I made it to CVS and back after breakfast, and I am now hanging out with Bev and Dave while Bev shows us photos of the house she lost to repossession. We all have stories as to how we ended up in the shelter. It’s a depressing place to be, but it is nice to be able to find people who understand my predicament and don’t judge or feel guilty. Being homeless can be humiliating, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, hanging out here with others in the same state as me is rather relaxing to a certain extent. At least I don’t feel the need to explain myself and my predicament. Everyone here is homeless.

In fact, I have been talking to people and helping Bev carry her bags out to the curb, and I haven’t been freewriting as I should when I work on this blog. Freewriting is meant to be fast and loose, but I have started and stopped a few times since I started this post. People have cleared out now, though, So I should be able to plow ahead.

…and no sooner do I write that last sentence than I run out of steam. Let me write some about musical practice. That usually gets me going.

I lost all my volumes of Bartok’s Mikrokosmos when I moved out of my apartment, but I found it online as a free PDF file. I can’t wait until I have a place to set up my piano again so I can get in some practice. In fact, I want to take some piano lessons when I can. If I get a small apartment with some kind of an income I would like to take some lessons at the Community Music School of Springfield. I just need someone to teach me functional piano. In fact, let me break it down a bit.

  • Common chord voicings and chord progressions: I need to be able to harmonize melodies and play simple accompaniments. I wouldn’t mind learning some riffs and common accompaniments.
  • Reading: I just need to be able to read my way through simple piano pieces, but I should aspire to play things that are increasingly more complex. This is where Mikrokosmos would come in handy.
  • Score reading: I don’t know why this should be separate from reading, but it does involve being able to sight transpose and read in different clefs. It also involves writing out piano reductions that I can play, kind of like I did for Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun at Berklee. There I was able to sort out the harmonies of the opening section, played against the repeated melodic line.
  • Sight singing: This is something that is best done with a piano for reference, especially since I would like to be able to teach musicianship at some point. In fact, this is the shiznit, for sure.

I hit 500 words now. Let me upload this post and move on with my day.