Category: Teaching (Page 3 of 4)

Saturday was the big Honor’s Concert at the Minneapolis Convention Center.  I ended up having 3 students play in it.  Apparently I was overly excited about going because I ended up getting ready almost an hour before I needed to leave… then I proceeded to just walk around awkwardly waiting for time to pass.  This was the first year I didn’t need to go early to help.  It was a strange feeling to just go as a spectator… I didn’t like it much.  I like feeling useful much more.  But anyway, I did make my rounds and say hi to everyone and I did help run some useless errands for a few people (since I couldn’t help myself from offering to help a little!). Then I walked around until I could find a seat–since I went alone I only needed to find one random unfilled seat–and I finally did.  It was a spectacular seat, too!  Right in the center near the back but up about halfway so I had a straight shot view.

There were two soloist during the concert.  Let me tell you, they were in a league of their own.  Simply stunning.  STUNNING.  The first one was so good I might have forgotten to breathe or swallow for a little bit.  He had the audience of almost 3,500 people captivated into silence.  Total silence.  Even a single cough seemed to blast unnaturally loudly.

It’s such a treat to hear such amazing piano music–and it’s such an inspiration for all those little kids to see another kid (the winner of the first one was still in High School and the second was a College student) performing such amazing music.  🙂

Of course, it’s a treat to see my students on stage too… plus it’s such a formal event that watching the attire is part of the fun too!  It’s fun to see what dresses and colors are popular this year.

Uh Oh.

My piano had an annoying click on the middle E–a very common note to be played in EVERY lesson.  So I finally decided to open the piano lid and see if I could fix it.  I know, I know… it’s never that easy.  I should have known that.  But I looked any way.

Sure enough, I couldn’t figure out what the click was coming from (and neither could Tim–I thought maybe two minds were better than one!) so I closed it back up.  It got kind of stuck as we closed it, but I didn’t think much of it.  So I repositioned all of my decorations on the piano and started playing for fun.  It wasn’t long before I noticed there were a bunch of keys near the low end of the keyboard that weren’t sounding.  Or at least not sounding right.

Sigh.

I took all the stuff BACK off the piano and opened it back up again.

Uh oh.

Now I notice there is a broken hammer head stuck down next to the keys next to it.   WHAT?!  How did that happen!?

Well, apparently there is a trick to closing the piano carefully… that I didn’t do.  You would think that after owning the piano for so many years I wouldn’t have made the mistake… See the piano?  Notice the little leg on the far left?  Ok, that leg holds the lid open…

Right.  Now, when you close the lid you should tuck the leg back up inside and close slowly.  Which I did.

But when I closed it the leg swung back down and well… you can see what happened.  (On a side note, I discovered later that it swung back down because the screw was too loose.  I have since corrected this problem… )

So the piano guy was out here bright and early this morning fixing the problem.  Which actually wasn’t all bad, because the piano was in DIRE need of a good tuning as well, so he was able to do that as well.  I admit I had been putting off the tuning because I wasn’t sure when we were going to be moving and I know I’ll have to get it re-tuned after we move, but it looks like it will be a good chunk of months longer at the LEAST.

So, to recap.  Don’t try to fix a piano yourself.  Be careful to put the leg back up when closing the lid.  Good ultimately came because of having to get it fixed.  🙂

Yippie–it’s FRIDAY night!

This morning was amazing being able to sleep in a bit.  I was even able to function all morning without needing a cup of coffee which hasn’t happened all week.  It was also wonderful to be able to just stay home today without any errands to run or places to be.  Fall is just a very busy time for me… starting next week (for the next month) I have MMTA music seminars on Tuesday mornings.  It’s for the MMTA piano contest music and since I have students in contest now I really feel it’s beneficial to hear the notes the judges will be looking for on every song.  Plus I get to hear a good performance of every song which is always fun.  But it will steal another morning away from my week and I need to line up a sitter to come and watch the kids yet… I’ll be happy when November rolls around and Tim is home again and things have slowed down.

On an amusing note… I had a student come to his first lesson, after having the entire summer off.  Apparently he was quite diligent about logging his minutes during the vacation and had come up with an astonishing total:  2,340 minutes.  😀  I can honestly say I’ve never seen that total.  But there it was, logged in his book.  And I could even see all the little 20 and 30 minute practice sessions recorded in the practice boxes, so I had no reason to doubt him.  After getting through a few books, however, it became apparent that he liked certain songs better than others (um, ONE in particular) so most of his songs were pretty rocky… but the total was still an amusing discovery.

I’m going to take some pictures tomorrow since I noticed I didn’t post any this week.