I think I just found my dream gadget. It's a little bit out of my price range, but it would shave off $80,000 dollars! That's the pitch I'd sell to anyone I'd try to convince to buy this, though I have sneaking suspicion that someone will be me.

I'm going to take the plunge and audition for piano lessons at UIUC. The requirements are:

1. All major and harmonic minor scales in four octaves.
2. At least one composition by J.S. Bach (e.g., Two- or Three-part Inventions, Preludes and Fugues, etc.).
3. At least one movement from a sonata by Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven.
4. At least one composition from a composer of the Romantic period or 20th century.
5. Harmonization of a familiar melody to be selected by the audition committee.
6. Sight reading.

• Scales are to be played from memory. Candidates for the major in piano performance or piano pedagogy are required to play all audition repertoire from memory. All other piano candidates are required to play one composition by memory.

I thought maybe if I publicly declared that I was going to audition for lessons, I'd be more dedicated to preparing. I'm designing my audition programme right now. This is what I have so far.

1. I haven't practiced my scales yet but I've done these scales before, and at least there's no speed requirement, and I don't even have to do the melodic minor!
2. I do have a Prelude by Bach, but the accompanying Fugue is in bad shape. They're from the "Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2", Prelude and Fugue No. 20 in A minor.
3. There was the sonata that I really love by Beethoven, Sonata No. 27 Op. 90 E minor, movement 1. There are several difficult parts though, because you're required to play ranges larger than octaves very quickly. It will require much dedication. There's another option though, I just ran across this other Beethoven Sonata that I blogged about in a previous post. It doesn't seem so difficult, and is quite pretty. Maybe not as impressive though?
4. The Romantic period is my favourite. I have the Raindrop Prelude by Chopin (Prelude No. 15 in D-flat) that won't take me hard to bring back up. I also have Gymnopedia No 1 by Erik Satie, one of my all time favourite pieces to play.
5. I'm possibly a little worried about this harmonization...but won't worry about it right now.
6. Sight reading...also worried about this. I'll have to work on it too.

So you can see I have my work cut out for me, especially since I'll be working on a paper this summer and will be getting back into shape for modern dance class in the fall. Any suggestions?

I heard a Beethoven Sonata yesterday that I really liked and wanted to learn: Sonata No. 8 "Pathetique". Since this piece is in public domain, I decided to return to a wonderful site a found a few years ago, IMSLP. It's run by a student and has sheet music that's in public domain. To my dismay, the site was taken down last October!! The more I read about why it was taken down, and this poor student's dilemma, the more disappointed/distressed/dismayed I became.

Luckily, I found another site, Mutopia. I just want to learn to play a piece that I found a connection to...what's so wrong about getting some sheet music freely online? This "culture of ownership" [see Molly Wood's blog] really needs to end.