Craigslist is great isnt hit??

I found a good site for free sheemusic but most of it is "one liners." freescores.com,they seem to have a little bit of everything.
I got a few Irish trad songs there. They look like they are scored for C instruments and I will use one for sightreading tomorrow. Set dance pieces are hard to find. Also if you have more than 4 couples they are long.
The last two times I practiced,it seemed like an unintentional concert. Once there was a lady and her kids,this last time it was a lady and her kid.
that is unnerving. very unnerving....I wont even touch a keyboard in a music store.

I'm currently at page 40 after 4 weeks. Is this about the normal speed? And after how long do you guys think i'll be done with this book. Because it'll get harder and harder every week :p

Took me 7 months to finish book one, but I was still cleans up stuff while I was in book two. Your milage may vary. Remember its not a race, take your time and enjoy the journey.

Mark...

Daily stop for me. Unfortunately, somebody beat me to the $200 PX-575R. It's a shame I wasn't downtown that day.

I'm glad you reminded me of this. There are some pieces I worked hard to polish. After moving on, I've gone back to play some of these, and find, to my utter annoyance and dismay, that I can no longer play them well first (heck sixth) time through. I figured once I "finished" Book One, I would take another month or so to fly through the book a few times, and see if I can get some of these back up to speed. In theory, each lap through it should be quicker, and the level of polish should improve. That's my plan, anyway.

7 months is probably about the time frame I am looking at as well. I already have Book Two, but my eyes glaze over and roll back into my head when I look at what's in there.

I know it isn't a race, i have the feeling i can play the songs good. And that's what my teacher says too . By the way i'm 15 years old. I just hope to go through the first book fast because the second book has much more fun songs because of the knowledge you already have gained from the first book.

See, for me, I know it's not a race, but that doesn't make me less impatient. I want to improve quickly, as I assume the more interesting (and difficult) music is more fun than, say, Chiapanecas.

That said, I am falling short of my practice time goals these days, and may not catch up until late summer.

Its all relative. I still play the Entertainer and Amazing Grace from book one and once and a while play around with other pieces. Some take a few takes to play right.

Book two was initially scary but now I look back from book three and say wow, I can play many of them ok. (Not all), I'm still cleaning up many pieces in the back 1/3 of book two especially Canon.

When I looked at book 3, I again was scared, but it does start to come together. Some work out really well, some I hack to hell... By the way I'm very average and struggle to play anything clean. Just by brute force and lots of practice can I make anything from this wonderful instrument sound remotely like music. Maybe in time I can play like those that sound so gifted. Because I'm sure not...

Hi JohnFrank, Very nice demonstrations and beautiful playing. Thanks for taking the time to record and shared them.

I can now see where we can add intros and endings, but how do you select which parts to use for the repeats?

Thanks again for all of your wonderful tips.

Regards,

Key Notes

Daily stop for me. Unfortunately, somebody beat me to the $200 PX-575R. It's a shame I wasn't downtown that day.

Man that sucketh!!!!!(ya want some van seats?) I got my 1st keyboard from a pawn shop. I was looking for the cheapest thing I could find. Now I have a Roland d-10. Big enough for the nieghbor cats to hang out on. The b takes a while to sound until I play it a few times.

Key Notes - I'm not sure which "repeats" you're referring to so I'll cover the possibilities:

1. You can, of course, repeat the entire piece (if you wish to do that) even if there are no repeat symbols at the end of the piece. Or, if the piece is in two separate, distinct parts or sections (say like alot of pop songs with a verse section and a chorus section) you can choose to just repeat perhaps the second section (it's your choice - there are no firm rules - whatever appeals to you and/or sounds good).

2. Instead of the above (or in addition to it) you can repeat just the very ending part of the piece. This would be perhaps just the last several measures (or more precisely, the last phrase as indicated by the phrasing marks over the music - again whatever sounds good.

So, you could have a case (like I used in "Black is the Color...) where you play the piece thru once, then go back to the beginning and play it thru completely again, and finally repeat the last ending phrase again (the 3rd time it would have been played).

