Hi all!

I just signed up for this forum and am very impressed with the information and helpfulness in abundant supply.

I wanted to say hello in this forum as it is the most fitting place I think. I'm a neophyte piano player at the ripe young age of 56.

As far as musical background, I've always love it in almost all its forms though I didn't care much for Country when growing up and don't care much for rap and that sort of thing but some of the rap stuff actually approaches real music.

I began playing clarinet in 6th grade and played though high school (first chair clarinet last couple of years) but have only occasionally picked it up since then. About 15 years ago I made a serious effort to learn guitar (acoustic) and did learn a bit, but am no where near good at it. I've fiddled around with piano and keyboards from the time I was a kid playing melodies on my grandmothers old and out of tune upright. I have also worked to learn some theory and compose some music using keyboards and software (Sonar 8) and intend to do a lot more of that which is part of my stimulus to learn to play piano more than just one-finger melody tapping. I've also over the last few years developed a love of just listening to piano in various forms and would love to be able to play a few of simpler classical style pieces.

This week I purchased a Casio PX-320 locally after a couple of weeks or research as well as a StudioLogic SL990xp midi controller (which will arrive next week) to go along with my Edirol PCR300.

I also have an older Yamaha PSR500 that I bought many years ago to give my oldest son something to practice on at home when he was taking piano lessons -- though it was hardly ever used by him.

Professionally I'm a computer engineer/software architect but have a mean creative streak that I have to keep fed with photography, art, poetry and music. I seem to continually dabble in all of them. I hope to get a little more serious about the music and learning to play piano at least to some reasonable degree.

well, enough about me, let's hear from you.

Welcome! I have been creatively involved with piano for the past six years (give or take). I am 54 and even though I have sung all of my life, piano was a bit daunting! But now, I am loving it! It's what we need ( i think) to knock away the stresses of today's environs. Keep right on "dabbling" Take care!

Thanks for the welcome piano4!

Sounds like we're kinda on the same page.

Welcome to the forum! This place of so many people doing so many things with music is really inspiring. Keep playing! It's a really awesome instrument.

Matt

Thank you for the welcome Matt. I do hope the forum will help to keep me inspired.

Welcome aboard!

This place is a GREAT resource for the active adult beginner/returnee.. Lots of great info and plenty of good stories/suggestion/tips to keep you up way past your bedtime

As for me, I'm an adult beginner who's been playing since mid June of 08 (so approx 9mths) wow, I just had my piano baby (lol)

Realize now (if you don't already) that there are going to be people out there 1000x better than you at 1/3rd your age or experience. You're on an incredible journey for YOU so sit back, (well ok sit up) and enjoy !

Thanks TTigg! Oh I know there are some amazing kids out there (do you ever listen/watch that pbs show "From the Top?" Wow!).

I have no illusions whatsoever as far as my abilities and am only looking to do this for myself, hopefully no competition, no ego involved, just hoping to learn a bit.

Enjoy!

We could have been seperated at birth-LOL.
Welcome to the forum.

Oh and I also played clarinet for a short period of time.

Well, there ya go then!

Thanks for the welcome!

Kenny, welcome aboard!
It's always a pleasure to have new people on this site.
I myself am relatively new to it. I signed up around early january. And new to the piano as well. Ok Ok, I lied! I took one semester of theory back in college, 7 years ago. The instructor was a bit of a brute trying to shovel everything down your throat because we were his last class for the afternoon and he wanted to leave. However, sometime last year I was at a music store with my friend who was looking for a clarinet for his daughter. I went by the piano section and saw a Polished Ebony Yamaha Clavinova CLP-240 digital piano. Well, you can say that's what I'm learning on now. LOL. I do see myself composing in the not too distant futurem but for now, I'll stick to my Alfred's course.
Enjoy the site and the people, and keep it up...right!

Thanks for welcome. You sound a bit impulsive like myself. I tend to be a bit obsessive as well once I take up something. For now I'm planing on focusing on just learning the basics for my own enjoyment.

I'm sure well see each other around the site -- maybe particularly in that Alfred's thread.

Welcome to the forum, Kenny! There's plenty here to keep you inspired, all right. Go get a marker and put a great big star on May 15th, as that's the date of our next quarterly AB forum online recital. You can start working on a piece to submit for it.

I'm a lurker, not a poster, but I find this site inspiring. Being an adult beginner can be really frustrating (just shy of five years myself), but I find the enthusiasm by the regular posters on this site infectious. It can usually get me over the hump of wanting to just give up sometimes.

What made me delurk, is I just ordered a Casio PX-320 myself. Unfortunately, my mother passed away last fall and I traded my Yamaha upright with my father for their 1941 Chickering & Sons baby grand, that orginally belonged to her mother. I love the piano, it is absolutely wonderful. But it has made practicing difficult. The upright had a practice pedal and was in a back bedroom so I could practice whenever I felt like it, which is usually after everyone goes to bed. Now the piano is in the center of the house so there is no escape. So I had to get something I could practice with headphones while family is in the house.

I was thinking about getting a Yamaha CP33, I liked the way the action felt. However, I play electric guitar in a rock band as a hobby and have just recently started to add simple keyboard parts. At our last gig I borrowed an Alexis Micron and added some organ sounds and it went over well. So since the PX-320 has many more available sounds and costs about half as much that's what I went for.

It is exciting for me to have the two separate aspects of my musical life (rock guitar, classical piano lessons) converging.


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Currently working on:
Satie - "Je Te Veux"
Mozart - "Viennese Sonatina no. 1"
Chopin - "Prelude in Bmin"

Hmmmm, I'll see what I can do. That's about 7 weeks away I guess, I should be able to do Twinkle Twinkle or something by then eh?

Thanks for the Welcome and Encouragement Monica!

Cool. I think you'll really like the PX-320. I'm enjoying mine a lot! And thanks for de-lurking and sharing that. I kinda came at this from a different angle myself. As I said I've always liked piano and have developed a serious love of piano sonatas and other work, but my involvement came through wanting to compose using midi and Sonar and types of software synthesizers. I'm currently focused a bit on composing ambient style music, but hope to do other types as well. Part of the mountain to climb is simply learning to play better in order to record the parts more easily.

I do just enjoy the beautiful sound of solo piano tremendously.