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Thanks Gracie and Glasslove for your responses to my questions ...

Your comments help me to "justify" moving on before things are perfect, which I do also.

I try to stay on a piece until I can at least play the right notes and I am at least aware of the phrasing and dynamics of the piece.

By "staying on it" I mean that I do not leave it entirely. I usually have a range of about 6 - 10 consecutive pieces in the book that I will move between. Then when I have pretty well mastered the earliest one, I will add another one. I just keep moving my "set" of pieces along in the book.

I sort of view these pieces as "proof" that I am getting better and making progress.
I don't have to get them to performance level but I need to feel that I could do that if I wanted to.

Then I use other sources of music to add pieces to my repertoire. It is my intent to get those pieces to near performance level.

But thanks again for your comments, I feel like I am doing the right things.

I had a similar experience at one point a few years ago. I injured my right hand. I used that time to work on left hand only. It turned out to be a good thing. Hopefully, you injured your right hand.

dmd,
my teacher does not look for perfection before "passing" me on a piece. He does stress understanding the dynamics, rhythm, slurs and ties and being able to demonstrate them proficiently. A mistake here and there is no big deal to him. I can tell he expects some nerves to interfere with my playing (I'm thankful for that!) I think I am more critical of my playing than he is. I don't have any trouble with rhythms or tempo. He complements me on both on each piece that I have been working on. I do have a little difficulty on it the first time or two through but a big part of that is my aversion to counting. I do tend to ignore the dynamics and pedaling until I have the piece "in my fingers". Then I start working on that so he sometimes has to remind me to pay more attention to that.

At my last lesson I played 3 pieces for him that I had been working on. I expected to get passes on only one of them and he checked off all three and we moved on. I will go back and continue to work on 2 of them. (The 3rd one is Lavender's Blue and I have no intention of playing that one again) I also go back in the book and replay pieces further back just to keep them fresh.

Doug:

You mentioned dynamics, rhythm, slurs, and ties.

You didn't mention phrasing. Is that because you just didn't or some other reason ?

I bring it up because I had a teacher for four (4) lessons a while back and that seemed to be a special topic with her. She would demonstrate how I should "roll" my finger/hand off of a note at the end of a phrase in order to get the proper effect.

I never really understood what she was talking about.

My concept of phrasing is to play the notes within a phrase in a legato manner and have a noticeable "break" between phrases.

Can you (or anyone else) shed some more light on the concept of phrasing ?

I have another question for those of you who have teachers and have just about finished book 1.

Are you playing all the pieces at the end of the book while looking at the music or are you memorizing the piece and looking at the keys ?

I didn't mention it because we haven't talked about it yet. I am familiar with the term but I don't recall it ever coming up in any of the materials I have used to this point and my teacher has not brought it up.

That is interesting. Phrasing is first mentioned on page 42 and wherever there is a long curved line ABOVE a set of consecutive notes a phrase is being indicated. Your instructor may not be making it a point of emphasis, which is good to hear from my perspective. It doesn't seem to me to be a big deal but my instructor seemed to think so. I would be interested in what your instructor says about it if you bring it up. Whatever ...

Thanks for your input on this.

I didn't remember seeing the mention of phrases on p.42. We have talked many times about slurs which CAN indicate a phrase but not in the context of it specifically being a phrase. He does stress the proper playing of the slur.

If you Google for an explanation of phrasing in music, most times it doesn't mention slurs. P.42 says 'Slurs often divide the music into phrases' and 'A phrase is a musical thought or sentence'.

Wikipedia on Musical Phrases

Specifically: Edward Cone analyses the «typical musical phrase» as consisting of an «initial downbeat, a period of motion, and a point of arrival marked by a cadential downbeat». [5] Charles Burkhart defines a phrase as «Any group of measures (including a group of one, or possibly even a fraction of one) that has some degree of structural completeness. What counts is the sense of completeness we hear in the pitches not the notation on the page. To be complete such a group must have an ending of some kind … . Phrases are delineated by the tonal functions of pitch. They are not created by slur or by legato performance … . A phrase is not pitches only but also has a rhythmic dimension, and further, each phrase in a work contributes to that work's large rhythmic organization.»[6]

I think the message is that a slur CAN indicate a phrase but while a phrase can include a slur it can also go beyond the slur or not include a slur at all.

