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Does anyone recall O sole mio and the sound of the left hand chords? The RH melody is nice but boy that C7 in particular sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. In fact almost the whole arrangement for the left hand sounds just crappy to me, even when I do it reasonably well. Anybody feel the same?

Hey everyone, its been a while but still here and still practicing. I just finished with O Sole Mio. I can't stop playing it, I love it. I think it's cuz I'm italian lol. Its so weird though cuz I remember when I first got this book, I looked through the pages and I remember looking at O Sole Mio and thinking...I'm never gonna be able to play this and now I can't stop lol. Anyways, working on Jericho now, it's pretty easy and fun to play. I still need a little practice though. I hope everyone is doing well and keeping up with the practicing. I really can't wait till I'm done this book lol.

Yes, and not just O Sole Mio but many others have this "problem". I am guessing it's a compromised by Alfred for beginner's music because the book is sticking to basic I, IV, V7 cords for the left hand and these cords don't harmonize with all the notes all the time. But this is why I like Alfred so much. It makes sure that we are playing what is taught so the music is 100% in sync with the theory and the book does not attempt to make us play anything our level of theory and technique cannot handle. It makes complete sense to me even if it doesn't always sound good. If you look at Book 2 and 3, the "problem" eventually goes away as we learn more technique and theory. At the end of book 3, all the music are presented in the original un-altered form (difficult). So stick with it.

Thanks Carl Mc. It's funny I actually didn't like Rasins & Almonds at first, but my wife says it sounds good, so I kept playing it, now I like it too! I play it moderately fast, around 120 on the metronome.

Never woke up with a tune from Alfred in my head. Sounds like you practice a lot. It's a nice problem; makes you want to play some more!



I was visiting my dad last week and he was watching Pavarotti singing O Sole Mio! I thought it was amazing, and then I thought wow, I could play that! Well, I could play a little part of that amazing aria.

Wow, 1silkyferret, I had to google the carrilon(sp) myself and it looks quite neat, do you really play it with your fists and how does that affect your piano playing? I think it looks fun, but agree I wouldn't like practicing with something so loud, lol.

Welcome 4evrBeginR, sounds like you are making great progress and will need to change your user name soon, lol.

[quote=BarbVA]Wow, 1silkyferret, I had to google the carrilon(sp) myself and it looks quite neat, do you really play it with your fists and how does that affect your piano playing? I think it looks fun, but agree I wouldn't like practicing with something so loud, lol.

HI BarbVA,
yes you really do play with your fists. Dynamics are controlled with how hard you hit the key. Well its more like you hit the keys with your hands balled up and you hit the keys with your pinkies. Its a downward motion and flick. I also do some hand spreads for hitting 2 keys at once, thumb on one key, 1st or middle finger on the other. I can do a 3rd easily and a 4th,my hands are small enough the 5 is a forget it. For some reason the 3rds are in the left hand a lot. I have spend most of the time learning how to deal with more than one note on the keyboard at a time. On piano its a case of oh thats the ?chord so there is no thought involved. the bad news is you also have a 2 octave pedal board so you have to use your hind paws too..In my case that is very bad news! I kind of wonder when I see complaints about having to deal with 3 pedals!!!I tend to stick with 2 myself one on right foot one on left but my teacher is letting me know that is not ok....Just trying for beat one and 3. Not even bothering much now with the others. Most of my stuff has beat one on D and beat 3 on C. As long as a foot doesnt have to move,I'm mostly ok. I have to wonder what "genius"came up with pedal board.
it is fun but LOUD so I have a place that lets me use thier practice keyboard. Its only 2 octaves and the keys are closer together than at the tower's set up. A practice keyboard is not a "live "keyboard so you can do endless scales and not drive the others crazy.
A lot of the music players use is piano stuff. Piano is useful for a few reasons...one you have to learn how to read 2 staffs of music at once,and the other is having to have independence of the hands. I can now read bass clef without having to stare endlesslly. I would rather not. I play slow jigs and period stuff. I call them "one liners"treble clef only.
personally I think everyone should try playing one of these tasty instruments at least once in their lives...Players do seem to be cool about sharing their toys!

All done with Jericho...it was fun and easy. Can't stop playing O Sole Mio though lol. I'm almost done this book yay!

Well, I finished Amazing Grace. The only thing is to polish up the pedaling, which is giving me some trouble. I suppose it's time to move onward to book 2.

One question about pedaling. I let up on the sustain pedal and press back down as I play the next measure, and I feel this rubbing feeling in the keyboard as I am pressing on the keys. If I let up on the sustain pedal slightly before or after I press down on the keys I don't feel the rubbing, only when I let up and step back down and press down on the keys all at the same time, I feel the rubbing. Is this normal? Should I try to avoid this rubbing feeling?

Congrats 4evrBeginR, hopefully I'll see you in thread 2 soon!

I passed on everything at my lesson last night, so its up to On Top of Old Smokey for me. As the end of the book gets thinner, I'm getting really anxious to be done with book 1, but know that I still have some big pieces to come, I hope they don't slow me down too much, I'd like to be on to book 2 by fall.

