar Hero or Rock Band, though, I know it.

How being in Marching Band ended up in "The Real World" of Beatles Wii

2009-10-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

First, let me say that I played Brahms and Ravel the other night when there was no one home (and if no one is in your living room, it does make a noise) and frankly kicked these dead guys' behinds. I also had nothing to drink except herbal tea. It was like there was some sort of sleeper effect. I hadn't sat down to the piano in a few days and hauled out the Ravel for kicks and there is was -- all the way to the end. Can I do it again? I am afraid to try. I was thrilled. My dad used to say that if you wanted to hear me play, you would have to go into another room. I am a tad nervous. I recall that in the Marilyn French's book The Women's Room, there was a character who also could only play the piano if people "weren't listening".

Last night being another official "off night" at 9 Hood, I thought I would have a go at the drumming in the Beatles game. I have had some success with Guitar Hero drumming, especially at the Medium level. In GHWT, you can essentially find a basic groove -- the equivalent of the snare and ride cymbal or snare and high hat. Everyone once in a while, on medium they will have you play another tom tom or something. And of course, there is the bass drum along the bottom. The bass drum is trickier than you might think because it just doesn't play on all the strong beats in the Beatles game. Again,I find myself with even more and more respect for Ringo as a drummer.

I am playing the Wii Rock Band Beatles game with GHWT equipment, and have found that the drums work just as well as the guitar does -- as long as you are using the most up to date equipment which I am. On the Rock Band game though, there are only four drums, and the GHWT game has five options. I did not use the orange cymbal. I follow the "fretboard" and the relative psitions with the drums generally -- or found this was adequate with the medium and hard settings I tried. With the Wii guitar, you still use all five buttons on the hard and expert settings. I tend to think of the orange button on the guitar as a sign to shift positions -- much like you do when needing different positions on a real guitar. The drums seem simpler in terms of lay out, but are just as challenging with regard to difficulty.

I read in some book which covered their early years that at one point Ringo walked out of a rehearsal because Paul fussed at him for not being able to do a drum roll. I can't imagine when that was because on the hard and expert settings in the game, you certainly do need to be able to do drum rolls in the later songs.

This rediscovery of the Beatles is kind of interesting and of course I am falling prey to the marketing aspect of the game.. No doubt what's left of the Beatles corporation including Paul my least favorite Beatle and god knows who else -- Yoko and George's widow and Ringo; I don't know -- want those of us who either knew the Beatles or who are rediscovering them or in the case of kids discovering them to go out and buy all the new remastered CDs. Which I have done, but not all of them. As I said in an earlier post, the fidelity on the sound even through my TV which is powered by tubes and squirrels running on a wheel in the back still cranks out details for the ear that make even the old Cavern era pieces sound like something other than crappy "Rock and Roll Music".

Anyway. I am enjoying the drumming because at this point it is more of a challenge and a novelty for me even though I played percussion in the marching band in high school. By the time high school came around, I was playing the bassoon -- and the bari sax in the "Studio Lab Band" which was essentially a big band style band, as well as in the pit orchestra for Guys and Dolls -- and the rule was that if you were a wind player, you could not play in any of the premium ensembles including orchestra unless you also played in marching band. Ugh. I was not going to march with a bassoon -- not sure anyone does. So I marched first with the bells -- which I hated -- since I could play a keyboard. And then I got ot try the snare and the bass drum and the cymbals. We were not one of those schools with a huge percussion section that had a million things going on at once and rocked out on the sidelines or something (Though we did have the "Bisonettes," a kickline named after the school mascot.). And since it was the Seventies, we played weird stuff like the "Kentucky Fried Chicken" theme song (which right now I cannot conjure up in my head) and the theme from the movie "Jaws." As a result, nearly everything we tried to march into looked a bit like a chickenleg. No kidding. But I did get to play percussion.

