Moving on to the next phase of my learning, I am now starting to learn an actual song. In this case, it is a simple Spanish song called “Juanita” from the piano self-teaching book I picked up at the thrift store. Employing the Constructivist principle of mediated learning (scaffolding), I am focusing my efforts this time around on learning the left hand part first:
Unlike my experience with learning ukulele, in which I found that my guitar skills were highly, immediately transferable in spite of the fact that the chords, string notes and string order are all very different, playing the piano is too dissimilar to have the same effect. I wonder, if I were to take up a brass instrument, if my old tuba experience from elementary school band would resurface, or if it’s lost forever to the ravages of time? I suppose there’s only one way to find out (perhaps the subject of another inquiry in the future?)
I am finding the aspect of playing separately with each hand a bit daunting, because most of my experience with musical instruments has been playing stringed instruments (guitar, ukulele, violin) on which the hands coordinate to play the same notes. Having to play two different sets of notes may very well confuse my brain…we’ll have to find out next time!