Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Alfred's Basic and ALL in One Adult Piano Course Book #1

I am on track to complete Book 1 in (6) months. If I could get through all three in (2) years I would be happy.

Well done mom3gram and Romolo and everyone else as they progress!

I've learnt O Sole Mio today, much as I dislike it, so was relieved to find it easyish. The arpeggio at the end is my fave bit I'v ealso learnt Love Me Tender from the Greatest Hits.

So this weeks focus will be on The Entertainer and Edelweiss.

I had played scales and arpeggios for my first 8 weeks as an adult beginner.I have worked on Alfred's book for a total of 3 weeks ( I took a break from this book for 3 weeks )and am now commencing the last two pieces. I hope to do the next level and the first two greatest hits books in the year to come.
Currently trying to find a piano teacher who answers their phone to book lessons..... easier said than done

Hi Ejay,
how do you find The Greatest Hits?
For me they are much more difficult than the relative pages in the Lesson Book, maybe because I don't like them so much...
I have learned Love Me Tender quite easily (I love the King), but Edelweiss... mmmh...

I think the challenge with Edelweiss is the different hand positions. I'm finding identifying the chords helps. Although ALfred's 1 hasn't really covered the chords in the different inversions much.

I like that the pieces are slightly harder than the book, although whether this is because the chord markings are not there and there is less fingering markings, or the pieces are actually harder I don't know.

It does feel a bit more like playing 'real' music and I think the book was a worthwhile purchase. There is always the danger in method books ,which use songs to teach as opposed to exercises, that we only learn the pieces by rote, and don't go on to look at supplementary stuff and really apply the techniques learned to other pieces.

I can sight read most of the pieces, but they will take some more time to polish than the songs in the books I suspect.I hate the titantic theme.. seems too empty

Well, it's the shifting hands that has slown down my learning Over the Rainbow and I having doubts of my making the cutoff for the recital but maybe I can learn it by next time.

I probably would be best served by backing up to the chords and scales and simple tunes and working my way through.

Thanks, Ejay, for your inspiring reply.
I am going to work on identifying the chords and the different hand positions in Edelweiss.
I do agree with you. We need more "real" music than the songs in the Lesson Book and that's why I have ordered other Alfred's Books.

Well... here is my guess for the Edelweiss chords (Greatest Hits, pag.3):

G-D7-G-C-G-Em-C-D7
G-D7-G-C-G-D7-G-G
D-D-G-Em-A-D-D7-D7
G-G7-C-Em-G-D7-G-G

Studying the chords has helped me to love this song and now I don't find it boring anymore.

Congratulations mom3gram on conquering a difficult piece! I know all too well the frustration of starting pieces that seem as though I will never get through them, and appear to get no better regardless of how much time I spend on them. And yet, eventually there is a breakthrough, and it is so elating when that happens! When I'm especially frustrated with a piece, I sometimes find it helpful to forget about it for a while, a week perhaps, and come back to later.

I must admit, even after a year-and-a-half, I don't like having to pick up my left hand and move it to a new location. I especially don't like having to move both hands simultaneously, particularly when they must each move a different interval. I guess this is where hands separate practice can be helpful?

I have a question for everyone: when you have to move your hand to a completely new location, when you reach the new location on the keyboard, are your fingers actually touching the notes before you play them, or are your fingers simply over the notes, but not necessarily touching them? I ask because I've watched many videos on youtube of people playing pieces that require quick chord changes, and I can't tell if they are actually touching the notes before they play chords that jump around. When I have to make a quick change, I find it very difficult to be able to touch the notes of a new chord before actually playing them. Also, suppose I were able to touch the notes before playing them, but suppose I put my hand in the wrong location. If fast changes are required, it seems that perhaps it isn't necessary to get your hand into exact position on the new notes before playing them, because if you find the wrong notes, there really isn't time to change hand position anyway. I was just wondering if I'm wrong about this. Also, when moving my hand, I try to keep it in a plane parallel to the keyboard with my fingers fairly close to the keys rather than moving my hand and arm in a arc. What does everyone think about this?