Anyone else care to chime in?

I will bring it up at my next lesson but that won't be for another week.

I have another question for those of you who have teachers and have just about finished book 1.

Are you playing all the pieces at the end of the book while looking at the music or are you memorizing the piece and looking at the keys ?

Hi DMD,
I try VERY hard not to look at the keys when I play. Sometimes I have memorized the music because I have practiced it so many times. My teacher doesn't expect me to do that though. So, in answer to your question, I always play for her with my music in front of me. My teacher has talked about phrasing, but has never suggested a specific way to play differently the music that is part of a phrase.
I agree with Doug, you can have a phrase with or without a slur.

You can do either or both. A difficult piece usually requires a lot of practice. After so much practice, you’ll memorize it then you are able play looking at score/hands, not looking at score/hands, with eyes open/closed. This is when you have a piece down cold. When practice, not a good idea to look at hands but rather glance when you have to move them.

Hmm… Phrases divide a piece into many moods, feelings, sentences if you will. When you work through a piece, you’ll notice that slurs, piano, forte, crescendo, diminuendo etc… help make it softer, louder, smooth, staccato, up, down, strong, soft… hence breaks it into phrases. This is what I understand phrases. If you create a thread in the teacher’s forum, I’m sure you’ll get many in depth opinions.

I've only had one lesson and we reviewed everything I've done in Alfred so far. She never mention the word phrases, but we did review dynamics. She also had me tell her and play for her songs that included legato, staccato, accents, slurs.

I can read music as I played a woodwind instrument for years and I'm a singer. The dynamics of a song are important. I tend to put effort into learning the dynamics after I have the song pretty much under my belt. I try to learn the music as written in regards to playing legato, staccato etc right from the beginning.

To me, I suppose I would say they dynamics are the "feel" of the music, and the phrasing would be playing the notes legato, staccato and so forth. That's definitely not a real definition, but that's what it feels like in my head.

I'm interested to see how my teacher will correct the way I play the keys when it comes to doing different phrases. I'm eager to learn.

I'm not sure how the pedals will work into all this. Right now I use the pedal like you would the brake in your car when a deer runs out in front of you. LOL It's like all of a suddent I realize I should have pressed the pedal 2 beats ago.

dmd, up to this point (p95), I don't look at my hands when I play. Even if I come to a note and my hands get confused on the keys, I make a point of stopping and feeling the keys without looking. I've been making a special point to "feel" the intervals. I honestly have trouble "seeing" what the interval actually is on the sheet music. I need to work on that as it feels like I'm guessing. I've played music further ahead in the book, and I don't know how I'll ever get through them without looking. Good question you asked.

GracieCat:

Thanks for the thorough response.

I am very interested in this topic (not looking at keyboard) because that is basically why I am working with this Piano Course (Alfred's). I can already play some very nice music which I have memorized. I have been playing for about 5 years.

The issue I have with all of this is that I cannot retain a very large body of pieces that I can play because I cannot "remember" them all if I do not keep revisiting them periodically. I am hoping that if I can "read" music and play while looking at the music, it will enable me to get back up to speed with a piece much faster if I wish to do so.

So, I use this course as "practice" playing music while looking at the music instead of memorizing it and playing while looking at the keyboard. I am just interested in how many students are actually accomplishing that or do most simply do what I do and end up memorizing the piece and looking at the keyboard.

Of course, this is only a problem when you need to move your hands longer distances on the keyboard. So, it really only applies to students who have nearly completed the course.

This was great!! It's exactly how I am doing it right now.

At least you use the pedal. My teacher laughs because I just say "oh pedal" when playing instead of actually using it. The only song that I used the pedal consistently for was "On top of old smoky," it would have been shameful to do otherwise My teacher, fortunately, comes from the "Let's choose our demons one at a time school." She is very encouraging and promises pedaling will come at some point.

GlassLove - I know exactly what you mean about using the pedal. The first time I played "Old Smoky" perfectly, I realized I hadn't used the pedal at all! Everytime I went back to play it using the pedal, it threw off my playing completely. After a while, I gave up trying to use it! Maybe I'll revisit it in a few more weeks and retry it. You have a smart teacher!!!! She chooses your piano battles carefully!

