Description

Learning to play musical instruments can be fun. During the Covid lockdown, as a later-in-life amateur “musician”, I took the opportunity to learn how to play multiple instruments, including Western (Piano/Keyboard, Guitar) and Arabic (Oud, Kanun, Iraqi-Santur), utilizing online resources, particularly on YouTube. I will share my journey and progress(hopefully!) in learning these instruments. To expedite the learning process, I will provide the Alphabetical notation music sheets that I have transcribed and color-coded to identify distinct music bars. For more complex melodies, I have developed multiple transpositions(using Excel), to simplify and enable playing on instruments with a limited scale range, such as the Iraqi-Santur. I will share my notes in PDF format for a wide variety of popular classical and “Top of the Pops” melodies(both Western & Arabic), including relevant music sources, references and links. Occasionally Lola, my African grey parrot, singing along.