keyboard class Archives - Page 2 of 2

23 March 2010

Rough Days of Blessing

Jim Ministry glimpses, Prayer and Praise 0

Yesterday was a rough day. Both Shari and I were not feeling at all well. And we were concerned about sick friends, such as our friend Miguel whom I mentioned on Twitter. Challenges with the niños. And yet, God still has ways of blessing us.

I woke up feeling worse than usual, but managed to get ready for an event at Hannah’s school. Yesterday I was to accompany some of the classes on keyboard, while they sang the state and national anthems.

As I was leaving the house, I somehow (!) slammed my finger in our front door – right hand, middle finger.

Right away, I rushed in and got an icepack, holding my now swelling, throbbing finger in the ice all the way to the school. Which was a longer trip than usual – I took a wrong turn and got lost in a residential maze.

But – praise the Lord – the finger was all right when it came time to play, and everything seemed to go all right. The children did great!

Afterwards, in fact, a couple of teens came up to me, asking if I taught keyboard. Turns out one of them lives in Jesús María, and he and his sister are both interested in learning keyboard. Could be, if I do the class again, that I’ll have some new students.

Overall, I’ve had some good times at Hannah’s school, and I’m now recognized by name by quite a few of the students and faculty.

I managed to revive enough to do a keyboard class in the evening, which was fun as usual. It was the last class, although we have a practice on Thursday for our big event on Friday.

It’s been quite a run, those classes – and now I have a good set of material to work from if I teach the class again.

Shari was, of course, on the run all day, but I finally saw her briefly in the evening. We traded off and she left for a surprise birthday party for our friend Aurora. I helped some more with the kids’ homework, cleaned up a few things, did some other work I needed to get done, and crashed.

Challenging days – but in the middle of it all, good times with lots of people, and God’s grace most of all.

22 February 2010

Keyboard Class Update

Jim Mexico, Ministry glimpses, Video Blogs 0

Tonight we had week 4 and week 5 of our keyboard classes.

Last week I was sick, so we crammed two weeks into one today. Which was a bit of a challenge, because it cut down on the much-needed practice time. But I think it went well.

The student count has been somewhat erratic, but we had 6 students tonight and a host of people "auditing".

This week we talked about pedals and chord inversions, and then tried putting everything into practice. One of the songs we’ve been talking about from the beginning is México Lindo y Querido, a national classic (sometimes called the country’s second national anthem).

Here’s the classic rendition of the classic song. It’s brilliant in more ways than one. The singer is one of Mexico’s most famous singers/actors, Jorge Alberto Negrete Moreno (1911-1953). Obviously you’ll only get so much out of it if you don’t know Spanish, but here’s a rough translation of the chorus:

Beautiful and beloved Mexico
Should I die far from you
Let them say that I’m asleep
And bring me back here(see a full translation here)

25 January 2010

Keyboard Class… part 1

Jim Mexico, Ministry glimpses, Video Blogs 0

Tonight we made it through the first keyboard (piano) class without any deaths or major injuries. There were a handful of students, and a few added lookers-on… it was fun.

We only have 9 weeks. Today was mostly theory; next week we’ll be getting more into actually playing.

I played a few examples of different kinds of music – different types of scales – even some microtonal music. Some music from the UK, some Canadian music, and a whole lotta Mexican music. 😉

Here’s some piano playing for you – one of the songs I used this afternoon as an example. I expect all my students to be doing this after 9 weeks. All right, maybe not quite….

This is a song played by the composer. The composer is Mexican Consuelo Velázquez Torres, and the song is Bésame Mucho….