Big moment for the cymbals was during the National Anthem -- a solo; "For the la-and of the free" **CRASH** "And the home. Of the. Brave." Followed by cheers and we would walk off the field so the Bisons could do their thing. A couple of times during the indoor band rehearsal, I got to play drums as well and I learned how to do snare rolls and the marching cadence and some other things. It was fun. So I am getting the hang of this drumming thing more or less. I do know, for all my percussionist friends out there, that it is not the real thing as far as drum playing goes. But as a guitar player, it is way more real than playing the plastic guitar with the multi colored buttons. There is a guy on You tube who credits GHWT with training him to learn the real drums. I don't know his whole story, and I bet he had some native talent to begin with. But it does support my point.

(Of course I cannot find his video.)

What is happening with the Beatles game though, is that I am really feeling like I should get on to real instruments. Why am I playing this game? It does allow me to blow off some steam. And it is fun. And no spectres from my past or present are standing over me criticizing my errors. But the Beatles, I swear, especially in studio modes, look at you if fail a song, and I think when I failed out of "Back in the USSR" for the first time, I heard John Lennon say, "Don't do that! Don't do that."

Boddington is what Ales Brahms. Still, can't clean up with the Pineapple Rag

2009-10-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

Friday night here is big "party night", which generally means a sort of Happy Hour (or for me this week, Less Miserable Hour), supper and goofing off -- no correcting or prep for teaching, no reading for classes, no excessive processing of the relationship -- you know: R & R. Like reading all the magazines we don't have time for and unpacking groceries. Woo hoo. After dinner, I decided to put in some piano time and went right to Brahms. What damage could I do in my 15 minutes of infamy at the piano?

I stumbled through the already nailed first section of the Intermezzo. Fail. Halting, inconsistent, wrong notes, old patterns. I thought I could Just Do It. Ummm. No. I was astonished at how quickly I fell back into poor playing. What was lacking was my attention. This project is not about developing fine motor skills; it is about developing the right mindset to learn some piano music and/or unlearn some that had been spottily played. Last Friday, I simply could not focus. My muscle memory is not quite retrained for the this piece, either, I don't think. So, without the ability to be mindful, caused in no small part by Boddington Ale, I defaulted to the old ways of playing from the macro to the micro level.

Last summer, I played the bassoon in a Coro Allegro sponsored fundraising event. What was different for me with that performance was my success at playing in a public venue. My personal success I think was due not to big shifts in my ability, but shifts in my ability to focus. I looked at the music,not the audience, I listened with the mind and heart's ear, I felt the music as phrases.I was not distracted by fear of the crowd, fear of failure or fear of my mother in the audience. As a result, my previous patterns didn't occur. More recently, I was in a performance with my old teacher and she asked if I had been practicing as I seemed to playing better. The answer, I was sorry to say, is not really, but I think my meditation practice is taking hold in that arena. By contrast, Boddington Ale does not help concentration for me. I wouldn't drink and meditate, why would I drink and play the piano with intention?

As I continued to play poorly, I of course got more and more competitive with myself, more and more frustrated, and the whole thing got pretty ugly. I said some unauthorized words, and thinking of Schroeder and his mounting frustration with Lucy, resorted playing "Jingle Bells" with a boogie woogie bass mostly to stop the madness (???) and have a laugh at myself. Mr. Stripes who usually takes a neutral view towards my piano playing seemed a little alarmed at this.

I thought then to turn to the simpler Pineapple Rag. This went better until I started to stop paying attention to the chord root played in the bass on all the strong beats. Er, this is ragtime. You sort of need that note. I have also been using the pinky of the left hand which is probably my weakest digit. Sadly, in one section, the notes I needed to play were either a B-flat or an F, and I was only hitting that F about 75% of the time. That's all. No tricky chords there. I was getting the chords on the after beats, but the strong beats were, well, weak.