If the piece was in two sections you could, for example, play the entire piece thru once (sections 1 & 2), then go back to the start of the second section and play thru to the end, and then repeat the last phrase (3rd time played).

Or you could have the case where you simply play the song thru once and then repeat just that last phrase as a finishing touch.

There are usually several choices when you're enhancing a piece according to your own desires and tastes - there is no right or wrong way, just your way. And this isn't even considering the possibilities involved with choosing how to do intros (which can really round out your interpretation).

Hope this helps.

Regard, JF

Thanks JohnFrank! IOU big time. I love all of these ideas and the different variations and options to personalized any piece of music. I'll definitely have to try them out along the way as I get better.

Thank you so much once again and have a fabulous day!

Key Notes

I am sort of messing with dropping stuff an octave,.or up an octave. so play the 1st verse,then the 2nd up the octave.

fingering is the same. Just move paws up or down the octave. Simple. Works on Irish music well.

My sightreading still sucks but I did run thru 3 pieces today. Finished one of them. Stopped at a few bars on the others.

JF,
Those are some great ideas for spicing up Alfred's!!
If I ever finish the Can-Can song, I will have to try them!!

Thanks Triyche - yes, do give them a try - I think you'll find they enhance the music, and your enjoyment, a great deal.

Regards, JF

Well, I've moved on through the Middle C position songs, "Waltz Time", "Good Morning to You", "Happy Birthday" and a couple of short one liners. They were easy, probably because I spent so much time in the Bastien beginner book which started with Middle C. I'm still butchering "Brown Eyes" and "Alpine Melody" some days, but today I tried "Standing in the Need of Prayer". It looked hard, but it's actually not that bad. I'm still playing it slowly, but WAY better than I did with "Brown Eyes" and "Alpine". I think I'm going to like this one.

I'm also working on "Morning Mood" in the Bastien Level 1 Classics and "Lean on Me" in the Faber Adult All-in-one". I'm only on page 32 in Faber, and "Lean on Me" is a very easy song in middle C position with no chords, but I'm having trouble with the timing because it's slow. I've set my metronome to 50 and feel like I'm waiting a year to play the next note.

On an slightly off topic - two of my grandkids are in their piano recital tonight, and I'm worried about how they will do. They are doing a duet, and the older one reads music well, but occasionally makes a mistake. The younger one has a really good ear, but doesn't read music well, so she has memorized her part to compensate. They can't seem to coordinate their playing and have been arguing more than practicing. I can't be there to see them play and am kind of relieved, because I'm afraid that if anyone makes a mistake or slows down it will be a disaster. They are both in their second year of piano. Keep your fingers crossed for them.

"Standing in the Need of Prayer" so far is one of my favorites from Alfred's. When I first started learning it, it was the most intimidating looking piece I had encountered in the book.

I will keep my fingers crossed!!

Standing in the Need is hard only because the eights are triky because the piece if you ever heard it sung gospel style like i have is normallyu done with swing notes. That means the 8ths are not equal. I can not play it with straight 8ths because if that.
I have beenstuck on that for weeks. I am about to just give up on this one. My teacher is not real happy about that.
on a waltz for me ( lot of alfred's stuff)I dont have that problem

1silkyferret,
can you swing the 8th's instead of playing it straight?

my teacher doesnt want me to do the swing 8ths. I have been on this piece for over a month. Now its kind of a moot point. I am going to OK for a show there for a while so I will be on my own there. I also have the same problem on Alouette.
I am hoping to get a lesson or two there.
I can sort of get the 8ths if I am not doing the left hand part.
my left paw is still kind of useless. I also picked up a Bastiens book of real simple looking stuff (its a kid's book with cute pix/)

1silkyferret, don't fret. Soon, you'll get to the Blues stuff, where Alfred's ASKS you to swing the 8ths...

Just got my Afred's Adult Complete Course Level 1 today in the mail... son is sleeping for the night, so it will have to wait till morning

Welcome to Alfred and good luck!

Mark...

