Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum totally freakin crazy

This is gonna sound wierd. But hey its coming from me.
Decided I wanted to learn carillon. Go watch a player in his cabin. Discover that the keyboard is laid out like a piano. think maybe I need to learn basic piano. Get cheapie keyboard 2 days lator,1st piano lesson 3 days lator.....
so I had to quit wining and get cracking. I have a month to learn where and what the keys are. I am thinking the 2 finger system..like the one I use at the computer. I type with 2 fingers. works for me.
Started with thinking "this cant be that darn hard,I played flute for 6 years."Picked up Tenor Sax later.
Boy I was WRONG.....very wrong. Getting both paws to do anything together is a "you gotta be jokin"experiance. my left hand holds pliers and chain. That is all it really needed to do...Until know...
So here goes,
1st piano lesson. /find the Cs and the Gs discover that the 2 finger system is unacceptable to the piano teacher. very unacceptable. I told him I was just there to learn the keys and thier corresponding notes. Not to actually learn the play the freakin thing. At this point I had ZERO interest in piano...
2nd piano lesson discover that I really do not know how to read treble clef. I just learned a given note was a given finger posisiton. we spend most of lesson going thru the treble clef. Piano teacher told me about flash cards..
3 lesson. had treble down...now to work on the idea of making the hands actually do something with the keys

4the lessons jingle bells...drove me nuts and took 2 weeks. Heck I learned toccatta and fugue in dminor in that amount of time on flute 20 years ago....jees louise got discusted and got some sheet music other than the boring alfred book...Get a Styx book and mess around a bit.

5 th lesson...other small stuff,
missed a week
6 lesson part of "When the Saints"


silly side project learning Styx's come sail way vocal line..picked out with right hand. Had fun for a while and mess aouund with the Styx book to the point of not doing as much with my actual lesson from the teacher. Starting to think "Maybe the piano stuff isnt to bad this is kind of neat and even if the carillon thing doesnt work out for whatever reason I have this and may continue.
Lesson 7 comes this monday other part of Saints I hope.


Carillon lessons........MAN I MUST ME NUTZ REAL NUTZ
1st off, I cant sightread worth a spit!!!
2 off I really do not like making a mistake where ANYONE can hear it.....and did I mention I can't sightread..I think I woud rather go to the dentist.

Just in case you did not know. carillons are loud. VERY LOUD. as in heard from a few blocks depending on how tall the tower is.
when i see frank next I am gonna beat him...I totally blame his happy tail for all this. be carefull what you tell a tired rennie after a long show season.
Lesson one
"Rule 1 the keyboard is big
Rule 2 the keyboard is far BIGGER when its YOUR hands on the batons. the "oh my god factor really kicks in. (what am I doing here????i have to pee)sheer terror....

key id as in find the gs and the cs. can you show me the cs and gs....no problem..almost no problem a few mistakes but considering I could not find midlle c from a hole in the ground dec 4...not to bad...teacher spent a while explaining the "wrist flick"that one uses and showed me how to hold my paws...
then it came time to actauly PLAY the thing.
remember this puppy is LOUD. Very loud. I had my paw on the 1st note. Ok so far. Now its time to actually hit the baton. brain fart. "between the I cant believe I am actually doing this and the oh my god factor...I froze. EEEEKKKKK "amost hit the "never mind I think I am gonna rethink this whole equation.
after a bit of the teacher being very patient with me we did
a few lines of carillon exercises a lot like the simple stuff in basic piano books. He was nice and cool enough to play the lines with me. At least for the 1st time for each.
The keyboard at this tower required you to actually really hit the batons. I am thinking the llighter the touch.the quieter the playing...less mistakes heard from miles away.
end of lesson. I was feelling estatic..but my paws hurt...drove home very happy...mew mew mew

Lesson 2 same exercises. this time on a keyboard that is a much lighter touch. Deffernt tower. Teacher spends a while trying to get the practice keyboard to work. It just does not want to speak to us. We get thru a few more lines of exercises. I seem to not see the Es.....anywhere....its not like I am blind or anything...just did not see the Es....feeling stupid. He says you really dont like Es....?We do the exercises again. The he makes me sightread...remember I hate sightreading and wonder what gods I ****ed off in my last life that require me to do that...kind of like getting up in the way to early in the morning feeling. I ask "do we really have to go there?" He said Yes...He was kind enough to play the piece with me but we dont get to far. He plays some real cool stuff.....and sighreads a piece in front of me.