I saw a suggestion in a guitar method once that you should sing the name of the notes you are playing (on pitch of course) in order to reinforce your learning of them on the fretboard. I remembered this after I abandoned the piano bench, and because I am not a beginner, sort of scoffed at this notion, at a least at the time. It might be something to try. It also might be OK if let myself glance down the keyboard to zero in on where that errant note lies. My eyes are not glued to the keyboard normally.

This was an interesting session after the fact. I think I need to just let myself play the piano, Ale or no, for fun and stop always thinking it has to be so goal oriented. I also need to remember the Quit While You Are Ahead Maxim, followed by the Beware the Diminishing Returns Corollary. When I was learning to parallel park, I would try multiple times and when I got it right a couple times in a row, my dad would would let me stop practicing it. I am a good parallel parker now actually. Even between cars.

I also know some people have no problems with altering their consciousness and performing music, and this is not a criticism of that. (Hey, look at Jim Morrison.) I also need to lighten up, I know. (boogie woogie Jingle Bells worked, for example; no clams there.) Perhaps I need to drag out some new stuff or do something that doesn't have the baggage on it. Like mic the bassoon and run it through an effects pedal...

Back to the Beatles game

2009-09-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy with the piano and a bassoon performance, that I actually have not been playing the Beatles game at all. I guess part of the point of course was to play the piano more, which I have been doing. But since I have been prioritizing the real instrument playing, I have not been playing the game. I actually need a little time to blow off steam, so I don't know if I am accomplishing my goal of needing to "goof off" by playing Brahms.I am pretty goal oriented, and to say I have been stressed out is an understatement these days..So, last night, after a bassoon performance with Kammerwerke, I came home and had a go at the Beatles game in "story" mode.

One of the goals with "story" mode is to collect photographs of the Beatles that you can browse in the game. You do this by accruing "stars" as you play. You can accrue stars by playing accurately when the colored diamonds on the fretboard light up and you get the passages without flaws. The thing that seems a tad 'unfair' or out of balance, or something, is that if you play a song on a higher level, like Hard or Expert, you still accrue photgraphs at the same rate. There is no "weighting" for playing the songs at a higher level. You could accrue enough points at a lower level and achieve the photographs. I have been attempting songs at Hard or Expert and just can't quite get beyond three stars. So I get one or two photographs, but even if I succeed (i.e. don't "Fail") at these higher levels, there is no compensation for doing so at a more difficult level.

I am currently stuck at a "three star" success rate. I "pass" the songs on Hard or Expert at about an average of a 84 % rate. (or a "B"in the high school where I teach) , but since I don't get four or five stars (and I am SOOO close sometimes), I get one photograph. If I lower my level to Medium, it is really boring. But what is the goal really? To accrue photographs and achieve a goal spurred on by extrinsic motivation? Or, is it to get better at the game?

Well, I do know it is a game after all. Still, I don't want to play the songs over and over to "win".

I played Guitar Hero World Tour before this and was succeeding at a 94% plus rate in guitar mode at the Medium level. This got pretty easy. But since I didn't always know the songs on the game, it was a little like "sight-reading" in a way, and I felt like I had accomplished something by passing the songs at first go 'round.

The Beatles songs seem a like whole different thing. I can't isolate the variable, so it is difficult to say if I am playing the game at a higher level becuase the game is eaiser, or because I "practiced" on GHWT, or for some other reason. I do notice that the earlier songs for guitar are harder. I have much more respect for the rhythm guitar role and George's solos than I ever did.

I am not an intense Beatles fan, although I do know about their music, listen to it, and when things get low in the dark months of the year here in New England, I watch "Hard Day's Night: and have a good laugh.I was born too late maybe, I don't know. I also am a sort of Anti-Paul fan. I don't like him. Cuteness wears thin on me and I always wrote him off as a smarmy dude who was lucky to outlive the other ones. Plus whats up with his too-young wives. I know I am being judgemental. But the Beatles game is changing all thins.

