The little time I get to practice (and just play) these days is mostly fun, yes.  In fact, someone wants to do a piano duet of one of Mannheim Steamroller's songs for our Christmas program at church.  At first it seemed pretty tough, but it's coming along now, so that feels good. :)  

Heh. Best way to learn a tune. An impending live gig. I've had to learn entire set lists with a week's notice. Grueling but rewarding. Have fun. :-)

:)  I can't imagine learning a whole set in a week...well, not memorized 7 page pieces anyway.  :)

Yeah... I'm a little... how shall we say... crazy. :-p

It usually all had to be done by ear as well. It was hard but I'm a better musician for it.

Crazy works too.  :)

I'm so glad I had to learn to play by ear several years ago.  I'm still not as good at it as I could be, but at least I can sometimes.  Still ticks me off that some piano players don't teach their students to do that, but that's another story.  

Training your ear to recognize the modes of the Major scale helps immensely with being able to pick stuff up by ear. Then after that's covered moving on to the modes harmonic and melodic minor covers up much of the other gaps. Then it's just symmetrical and foreign scales really to cover the very small remainder. 

Before I learned all that crap I painstakingly taught myself tunes and solos through trial and error. Now I can pick out the modal patterns or chords or whatever for each part of a song and know where everything should be in the grand scheme of things. Then it all falls into place much easier. Even if it's a flowing song that doesn't follow a key once a chord is established the entire structure for that moment in the song is right there ready to be solved.

Pretty cool stuff.

So true!  I've got the basics down but still have far to go.  I find I can find most intervals...unless I'm in the middle of a song and trying to find one!     But like you said, you start doing things naturally, and that's cool.  What started this whole thing, though, is your post about exercising and then being able to try new things. Ior something like that...)  That sounds interesting.  

You seem to know what's going on. It's just a matter of spending time doing it and playing around with ideas. Not always an easy task what with the going's on of life and what not. I've just had long stretches of time where I was able to focus my attention solely on the nerdier aspects of music. Without that I wouldn't have as much of a grasp on things as I do. That has all come at a very steep price but it keeps me reasonably sane at this point. Don't have much else going on so I just keep getting dorkier. ;-) 

I can't even imagine having time to focus on any one particular thing at this time.  I can't figure out if the diversity is enough to keep me sane or is actually contributing to the insanity.  :)  I suppose it does keep me off the sidewalk though.  :) 

Beepster

 Gonna be quite the struggle getting my hands to behave properly though after 20 years of guitar playing. It's VERY difficult for me to play two independent parts with each hand because of how on guitar the right and left hands work in constant unison. 

You should take up classical guitar! Nothing teaches you hand and finger independence like a Bach fugue that has 3 or 4 independent parts. The "secret" behind playing independent parts is to sight read them. That's why I recommended taking up classical guitar - all the parts are on one stave. Your eye is tracking left to right and playing the notes as they fall. Sometimes you're playing notes together, other times you're playing notes in succession. The point is, as you're reading and playing, it doesn't feel like you're playing independent parts. It just feels like you're tracking a succession of notes with your eye and playing them in time. I think a lot of people think that it involves splitting your brain into multiple parts and multitasking....it doesn't. 

I actually learned to play independent parts by fingerpicking ragtime guitar. I wrote a walking bassline and a melody, and couldn't wrap my head around playing both at the same time until I realized that you have to think of it as one part, and which order the notes fall when you consolidate the parts into one.