Thank you,

Looking forward to that part of the equation.

Yes, I did it! I faced "Beautiful Brown Eyes" and the use of the damper pedal for the very first time, and I'm happy to report that it's not as bad as I had originally thought that it would be. But then, I know that this is just the beginning.

I also liked and needed Leschetizky solution exercises for developing equal skills for all of the fingers, since my fourths and fifths are definitely weaker then the others. I was going to post and ask for suggestions on how to improve in this area but then I came upon these exercises.

BTW, I broke one of my own rules and peeked a few pages into the future and saw "The Amazing Aerobics of Hanon, No. 1 & No. 2" on pages 78-79 and I'm freeking myself out right now. I knew that I shouldn't have looked.

Hope everyone has been enjoying your practices and playing.

Key Notes

Key Notes, you know I am as much a rookie as you are. I toyed with those Hanons... it turns out there is a pattern hidden in the complexity. It looks much tougher than it really is. But I also admit that I am not playing those any more, as I find them utterly boring. Maybe when I get a teacher, I can be convinced that it's worth it, but right now, I don't think I am missing anything.

Recently, I haven't gotten anything as polished as I worked to earlier in the book. I talked about this in the blog recently. My standards for "it's time to move on" have lowered as the pieces have become more complex. Nevertheless, I keep working on the things that aren't perfect, so the list of things currently in progress has gotten pretty long. At this point, I am working on everything from Little Brown Jug to The Stranger.

I must say, The Stranger is BY FAR the most musically interesting piece in the book so far.

AWTPP, It's interesting informations regarding the Hanon pieces, although I'm not too surprise to learn of this hidden, perhaps repetitive patterns within them since most pieces of music does tend to have this common characteristics.

Looks like you are almost done with book 1 since you are up to The Stranger, page 129. "Rookie" or not, you are 64 pages ahead of me, and that's really great regardless of how rough you are currently feeling about the unpolished statuses of your pieces.

I agree and have found this to also be true for myself as well in terms of knowing when I should be moving on. I can definitely be wrong being so new at this but what helps me in determining this is as follow. I feel that there's a difference between learning how to play a particular piece well versus learning all of the intended techniques in that particular piece or lesson well. Because at some point, I found that I've already learned the techniques but still haven't yet been able to concistently play those piece(s) as expressively, smoothly or as flawlessly as I would like them to be. So as long as I felt that I've learned the techniques well, I can then move on to the next lesson or pieces with the intentions of going back to replay and review them for as long as necessary for reinforcement. Thus, I also have a list or a few pieces that I always go back to for warm-ups and to do fine tuning with.

Thanks for your reply and insights. I'm looking forward to discovering The Stranger with your positive review.

Regards,

Key Notes

Key Notes, what happened was this. Early on (think Alpine Melody, for example), I was able to get to the point to where I played the pieces without error, with some sense of musicality, over and over again. Lately, I have gotten to the point to where I could play most of the notes, with some errors, pretty consistently. But my practice sessions (which have been admittedly sparse lately) could not progress me past that point. I would spend hours and hours, spread over the course of many days, consistently making the same errors over and over. Or maybe there would be three phrases that give me grief, and I would get one or two of them right once in awhile, only to trip up on the third.

Chuan Chang discusses this phenomenon in his book. His solution is to practice the difficult parts over and over again until they are basically automatic. This hasn't worked for me. I bet if I had a teacher, he / she could probably get most of these errors cleared up in no time. But alas, I don't have a teacher, and won't for the time being. So instead of playing the same imperfect phrases over and over again, I have simply come to accept imperfection (for now), and move on simply if I can limp my way through something.

Wish I had a way to record, so you could see (well, hear) what I mean. Maybe I'll post a Youtube clip or something. I keep threatening to do that on my blog, but haven't made good on it.

When I am "done" with Book One, I figure I will take some time, maybe a few weeks or a month or so, to go back through the second half of the book, and see if there was any improvement on the things I couldn't perfect. My instinct tells me to expect some improvement.