For one, the bass parts on the game are tricky. On hard and expert, you can hear how closely they resemble the original parts, and thanks to the marketing aspect of the game, the sound fidelity is ramped up and you can hear much more on the game (even given my ancient TV) than I can hear on the speakers of my 2000 Honda Civic's sound system. Yeah, this music is complex. When you play their earlier tunes based even on 12 bar blues, they include riffs and flourishes that really make them stand out. Oh, so thats the big deal. It's not just their cool three part harmonies, which even as a kid I really liked.

As you play in guitar mode,you also get the opportunity to play George's solos. These are NOT simple (I mean on a real guitar) -- they come up quickly, and in this game, you can really hear them. So I am appreciating what a fine guitarist he was. I KNEW this, but even playing the plastic guitar, using a combination of my ear and game finger-flailing, I can hear and see what he added. I don't think any of the recordings I had brought that forth for me. It cracks me up that you can have a "perfect" solo, a "good" solo, or a "messy" solo. You get extra points for these as well. Cool.

The graphics are fun. I am still so intent on playing the game well, that I think I am missing some of the graphics. I am also still playing in righty bass mode or mostly guitar mode.As you get past "the Cavern" and Shea Stadium in "story ' mode, the graphics get trippier and trippier. I think it is time for a Rock Band party where we can, umm. play together and , er watch the graphics. Or something.

As you get into the later stuff -- Abbey Road and George's sitar work -- the game seems more like GHWT. You are not necessarily tracking guitar work with the game's plastic guitar. In GHWT, sometimes you would be playing a keyboard or something on the silly plastic guitar. Same here. The Beatles left the rock and roll music thing behind them once they departed from their stadium tours and the game reflects this as well.

As a musician, I find myself betwixt and between., I am hearing Beatles music differently -- much more detail -- and this is due to the sound quality and the sym feature of playing Rock Band, as limited as it is. I play a little guitar, and for one thing, I am not keeping the calluses in my left hand in good form by choosing to spend time away from the real instrument and playing the Rock Band instrument. YouTube has some vids of a guy who attributed his ability to play the real drums to the practice he got on Rock Band, I don't have Rock Band drums. Trying to see how the GHWT drums work with Rock band is on my to do list, for sure. But what about my photograph accrual?

Listening to the Voices

2009-09-21T16:06:00.000-07:00

That would be the inner voices. Brahms was another genius in the music world IMHO, maybe or maybe not on the level of JS Bach, but a genius nonetheless. Plus he had a nice bushy beard:

In an attempt to avoid racing over the first two pages of the Intermezzo, I have been focusing on the inner voices. As a bassoonist and alto, I know a little about the value of the middle to lower parts of the staff, and Brahms has given much to consider with regard to them in this pieces. Maybe he meant to call it an inner mezzo, you know like listening to your inner mezzo. (As opposed to listening forever to a diva soprano.) Maybe not. Anyway...

The swell and beauty of his theme is changed ever so slightly and quite deliciously by the subtle chord changes and inversions as carried by both the left and right hands. They are also places easily fluffed over by a less attentive player. Not to mention any names.You could play through the first two pages anyway with sort of approximations of the chord changes. But the warmth that is Brahms is exemplified in this piano piece surely, and it is attention to detail that can express it.

I have spent the last two practice periods focusing on these changes and have been playing them veeeerrrry slooooowly and out of rhythm on occasion (on purpose). It is like a kind of savoring of something very endorphin-releasing. Many such opiates come to mind -- pick your own. But I have been avoiding playing the piece up to tempo, because I have to relearn some of these chord changes 100% accurately, which means unlearning the old ways. But I prefer to think of it as a relearning of his beauty and tripping out on the so lovely warmth that a piece in key with sharps (it is in A, mostly) can provide. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Meeting the Beatles

2009-09-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Tried the Beatles game for the first time with the Wii Guitar Hero guitar controller with absolutely no technical troubles. I started out on Quick Play in order to get a feel for the game and found that the songs there are listed by ranking them easiest to most difficult. In the interest of avoiding being embarrassed, I started at the top with their easiest tunes first on medium. They were WAY too easy. When I tried Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the first time on expert though, I failed, not to booing as with GHWT, but the band simply stopped playing and you could hear John's voice saying, "I don't know what they're doing."You an choose a No Fail mode, but I skipped that.

