B Minor Waltz

Welcome back to Tea with Liya! It seems like only a couple days since May started. In this post, I'm playing the song "B Minor Waltz" composed by Bill Evans. I also have some things to say about strengths and weaknesses. I hope you enjoy the song!


Listen to the song here
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Playing a song off the sheet music without listening to it is something I don't do that often.

While jazz teachers usually emphasize the importance of playing by ear, they also know that reading skills are important. "What are you going to do," one might say, "when you volunteer to perform with a band this Friday, and they put a song in front of you that you've never heard before? You'd have to know how to read the notes."

For some players, learning a song by listening to it is hard. For others, learning it by reading the notes is hard. They both want to capitalize on their strengths since they know that it's a lot easier to get better at those. However, they know that working on their weaknesses is just as important.

So then comes the question: should you capitalize on your strengths or your weaknesses? If you focus only on your strengths, then you'll have some things you're really good at, but your skills won't be balanced. If you focus only on your weaknesses, then you might be able to get them to a point where they're not weaknesses anymore. However, it's a lot easier to get frustrated with those.

I suppose you would need a balance - even for something that's inherently unbalanced, like strengths and weaknesses. You keep learning songs by ear so that you can keep up your skill with that, but you also take some time to learn songs by reading the notes.

It might just come down to not putting all your eggs in one basket. Don't always focus on your strengths, but don't always focus on your weaknesses, either. When you put too much into one, the other becomes empty.

Here's something else you can say: no matter how good you are at something right now, there is always an opportunity to improve. If there wasn't, there would be no point in capitalizing on your strengths.

I learned this song off the sheet music, but right now I'm starting to learn another one by ear. You always need a bit of both.

Keep filling your teacup with music!

~Liya