I find the memory vs. reading the music while playing to be an interesting problem. The better I get with a particular piece, the more of it becomes "muscle memory" rather than simply "reading" it as I play it. But I find I don't memorize pieces completely and my best playing involves using both the book and my "finger brains".

I've noticed that when I go back and "review" a piece, that I often find that I might have been making a mistake on either fingering or playing a wrong note that didn't sound out of place, but now I can correct it and further improve the piece. I guess that's the best method when you don't have a teacher!

Hi guys, I have to laugh when I read about the struggles with Lullaby since I'm currently fighting that song as well! I'm not really in the Alfred course though, I bought the book intending to self teach myself and then my wife bought me some lessons that I enjoyed so much that I now have a teacher. My teacher uses a different book (some thing I've never seen referenced here entitled "Progressive Piano") that is very heavy on left hand chords with right hand melody and no pedaling yet. I fought the rhythm in Lullaby for weeks before it started to come together and the only way I tamed it was by setting the metronome to 72, marking all the 1 and 2 and 3 and's in the score and then counting out loud over and over again, I'm surprised the wife didn't send me in to Lullaby land with a sharp knock up side the head after the 87th redention of that song. I have the rhythm down now and only need to sharpen up my octave jumps a bit to get this over with.

We are starting to include the Alfred's book now since she wants more work with the left hand rather than just chords over and over. We used some simple pieces from a Farber book that used the left hand a bit more and this week I can join the AIO book 1 thread since I get to play Saints (left hand melody right hand chords) and Mary Ann as well. The deal is that both these songs are in my book as well (again right hand melody left hand chord) so I have to play my book's arrangement followed immediatly by the Alfreds one, should be fun. Please please let me pass Lullaby as well this week, I'm not sure the wife can take much more of this!!

Hi Zinfan,
I hope the stars align properly and you can put "Lullaby" to rest at your next lesson. Believe it or not, it was one of my husband's favorite pieces so far (lucky for him...he got to hear it 50 times a day for a whole week). My 8 year old son got sick of it really quickly though. The thing I thought was really hard about it was the right hand movement (maybe the range of notes in the right hand).
I am now working on Little Brown Jug. I play it at a turtle's pace, but have all of the right notes down. It sounds quite bizarre at that pace. I am also supposed to play the Mexican hand clapping song at my next lesson.

I just had my second lesson and it sucked. I couldn't wait for it to be over. Basically, she wants me to repeat all the same items she had me prepare this week, again next week. I'm so sick of these songs I could puke.

I could not play at all. I was nervous and my fingers felt like they had lead weights on them. I couldn't figure out the names of notes, which I already know well.

I play this crap at home with no problem. Smooth and all. I get there and it's like I've never seen the stuff before.

I learned nothing today. I came home and immediately sat down at the piano and played everything just fine. I'm not going to keep paying good money to go there and regress.

She never said a word about my hand position so I guess that looks better.

Did I mention I hated my lesson today? Seriously, I hated it.

Hang in there GracieCat. It'll get better. I have the same problem, only it's every two weeks now instead of once a week. I can play everything fine at home but at the lesson it doesn't go so well. I go to my lesson from work so it's been overnight and all day so I feel very unfamiliar with everything when I get there and try to play it. I have to take a deep breath, figure out where to place my fingers before I start and then go much slower than I have been doing it at home. I usually end up playing it twice for him and do much better the second time through. He doesn't seem to mind that. He then helps me out with any spots I had trouble with. I have had to come back with a couple pieces the following lesson when I thought I would have been done with them. I think once you get to know each other better and feel more comfortable things will go better. I just keep telling myself that if I could play perfectly at my lesson (or even just pretty good) I wouldn't need them.

I cannot agree more with Doug, GracieCat. My hands actually shake during my lessons. Less so now (after about 15), and my teacher, recognizing that I am nervous will often ask me to play it a second time (during the same lesson though). The feedback she gives me is, in my opinion, invaluable. Hang in there, I am sure that your next lesson will be better.