Visually,for some of them, the quick play starts you out in a studio with a date displayed, and then once you start the tune, depending on the era, puts you visually into some other animated ambience. The Beatles look a bit like they do in the Yellow Submarine film , so it's not like they are unfamiliar or a mockery of themselves. The issue I am having personally with the visuals is the same one as I had with GHWT. While we have a good enough old school TV, it is not high def and the sound is just out of the speaker unless I crank it, much to my cats' and partner's dismay. So, maybe the visuals are getting lost on me while I am laying. It is as if they play on in my subconscious, but right now I am concentrating so hard on the game that I am not paying attention to the visuals.

This is an interesting project because while I am not the wildest fan of the Beatles, I do like them. I noticed that the more difficult songs for guitar are some of their earliest ones.

Above the tunes in Career mode is a kind of thermometer which display the relative difficulty of the instruments and some of the easiest songs , like "Yellow Submarine" doesn't even inch its way onto the thermometer.

Next stop, I think is "Career" mode, which will put me chronologically in the various venues they played in.

Counting to Five

2009-09-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

The goal of my Resolution 9 project is in part, of course, to shame/bribe/condition/encourage myself to get the piano playing back into shape. In the 1970 move, Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson's character, Bobby Dupea, has turned his back on his family and musical ability to live a sort of aimless life. While I may have started out my life as an adult in some ways not unlike Dupea, Nicholson's character in the movie, it certainly hasn't ended up that way, and some of the other differences are too numerous to go into here.

My story is that I am a middle aged woman who showed some promise as a young musician on the bassoon and the piano, enough that I went to Oberlin as a double degree student with my Conservatory major being the bassoon. I, like Dupea, didn't want the life of daily disciplined practice, so I dropped out of the Con, kept on with my academic studies in the College, and went a long time not playing much of anything except the guitar a little. Then, during the course of several lifetimes on both coasts later, I have picked up the bassoon again, play the piano off and on again here and there, and am a high school teacher. (No, not a music teacher.) So, like a lot of adults who played the piano when they were kids, I am taking it up again with a little more seriousness. A little more. This project is not about Nicholson's character per se whose fate at the end of the film is in some ways the exact opposite of what mine turned out to be. Rather it is about finding a structure by which I can take on trying to capture a small amount of discipline in practice and play the piano on my terms.

In the movie, towards the end, Dupea plays Chopin's Prelude in E Minor, "the easiest piece [he] could think of." The other pieces in the movie are Chopin's Fantasy in f minor, Opus 49; Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue; Mozart's E-flat Major Concerto K272 and Mozart's Fantasy in d Minor K397. None of these necessarily fall into the realm of "easy". The pieces I have chosen may or may not fall into the realm of easy, depending on any number of things, and the fact that they are not unfamiliar pieces to musicians in some ways make them "harder", if merely for the reason that they are familiar. EVERYONE plays them, knows if you miss notes and they can be played pretty lamely if accurately.

David Hodgkins, musical director of Coro Allegro , intones many at times oft-repeated quotes in order to coach the choir towards its usual excellence, and one of them has to do with the pitfalls of performing familiar music. When the group is rehearsing a piece well known in the classical world, like a Haydn mass or Randall Thompson's tired "Alleluia" [THAT old thing],dutifully dragged out our back pockets for perhaps too many occasions, David will say, "It's like singing the National Anthem! Everyone sings it! Everyone knows it. We can't afford to do it "mezzo blah!'" Or some some such exhortation to avoid mediocrity. He's not just talking about accuracy, he's talking about musicality and attention, and, as he is so often, he is quite right.

