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Theres the one pager wi repeats which I like. They still take time, after which you concentration goes particularly after repeated . . .repeats! Hardly surprising.

The longer harder ones are for the long hard haul. Like months. Same bloody song, its purgatory at times but you wont let go. Like a dog with a bone. . .(headphones are a must for other peoples sanity).. .the temperature rises, you seriously wonder if youre doing yourself any favours, until you get there. Sort of. Sometimes you doubt you will, but you do. Then you record.

You start again with another one. Another war of attrition, without which the job wont get done.

And do you maintain the previous?

How can you? Theres too many. . .

Welcome to the music that never ends!

Sense of achievement? Yes.

Enjoyment? Hmmmm, reckon so in a masochistic way.

Involvement? Very much. But I never find it easy.

But theres a time to come up for air. Or beer.

It was never this hard when I did it for money.

But I never learned much then. . . .

Have fun!

You know ... that is exactly what I think has driven me away from classical music and into jazz, cocktail piano.

Now, I do not seem to feel that issue of trying to "remember" exactly which keys to press.

I learn chord progressions and thirds, sevenths, ninths, etc ... and I do not always play things EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. And I can make mistakes and it is not the end of the world.

I may spend considerable time with a piece but it just does not seem so monotonous.


I enjoy things more.

spot on although sometimes I don't even make it to the recording stage but have still had to go through all the pain and suffering.

Hey Up Peter!

As a former pro player, do you have any tips we can use for getting a couple of hours of music memorised for a performance?

Most tunes I consider to be here today and forgotten tomorrow, so I just learn the melody and flesh it out with root-5th, root octaves, etc. Not great, but people recognise it and it is probably better than what they could do.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Cheers

Nick

Hi Nick! I understand exactly what youre saying. I got by with up to 4 hours of playing by a similar method to yours. Im not a theory guy, nor the cleverest but 4ths, 5ths, 9ths etc are all good to go. Play around with different chords to give a different flavour, "Danny Boy" is a good example of a song being pulled around by many different people sympathetically and effectively.
I admire guys who do jazz, but cant really get into it. So I just meander away from the tune somewhat to kill time. . .and prevent repeats.

Have fun!