Solfeggietto by CPE Bach
Op 740 No 31 The Passing Under of the Thumb by Carl Czerny
Rei Do Gado (On The) by Derek Hanusch
Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars by Antonio Carlos Jobim
Yes, Blockchords.com is still under construction. But more than that, my chops have still been under construction. I've taken up a second instrument, the guitar, and it has provided me with a wealth of new perspectives and techniques that I've been sorting through.
I do not post these videos to demonstrate that I am "good" at playing guitar. Strictly speaking, I doubt that I am very good at playing guitar at all. I have only been playing guitar since the late summer of 2009 and it has been very difficult and challenging. I didn't have that much natural talent on the piano, and I had even less on the guitar.
The only reason I've been able to stick to the guitar and make the very personally satisfying progress that I have made is b/c I have a very long history of studying harmony, hence the name of the website.
Rather, the reason I have posted these videos is to show people who have known me, and people I might yet know, something new that I enjoy. If you have known me in the past, then no doubt you knew that I had some idea that I was going to be a musician, and specifically that I play piano. Well, unfortunately I really was lacking in department of natural musical talent. All I really had a knack for being passionate & patient about building a system, harmony in particular.
So, some time ago I realized that if I was ever going to seriously work toward my dreams then I was going to have to realize that I had made a good effort but I was going to have to start over from square one. I was going to have to allow the part of me that told myself that I was a "good" musician to die.
Now, I still play piano & love it, I still study harmony & love it, but I also play guitar & I love that too.
And so now I have been blessed with enough experience such that I can see my chops as they are and I can find much about them that I like. I even find much that I want to share, and that I will share.
But, like Blockchords.com my chops are still under construction. There are two separate projects that I am working on generally that I expect to be taking around soon, certainly by the summer. These songs in this preview are not exactly representative.
The first two, the CPE Bach piece and the Czerny etude are actually written for the piano and I have arranged them for guitar. I left very little out the Bach. In the Czerny etude, I have basically just arranged the right hand part of the theme. I have since learned the rest of the etude and I may record that if I decide to. They are just two of the many pieces that I use to warm up, not really how I normally play.
The third song is an original that I wrote that was somewhat inspired by a solo piano gig I recently played at the restaurant of the same name downtown. I have a couple different arrangements of it that I do with different instruments, multiple instruments, so forth and so on, but this is mostly what I've settled on for the solo guitar arrangement.
The fourth song is a standard that I recorded last November on piano and never posted on blockchords.com and thought I'd include to round out the set.
I know the quality of the videos are pretty bad. Well as I have said that I have begun again at square one with my musical chops (as I have actually many times now) I have still resigned myself all these years just to studying and I haven't really begun to put a bunch of resources together along these lines. That's coming up. :)
- Derek Hanusch
blockchords.com
