Episode 42 – Devi Mamak

G’day, everyone. I’m David Reidy; welcome to Piano, finally, a podcast by an old bloke who is getting around to learning the piano, finally.

[Crab Canon]

Welcome

Welcome to show forty-two. Thank you very much for listening. If this is your first time hearing the podcast, I hope you enjoy the episode. If you’ve been here before, then thanks for coming back. Let me know if you’re learning the piano or another musical instrument and how you’re going with it. You can contact me at david@pianofinally.show.

Once again, I’m preparing the episode on Saturday; I’m going to see Daniil Trifonov this evening at the Opera House, I’ll include a report on the concert in next week’s show. The end of the first school term is rapidly approaching, which means reporting and exam marking. That’s well underway and will continue for the next few weeks, and the interschool debating competition starts again on Wednesday, so practising on Wednesdays is going to have to go on hold for a bit.

Along with Devi, I have chosen the next lot of pieces to learn; they are all grade one level from the AMEB Piano for Leisure series and the ABRSM Rock School book. I’ll talk about them in more detail in the next episode when I’ve had a chance to get a little more familiar with them.

This week’s episode will follow a different form from usual. This week sees the podcast’s first interview, and so I’m dropping the usual reviews and the essay. I’m going to try to get some more interviews that are relevant to adult learning in the coming months, and I’ve reached out to a few places to see what can be arranged. The normal podcast format will return next week.

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YouTube -

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Interview – Devi Mamak

As I teased in the last episode, the podcast’s first interview is with someone I have mentioned a number of times. It’s the person who is guiding me on my piano learning journey: my piano teacher, Devi Mamak. I’ll include Devi’s contact details in the show notes if you’d like to catch up with her work online.

And so, without further ado, here’s the interview I recorded with Devi at her piano studio earlier in the week.

[Interview]

A big thank you to Devi for taking the time to speak with me after a day of teaching. If you’d like to see some of Devi’s music, there is a link to her website in the show notes; you can also find her on YouTube.

https://caravandancecompany.com.au/devi-mamak/

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Review -

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Closing

If you’d like to contact me, email is the best way. david@pianofinally.show is my email address, and the show’s website is at www.pianofinally.show. In both cases, pianofinally is all one word.

Next week’s episode will be back to the normal format, I’ll go through how we chose the next four pieces to learn over the coming months - you might hear some of them in the progress section. And I’ll look in depth at the process I go through to maximise my chances of getting a productive practice session done.

 And so, until the next episode, I hope your piano stays in tune and you enjoy your time at the keys.

[Crab Canon]

Progress

I’ve now got three of the four pieces in the refining stage of practice. That doesn’t mean they are perfect yet, but they don’t need the intensive work each session that the last, Blackout Blues, still needs. So this week, I’ll include those three: the Fritz Spinder Canon, the Turk Bagatelle in F and Andrew Craggs’ Afternoon Snooze. In each case, I’ll include the first take and not the best of three tries.

All the pieces were played using the Kawai NV10 as the keyboard and Pianoteq 8 running on the M4 Pro Mac mini, emulating the Shiguru Kawai SK-EX in Heroic mode.

[Practice pieces]