Hi,

Im playing for about a year now and have lessons.

Today at lesson I played a bit (yann tiersen)
competine du autre ete le apres midi.

My teacher told me he found my playing
great and that i can make such big improvement in a short time.

Anyway it seems to me that my main problem is with the the rhythm.

I just start playing faster or slower after a

while in some music pieces. Do any of you have the same?

What else do you guys and girls have trouble with?

Also one question.

when there's a 4/4 on the sheet you have to just hit a note when the Metronome gives a tick (when there's 4, 1 count notes)

but what if its 4/3 and 3 notes do you have to play 3 notes over 4 counts or u just count to 3 and count 1 for each note you play?

The thing that is giving me the most trouble is the ornamentation in the Bach pieces. Example, Little Prelude #5, which I love...lots of fun ornamentation in there, but man, it's hard to get that stuff right....

- trills and other ornaments
- evenness in fast passages
- sight-reading
- freeing my hands/arms/body of unneccessary tension
- and with regard to practice: forcing myself to play sloooowly at first

These are my "favourites". Of course, every piece surprises me with a new "worst problem" ....

With regard to your question - - what do you mean by "4/3" - is it 3/4 as the main time signature (as in a waltz)? In that case, it is still one metronome click per quarter note, and after three clicks, a new bar starts.

I still don't have the finger dexterity to do trills and ornaments without them sounding "attempted."

My current challenge is evening the tone between both hands, since the right is significantly stronger than the left. (So the left wants to compensate by banging harder and more unevenly.)

Anything involving melody with the right-hand pinkie. It is improving but it is still weak.

are u guys sure u are beginners ? ''thrills'' are usually in hard pieces aint it so :p

Ornaments are a stumbling block for me too, especially now I've really started to get into Bach's music. Saying that, I think that my biggest problem at the moment is tension, especially my upper back. I'm working on it, but it can really make you tire quickly if you're not careful.

Euphonatrix got most covered, I guess. Going out of tempo is a normal problem. Try to control your emotions while playing, listen to yourself while you play.

I too am not found of baroque ornaments, though they surely sound wonderful. It's just playing them that is very tough... though I'm having some success here by playing trills with just the tip of finger barely touching the keys. I guess playing ornaments lightly is the way to go.

While you shouldn't play with it all the time, a metronome can help to correct/check the tempo.

Trills? I've been with the same teacher for 5 years and we still don't worry about them a whole lot.... Learn the piece without first and when you are comfortable with it, add the trills.

hmm why shouldn't i play with metronome all the time?

Relic,

There are a lot of good reasons. A good book on technique that a lot of us on the forum refer to is Chang's Fundamentals of Piano Practice.
http://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm

- you want to reinforce and train your "inner metronome."
- you want to train yourself to count.
- listening to the beats of a metronome for extended periods can cause your mind to play tricks and you end up not hearing the metronome or hear it at the wrong time.
- when you are trying to increase speed, Chang states that constant practice with a metronome helps reinforce speed walls. He recommends that you set the tempo, pracice without the metronome, increase the tempo and check, then practice again without the metronome

Rich

Well, to start with, it's not a good look if you have to play in public with a metronome

If you get very good at it and can keep very close time with the metronome, your playing may take on a robotic, mechanical feeling. Real music breathes a little, slowing down here, speeding up there, sometimes almost imperceptibly. Lots of metronome use tends to stifle that -- so is generally regarded as a Bad Thing.

While your tempo is wonky, use the metronome as much as you need. But eventually plan on playing the finished piece without the metronome.

My stumbling blocks?
-- remembering accidentals
-- playing consistently
-- increasing speed without sacrificing accuracy

Another doozy -- losing my place in the bar, so I play the melody in the right hand and skip foward half a measure in the left. Totally aggravating.

-- susi

My biggest stumbling block is with pieces that require me to look at my hands for jumps. I tend to memorize these quickly and then never look at the score. It's embarassing when my teacher asks me to "pick it up from here..." and I react like I've never seen the piece before.....

If it's a piece that I can play without checking my hands then I'll continue to follow (depend on) the score which prevents me from memorizing it securely....

My biggest problem seems to be that my left hand is stupid! The right seems reasonably intelligent, but that left... Seriously, I think the problem is that I am right handed and so that hand is used to "doing stuff" where the left is not. And that makes for very uneven playing at times- either the left lags behind or is off on dynamics, or I overcompensate and BANG with the left. My teacher has me working on a couple pieces that require more control of both hands to be played well and some exercises for control, also.

And speed- I can't seem to play things fast. I get to a certain speed and I just cannot go any faster, no matter what I try. So, again at my teacher's suggestion, out comes the metronome to check speed and slowly increase. But that can, as stated above, give too much of a mechanical feel to my playing.

*sigh* Sometimes, I do wish all this stuff wasn't so *hard*!

This is a big problem for me, too, Sandy. I believe that by not looking at the music after thinking I have a passage memorized, there is a section of my memory that doesn't know the notes and I keep practicing my mistakes. Even if I isolate the passage and go over it many times until I believe I have it, when I play the whole piece, the quickly memorized portion still gives me problems. It's frustrating!