Piano Day 2020
Today, March 28th is Piano Day. Piano Day is a worldwide celebration of the piano every 88th day of the year – because of the number of keys on the instrument being celebrated.
The Piano Day website, pianoday.org says that ‘it doesn’t hurt to celebrate the piano and everything around it: performers, composers, piano builders, tuners, movers and most important, the listener.” which is actually a quote from Nils Frahm who is a German musician, composer, and record producer based in Berlin. I tend to agree with this quote.
Every year in Waterford for the past few years, through Piano Day Waterford there has been a piano in John Roberts Square where people could come and play. Last year there was even a live stream via a camer on the piano, so people could watch live on Facebook. With the current world-wide Corona Virus Lockdown in place there was no choice but to make this an online only event for 2020. Piano Day Waterford requested that people submit videos which would then be shared during the day. I submitted 2 to the Piano Day Waterford event and I did an extra one for my own use on the day.
Now that Piano Day 2020 is almost over and the videos have been shared, I can inlcude here in one place so you can view them. I hope you enjoy. I have done Love of My Life, Forever and a Queen Medley which is based on suggestions which I got from Twitter followers of my account @shanesqueensite.
The songs are introduced and shown below via the videos on YouTube. Enjoy!
Queen Medley
I asked for suggestions via Twitter on songs to include in a Queen Medley. Within 5 days I got 27 suggestions of songs and I then worked on finding songs which were either in the same key or shared a common chord. I was able to then link songs so that I could do a 4 minute Queen Medley. Considering I only had about 2 hours on the Wednesday and recorded it the next morning I think it came out ok.
Love of My Life
I always enjoy playing this song from A Night at the Opera. My version has the usual classic entrance and structure however at the solo I use Brian’s Guitar style solo as I think it fits well and we all know it from the Queen Concerts anyway.
Forever
A beautiful song from A Kind of Magic, Forever is a great song to play. I slightly re-arranged this one also to include those lovely minor chords near the end, Em, Cm, Am, Fm, Dm, Bm, Gm and then back to Em – though not in the version on the album I think it rounds off the song nicely, especially when it resolves through the lovely arpeggio in D before the final E5 chord ends the song. A Masterpiece by Queen.
I really hope you enjoyed these Piano Day songs and hopefully for Piano Day 2021 we will be back doing live performances.
Stay Safe and if you have any Piano Day performances of your own please drop me a line on Twitter @shanesqueensite or drop a comment below.
Coming Soon
As you know Brian May is doing MicroConcerts on Instagram. I am @shanesqueensite on Instagram also but I will be running some MicroConcerts next week. This will be anounced on my facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ShanesQueenSite/ so if you play guitar, bass, sing or play drums please keep an eye out and I would love for as many people to take part as possible.