One of the most frustrating things I've found about studying the piano is when I spend weeks diligently working on a piece of music that I really enjoy, and eventually I am able to play it satisfactorily, even musically. And yet, when I try to play the piece several months (sometimes merely a few weeks) later, it is as if I had never learned it in the first place! Do other people have this problem? If so, how do you go about maintaining pieces that you've learned and think would be worthwhile to hold onto? Do you just have to play them regularly? I guess hypothetically, if it took me, for example, two weeks to "learn" a piece and months later, when I try to play the piece and discover that I can't, it should take less time to re-learn the piece, but I haven't experimented with this.

I have been playing guitar for many years, so I know the problem.
In my opinion, it depends on how much you had played the piece before forgetting it.
For example, in a short time I can play again a tune that I had played for years back in the '70s, but I have to study very laboriously a piece that I had practiced for few weeks last year.
In order to be remembered, a piece must "sink" in our brain very deeply.
When that happens, if we decide to play it again, we can remember it quite easily.
But with only few weeks and a totally new instrument, as the piano is for all of us, a piece disappears from our mind very quickly.
So, I guess we have to practice each and every day all the pieces we want to keep in our playlist. And for a very, very long time.

I'm not sure if this will help "sink" a piece of music in you brain or not. It does help with studying for exams. One of my teachers in High School called it the 3 on 3 rule, she swore by this 3 on 3 rule, told us all if we used it we would pass any exam.

It’s simple: Read/play something 3 times in one night. Do this for 3 nights in a row. That’s it. I always helped me with retain information for my exams. Like I said I’m not sure if it will help with remember how to play a piece of music weeks/months after you stop but it is worth a try.

Glad you are getting along with Edelweiss Boogieman.. I'm enjoying it so long as I stay andante.. don't like it faster.

Don't know if my technique is correct but I never lift my fingers high from the keyboard, they are either lightly touching or barely hovering. When changing position I move my arm laterally.. so if my elbows start near my sides, they move away but remain at same height... probably as clear as mud lol

My memory is instrument specific, guitar pieces I never seem to forget. Dulcimer I need to play pieces regularly to remain memorized, but is fairly quick to relearn them. Piano I'm so far reviewing constantly, but I believe even professionals have a repertoire they practice regularly and would need to review any piece they have not performed in a while.

Kenny perhaps you could submit an easier piece. It is always difficult not to choose a piece beyond our standard because we love the piece. Walking slowly is not easy sometimes, but best advice I read here recently is its a journey not a race.. must keep reminding myself of that one.

You're obviously correct, boogieman52. I think I probably have unrealistic expectations of being able to retain my favorite pieces into my long term memory without making much of an effort at maintaining them. What is frustrating, is that I sometimes feel as though I'm not really learning how to play the piano; I'm simply learning how to play individual pieces rather than developing more general skills. And then, after a modest amount of time has elapsed, I find I can't even play the pieces I've "learned"!


Thank-you for the advice, manitobagirl; I'll try this.

"Good People" is hard lol
I think the last 30 pages of the book will take me the same amount of time that the first 116 pages took me to complete. But no worry, I'm in no real rush.

Probably it is a matter of faith. :-)
We must believe that -piece after piece- general skills will be developed.
That is what happened to me with the guitar.
At the beginning I could only play simple acoustic blues, but then -head after head, lick after lick, turnaround after tournaround- I started to improvise and I stopped thinking myself as a juke-box: I was a guitar player! :-)
I hope (I do believe!) that this is what will happen with the piano.

I have the same feelings. Currently on "Good people" and after 4 hours, I have only gone through half of the piece. The most difficult to master for me so far but I can see the end of the tunnel though. And yes, like you my learning speed is going slower and slower. I hope I can finish book 1 by the end of summer

Definitely looks challenging. I took a look ahead.

I have just started learning from this book, and was wondering if someone could explain to me why the book describes the A key in C position differently for right and left hands. For the left hand, it says, "Reach finger 1 one white key to the right." For the right hand, it says, "Leave 1 on C Shift all other fingers one white key to the right."

Is this simply because it's harder to reach your pinky one finger to the right than it is to reach your thumb one finger to the right? If I can hit the A on my right hand with my pinky without moving the other fingers, is there an advantage to that?

Thanks so much!

Hi crossalantic

Welcome to the AAIO.

As for the (4) finger shift of the right hand, I would say that it has to do with cords and or the notes to follow. From this position it is easy for the 1-3-5 finger to play an F major cord FAC or in this case CFA.

Dilbert, the first half (of Good People) is the hard part. Once you get that, the second half will be easy.