Feb 24 (Var 5 + Bonus Dragon Warrior!)

I'm sorry.

Yesterday I did not record. I feel terrible about it - but I had a good reason! I had a bit to drink before I remembered to practice and what I was playing was not worth recording. So as penance today, I recorded a bit of that Dragon Warrior castle theme I mentioned the other day! 2 for 1!

Feb 22 (Var 5)

I have the feeling that I make less and less progress as the week goes on, then I get it all done on the weekend. Today's practice session felt like treading water. I was playing the notes, but I wasn't *practicing*, somehow. I kept putting off doing the recording, because I don't feel any better than I did this morning, and that depresses me. Oh well; here's to the weekend!

Feb 21 (Var 5)

Good progress today. This is the third quarter of the variation, and I picked it up a little faster than either quarter of the first half. But the fourth quarter - it's a mess. I can't sightread it. The clefs are constantly changing, the melody is constantly switching hands, and I get very very frustrated. So we'll see how that goes! Working on the end of this piece might be the first time a bad word makes it into a recording...

Here's 8 measures!

Feb 20 (Var 5)

There's a game for the NES called Dragon Warrior. I had a copy of this game when I was a kid. I played it a lot. It was a genuinely excellent game. But that's not why I mention it here, of course! I mention it because of the music in that game.

I always suspected that whoever wrote the Dragon Warrior soundtrack was inspired by Bach. Today, I found proof! Have a look at this photograph:

These 9 notes are encoded so deeply in my auditory neurons that after I played this the first time I stopped dead. I know it doesn't look like much, but here's what it reminded me of:

Do you get it? Can you get it? It's a work of genius, seriously. There was an incredible amount of really really good music in those old video games, more than there was any right to be. 

OK, so I have two maxims for you today. Number one: Constraints breed Creativity. The Dragon Warrior castle theme is a great example of that. The NES just wasn't capable of realistic audio; what it could do was beeps and bloops and noise. Seriously, check it out: famitracker.com. But great art comes from working within limitations, whether they're self-imposed or exogenous. And I guess the NES was just limiting enough, but had enough capability, that people managed to wring some beautiful sounds out of it.

Maxim number 2: the 80-20 rule. In any project, the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. I should have kept that in mind when I told you two more days! I moved up by just 4bpm tonight. I'm finding that my practice sessions are so much more productive when I'm well fed and well rested. And I've been skipping lunch lately...

Feb 19 (Var 5)

OK, I'm close enough to set a target: 100 bpm. I can play the beginning of this variation fast enough to really bring out the melody (which is in the jumping right hand, recall). The second half of this first half feels like it's speeding up, I guess just due to its difficulty, so I'm not there yet all the way through. By the way - I think I said 120 bpm yesterday. That was a lie; the beat is on a quarter here but I was putting the beat on the 8th, so I was actually playing 60 yesterday. Today is 76, and that's all the way through without any major errors. At this rate I'll have the first half in 2 more days. In the meantime, I guess I need to start looking at the second half, which will almost certainly be harder than the first.

Feb 17 & 18 (Var 5)

Hello reader. I missed you. Sorry about yesterday - I recorded (check the "date uploaded" on the video for proof) but totally forgot to post. So today is a double whammy! Here's yesterday (it's not very good):


And here's today! New camera angle, so you can see just how much my hands are mixed up with each other. This might be the first variation that explicitly tells you to use two keyboards; it's certainly the first time I've really wished I could. This one will be hard to play fast, that's for sure. Right now I'm solid at 120; let's watch that number climb together!