New Year, new skills!

One of my New Year resolutions is to practise for half an hour first thing each day this year, divided between ear training and "free" piano playing, playing from sheet music, and voice training.

New Year is also a time when there is quite a lot of familiar, not very difficult (and also out-of-copyright) music still knocking about from Christmas. I reckon you could devise an entire course of music training based solely on Christmas music - starting with the easy, Grade-1 recorder stuff like "Away in a Manger" and working up to the jazzier, more sophisticated "Christmas Song". (Though of course you could just jazz up "Away in a Manger".)

For now, I'm using the easy ones to practise anticipating intervals and adding basic left-hand accompaniments. I might even sing along too! Then, via sites like about.com, I'm comparing others' arrangements, to see how they've made the songs more interesting.

What is this?

I want to be a competent musician (particularly on the piano) and singer. Unfortunately I have no real aptitude for either. But I'm not going to take this lying down!

We all start out possessing some aptitudes and lacking others, but most of those we lack, we can make up for - with the right teacher, materials, and incentives. I just never found these for music - and I think that's because a lot of what's available isn't very good.

However there's now so much out there on the web that I figure with a bit of persistence even I can use the best of it to acquire a basic level of musicianship. Being a skinflint though, I'm determined to only use free materials!

And though I'm doing this principally for my own interest and motivation, who knows, I might in some small way make things easier for someone else. Hence this blog.

Contributions, even criticisms, are welcome!