"Five Easy Pieces" also refers to a set of 4 Hand Piano pieces by Igor Stravinsky, which he composed from 1916-1917, upon completion of another set called Three Easy Pieces. But as of yet, this isn't about that either, although I love Stravinsky. I did do enough conservatory time to nail the intro to "Rite of Spring" on the bassoon.

The "easy" part is also related to attention, focus, and time management. I do not have tons of time to devote to this particular project, so I want to make sure I am present in a kind of Buddhist way when I am.
Four pieces I have chosen are not the Bach and Mozart featured in the film, indeed not Bach or Mozart at all, and the fifth is as of yet undetermined. My choices are based on my desire to see a project through. All of the pieces except the new unchosen fifth are already on the road to completion, but in working on them, I have been not been following good practice techniques. As well, I am working on avoiding the self-defeating thinking that I MUST play the MOST difficult pieces in all the land technique-wise (as determined by some committee of shameful and invisible judges) to demonstrate that I am a competent musician. I have bashed my way through some Chopin Ballades like hacking through a bamboo forest with a machete only to have the conquered measures lie slain in my wake, "gotten through" but joylessly. And this because I was misusing my time. Instead of savoring some of it, I worried about "finishing the piece" to say I could play it. Bah. Maybe this is about being older and wiser. I love Chopin, that tortured soul, but I might love to play Brahms and Ravel more.

Focus is the key. I have half-learned the following piano pieces and when I pull them out, I tend only to play the parts I really know. There are errors I always play, play in fact so much they are starting to become part of the way I play the piece (oh dear) and I am simply stuck on the first few pages in most. So, four of the Five Easy pieces:

The Pineapple Rag by Scott Joplin (Been there, done that old Maple Leaf One.)
Intermezzo in A by Brahms , yes, that one, I am somewhat embarrassed to say
Ravel's "Dead Princess" Pavane
Someday My Prince will Come - the jazz waltz version of it, not the Disney version of it
???????

15 minutes of focus and bail out when the point of diminishing return starts. Oh and Beatles Rock Band.More on that later.

Five Easy Pieces + The Fab 4 = Resolution #9

2009-09-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

As someone who has been playing Guitar Hero World Tour (GHWT) on the Wii for a year or so now, and as a musician,I do wonder whether I am making good use of my time when I play the Wii game. Like many folks I bet, as I got good on the game, I wondered if my playing of the real guitar was better, as I hadn't picked it up in a while. I can say that GHWT does nothing for developing calluses and the grip stregth for barre chords. Still, I did pull out the guitar this summer and thought, "Oh yeah, I can play this thing. Remember?" But I do think my musical skills help me at GHWT. Great.

I am also a bassoonist, but I don't need too much additional motivation/bribery to play that instrument as I have regular opportunities to perform throughout the year. The thing niggling at me, like a splinter in my mind, as Neo would say, is the piano. I am actually a fairly skilled if nervous pianist. I love to play. I almost never do. Since I have been playing the bassoon and singing in a choir for years now, my piano playing when I DO it, is better and better, and I finally know how to really practice. But I don't play enough. So, here's my deal.

I thought it would be fun to try the Beatles Rock Band game for the Wii when it comes out. Like I have all this free time as a school teacher besides. And I wanted to finish some piano pieces I have in various stages of completion and maybe pick up some new ones. Hence the Five Easy Pieces.

My pact: I have to practice the piano mindfully for 15 minutes (15 minutes of mindful > 30 minutes of goofing around on it, believe me.) Then I get to play the Wii game. I have not come up with a timeframe for the game yet. And no, it doesn't have to be daily, although I will have to schedule it somehow.

The next post will be about the Five Easy Pieces, what they are and what I mean by their being "Five Easy Pieces", but my Resolution 9 comes from the equation outlining the relationship between my piao goals and the Wii Beatles game. And it must be at least the 9th time I have resolved to play the piano more. And who doesn't like a pun. I know I do.