She also, added Hannons exercise 2, and Its a Small World from the Greatest Hits book.

I'm still working on Desperado, I have the inroduction down pretty good, the next page and a half is there but still lots of hesitations. I'm finding my fingers go to the right keys, its my brain causing the hesitation as it tries to catch up with my fingers, lol. I haven't turned the page yet for pages 3 & 4, so she suggested that I start at the end of the piece and start working backwards a couple of measures at a time, she said it was a technique that she learned in college and helps your piece to come together and get stronger towards the end of the song, so I'm going to give that a try.

And finally still doing lots of scales, arpeggios, chords and cadences, but I'm finding the names of what I'm doing isn't sticking even if the technique is, I need to work on remembering what it is I'm doing, so I'm not lost later on,lol.

Just started this a few days ago, as an all fresh beginner at playing any musical instruments, and all musical theory. Almost got down Jingle bells now at page 30 or something hehe, so a long way to go but I'm really enjoying playing the piano already, even if I'm not very good at it so I can imagine it just being a lot more enjoyable as time passes.

Welcome Quagles,
You'll find that it'll get harder and harder but don't worry, you just have to keep practicing and you'll get it. Then you'll find it really enjoyable once you learn a piece that you thought you'd never get.

Good luck with your journey!

Hi, Quagles. It's not that long ago that many of us were at Jingle Bells and didn't think that we would ever get good enough to play the songs at the back of the book. Just enjoy wherever you are at, and you will have a lot of fun. There are a lot of challenges ahead of you, but just take one piece at a time and have fun with it.

Hi Quagles,

Just think that one of these days you will actually get a COMPLIMENT from your teacher on a piece you thought you NEVER get... that happened to me this week!
the hard part of learning is playing the stuff as written and not as you have heard the songs.

Thanks. Feels good. I will see you in the book 2 thread.

I noticed that when I change my signature, it changed all my signature for the old posts as well. I guess, you'll know where to find me!

OK, a recap of Alfred AiO Book 1. I started on page 1 played till Lullaby then got a little stuck. That was the first piece I could play on first go. After 2-3 days, I got through Lullaby and onward to the end. This is an important one in terms of skills - don't skip this song.

I hate to admit I skipped a lot of the blues songs. I didn't care for them, so I only played maybe half of them. I also skipped the song that preps for Entertainer. Didn't seem to miss anything, and I enjoyed playing Entertainer. My only wish was that it was longer. I played to the end of Entertainer and in my head, I was already hearing the secondary theme, but the song had ended without it.

Book 1 was a lot more fun than I expected for a starter. Don't skip any of the theory pages. They really helped me read the music knowing the keys - A minor, D minor, G major, etc.

Thanks for kind encouraging words all. Unfortunately I'm just going to be self taught without any teacher at all, but I listen to the songs to make sure I'm doing it correct

That's fine, Quagles. I'm self taught too, but any time I ran into difficulties someone here was able to answer my questions. I didn't like the blues pieces either - I don't know if it was the rhythm that threw me off, or not liking the sound, or both. But I played them until I either learned them or couldn't stand them anymore (that would be the Marsalis one and Good People).

Hello! I'm new. I gonna be college student this year.
I just had a private lesson a week ago.
He used this book to teach me.
I got up to page 30 the first lesson. He said I was fast but probably because I already all that stuffs.
Should I get ahead in the book so it would fasten my study because I wanted him to teach me something I don't know, not something I already know.
Could you guys give me some good good advices so I can learn more efficiently or faster? Thanks!

You should first of all talk with your teacher on what you already know, and what you want to learn first of all. Try to play the book at home and see what pieces you find too easy and where it starts getting out of your reach, and try to find what level you're at and ask your teacher to start from there instead of going through something you already understand.

Not worth using money repeating something you already know communication is the key. Though I'm a beginner, as well but that's my advice to you at least.

I've got a question as well, when does it get to that very slow challenging part that many have talked about before in this thread before? There seems to a few different versions of this book, mine is 147 pages. So around which piece does progress significantly slow down, I know there's different on how people progress of course, but there should be a point in the book the requirements are set much higher than earlier.

Welcome Quagles and KT13!

On Top of Old Smokey, The Can Can and the Marines Hymn are all going well, in fact probably good enough to pass if I had a lesson today, but I still have 11 days to polish them up so going to move on to Why am I Blue and Good People. I think the next one after that is Little Brown Jug (YIKES), not going to touch that one until after my next lesson.

I'm having a problem though on Its a Small World from the Greatest Hits book if anyone has done it and can help. The first note of measure 23, seems to want to put both of my #1 fingers on the same key with both hands. Am I reading this wrong, or do I do just that (it seems weird to me)? Thanks in advance!

The right hand plays the D above middle C and the left hand plays the D an octave lower (below middle c). I played this song for recital 13. If you want to hear it. I can upload it. Oh I already had it uploaded. here it is. http://www.box.net/shared/l5cud3ob0y