I have lesson 3 this week hopefully on Thursday of this week.
I get to touch paradise again!!!!!!!!happy happy kitty Boyfriend says "I am glad you found something to keep you out of trouble:

Touching heaven..........


Cindy

What is a carillon and what is a tower?

I feel your pain. If God wanted me to use both hands to play the piano, he'd have given me two brains.

I also did not know what a carillon was. Looked it up, and wow. Those look tough, although I like the idea of playing with fists (I have been known to use that method with my keyboard).

I really enjoyed your post, Cindy. Made my morning.

Do you have a carillon at home to practice? Or maybe a "practice board". I guess I do not see how it and keyboards relate, other than it's music uses the same staffs (although on 3 or 4 staffs). I guess that's enough for starters.

Man, I do like the idea of playing with fists....

EDIT - here's an MP3 of one playing "O Canada"..

http://amicus.collectionscanada.ca/...1&lvl=1&coll=24&itm=31386781

Good idea to look it up. That's a big instrument!

There is a "portable" carillon that plays at the Colorado Renaissance Festival just south of the Denver area each summer. That is one cool instrument. Here's a couple of pictures so you can see what a travelling one looks like:







Go to www.castinbronze.com for more information about this instrument and it's player.

Carol of the Bells and O'Fortuna are fantastic on this instrument. I think he plays along with an accompianment track at the Ren Fest.

In the one Cindy is talking about, the bells are in a tower and the keyboard is hidden.

Rich

It looks like the Spanish Inquisition finds an outlet...

Do they make a digital one?

Ya made me look, Mark...

I do have a carillon voice on my digital (voice 171 - no wonder I never saw it...)

Not really what you meant, but there it is..

Not too many can argue the "acoustic" version is just as convenient as it does not come with pedals to quite it down....

I got my B.A. at UC Riverside, which has a carillon tower. I have many many good memories of walking across campus late on a warm afternoon (Riverside is in the lower desert and is HOT most of the time), listening to the carillon tower sprinkling the beautiful sounds of bells across the skies amidst the rays of a glorious sunset (Riverside had, at that time, the highest smog levels in the country, courtesy of L.A.).

Great story, Cindy.

http://www.chimes.cornell.edu/sounds.html Here is another school with wonderful chimes. Enjoy.

http://www.midland.edu/directories/maps/carillon.php

One of the schools I attended has a carillon as well. It is quite beautiful to listen to. Unfortunately, there are no sound clips that I can find on the site.

Here is a Christmas carol performed on the 56-bell Kniker Carillon atop the Main Building at the University of Texas in Austin:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QGmBFpGeW5Q

mike

My piano teacher's husband was the carillon player at the college I attended, 2000 miles from here, when I was there, though we did not meet each other until 10 years later after we had all moved to PA. I was so impressed when I found out he was the one I had heard playing the concert every day at noon. What an instrument!

double post somehow.

Cindy, wonderful story you made me laugh so hard. I think you have a knack for being a comedian as well.

My parents live in Sebring Fl and there is a carillon tower (Bok TOwer)that we visited some years ago. It was really marvellous. The bells were so uplifting and tranquil at the same time.

http://www.boksanctuary.org/

Good luck with your new hobby it sounds like so much fun.

It looks like a ninja is playing the carillon in that first picture! Awesome!

I never knew wat a carillon was. Thanks for educating me. I loved your story.

A practice keyboard has become available to me at a different installation!!!!Happy kitty!!!!However after I did the darn errends I had to do today it was to late to go there unless I wanted the delight of cross town traffic!!!!!I had my piano lesson this am and actually MADE PROGRESS.
Practice keyboards are not like the keyboards on a piano. The you tube videos show you an idea. I know of a player in Europe that his his own practice keyboard at home but its very uncommon. The practice ones are as large as the "live"ones.

They are labor intensive to make and take up as much space as some small grand pianos.
If I stick with this insanity for a while,my dad does woodwork. I may have a long beg session with him.
We are going to Bok Tower during the run of the Florida show I am doing...may help the 6 weeks of withdrawal while I am not home.
I also get the fun of looking for a piano teacher in Fort Lauderdale because the idea of takinig 6 weeks off of keyboard is NOT a good idea for a rank beginner like me.