Hello everyone working on Book 1. Here's a small update of my progress.

Keynotes, Congratulations. I'm basically at the same spot. I just hit "Beautiful Brown Eyes" this weekend and hope to play "Alpine Melody" sometime during this week. I move on to new songs about the same way you do. It seems that the first few times I get a song right, I still don't feel I have "mastered" (if that word can be used) the technique being presented. That's why I also go back and start 3 or 4 songs back each time to continue to "burn in" those lessons.

I am working on a few other things at the same time as the Alfred's. Because of that, I am working my way through Book 1 a bit slower than I would like. It's taken me about 3 weeks to get from "When The Saints Go Marching In" to get to "Beautiful Brown Eyes". I am looking forward to some of the later songs in the book that I have heard via recordings and that I really want to be able to play. However, I enjoy the variety of mixing in stuff with the Alfreds. Besides the Alfred's Book 1 songs, I am working on the Czerny Op. 599 exercises 11, 12 and 13, which I find fun and a decent challenge at this point in Alfred's Book 1, plus it gives me a bit of that "classical music" feel that I don't get playing the tunes in Alfred's.

I peeked ahead too (actually, I scanned the whole book the day I got it). I think these two exercises are actually Hanon 1 and Hanon 9 of his original 60. I also find them mechanical and repetitive, but helpful in my case. I have been doing each one a pair of times for a warmup during the last two weeks. Once you memorize the pattern you don't need the sheet music and it takes literally 4 or 5 minutes max to run through both of them twice.

AWTPP, Have you made a decision on the piano/keyboard yet? I really like playing on our piano, but only get 2 or 3 practices a week where I am not asked to cut it short because of the kid's bedtime. I broke down and sold off a few things via craigslist so I could get a Privia PX-200 to practice each night using headphones. I can't wait until it arrives!!

Good luck and lots of fun to all of you still working on Book 1.

This is a bit OT but I hope you all don't mind....

Always Wanted to Play Piano.
I just jumped over to read you blog. Besides the fact that, in regards to learning to play piano, we are facing many of the same issues and reaching many of the same conclusions, the story of your mom almost made me fall out of my chair laughing.

My mother-in-law came to visit for a week this past Saturday (from up north, she lives in Savannah, GA so I call her a yankee). She has not been to visit since before we acquired our piano. She loves classical music, studied piano when she was younger, and has always been supportive of our daughter learning to play because she believes musicality is a very important part of raising children. She was very happy for us when we told her on the phone we had bought a real, acoustic piano for my children to practice.

Well, for the past two years, she never, ever, not even once, touched the cheapo electronic keyboard my daughter kept in her bedroom to practice her lessons. I've never heard her play a note. Anyway, so she arrives, unpacks, we have dinner, etc... I tell her all about my Alfred's Book 1 and play "Saints" & "Money Cant Buy You Everything" and tell her how much fun I am having learning to play. She thinks it is great that I am learning and is impressed with the Alfred's method book for Adults. She looks at it and says, "Oh, I love this song (O Sole Mio). I tell her to go ahead and play it and she agrees with a "don't laugh because I haven't touched a keyboard in over 40 years" (YES, Fourty!)

Well, she does "O Sole Mio", "Raisins and Almonds", and "The Entertainer", all one right after the other, sight reading, at a good tempo. She hit a few wrong notes and fat fingered a chord or two, but boy was I impressed. She hasn't had a piano since she went to college and never played since then because she was embarrased she could not play as well as she had been able. She has now inherited (kidnapped) my daughters keyboard and my copy of "The Library of Piano Classics" (which I can't play anyway) and is excited that now that she has retired, she can dedicate time to regain her skills.

A funny sidenote is that she doesn't "know" the sheet music notes. She was educated using the french Solfege "do-re-mi" system so she is using my Alfred's to try and learn our CDEFGABC notes on the Grand Staff. To her, a "Prelude in D Minor" is a "Prelude in Re Minor" and if I ask her to play a "G" she doesn't know which key to press.

Life can be funny. Have a nice day!!!