I haven't been here in a while but I'm kind of a book two'er. I reached America the Beautiful, got frustrated, and we've taken a break to do Minuet in G, and a Beethoven sonatina. I have to say I'm really enjoying the break from Alfred, although i'll probably go back. For some reason I got stuck on America.

I always find a good comment here. I don't remember who, but I just read,"Even the songs I'm pretty good at - I still make mistakes on". I hate to say that I'm happy to hear that others make mistakes also, but, well...I am. No matter how competent I am at playing each individual part, I rarely get through anything error free. I'm sure it's a concentration issue and I guess it will improve. I've been taking lessons for almost two years now.
Well, good luck to everyone. I'm not sure when I'll be back because I spend too much time here when I visit. I could be practicing after all.

Nice progress and recording Waltz.

I'm not too clear or sure as to what happened to your reply to my previous post but I believe that I caught a bit of it within nancy w's quote, and please, no apologies were ever needed or necessary. As you've already mentioned, we're all entitled to our own opinions, and mine is just another one among many. All is well.

Hope you had a good 4th as well.

Key Notes

Welcome 4evrBeginR! Sounds like you've put your wife's book 1 to great use and are progressing nicely. That's fabulous!

I enjoyed the Overture piece quite a lot, and am still going back to practice it once in a while.

Best of luck to you with book 2.

Key Notes

I liked Guantamera. It had a fun rhythm to it and was a very happy song to play

Nancy_W - I made copies of two of the pages when I was working on Canon in D. It was still difficult finding a way to place them on the “open book sized” music stand on top of my keyboard. I wound up having one page lying flat on top of the keyboard, and one page pinched between the music stand and the book. It was far from optimal, but it got the job done.

Undone

Waltz – Very nice job on Deep River. I really liked the tempo and dynamic changes between verses.

Undone

After a bit of experimentation I have discovered I can easily hold four sheets of paper on my piano without any overlap or any dangling off the edges. This makes it much nicer and I can get through the whole song without page turning stops.
The next version of the song I've started on is 5 pages though; so I guess I'll have to memorize on that one.

Thanks Key Notes, and thanks Undone! I really liked Deep River, it was great. Thanks for your comments

Theme from Symphony No. 6:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzAGQtl9dPk

Fascination:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDZkui96g-o

Loch Lomond:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0aueODUrsc

Had some free time around lunch today, so I recorded these three.

Love's Greeting is hard. . .

Waltz – Nice job on those recordings, but you know what’s really amazing to me? It’s that you did all three of those recently learned pieces during “some free time around lunch”. My ability to play a piece well starts to disintegrate rapidly after I move on to something else.

Undone

Wow, thanks Undone!

After I pass them, I still practice the "more recent" ones daily. Generally, I practice the "new piece" (one I'm learning), plus the three behind it. Thanks again, and as always, I highly value your thoughts regarding my playing,

Best,

Hello everyone, just joined this wonderful group.
I'll start off with a question. How critical is it to be able to recognize notes by ear? Even though I can read music, albeit slowly, still I am not good in the ear training department...something like calling out the white keys from middle C to the next C! Yet I can play some songs by ear!

Well, if you want to play music "by ear", I would assume it will be critical. Playing from sheet music, it is not as essential, but wouldn't hurt.

I agree with Waltz - I think if you can 'hear' when you play a wrong note, that you'll be good while reading music. Without that you can still play, but might not realize you're playing it wrong. There are exercises that you can do to train your ear better; but it isn't absolutely necessary.

Glad to hear that (no pun intended!), as I am beginning to feel insecure due to this weak ability. I have not tried to learn to hear notes and call them by name, but I was just wondering if this was a natural ability among piano players.

Are you currently on Alfred's 2?

Yes, I am. I think I'm 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through L2, as I sometimes skip some songs. My favorites are Guantanamera, Light and Blue, Hungarian Rhapsody #2 , Scherzo, Plaisir D’Amour, Waves of the Danube, Sakura, Village Dance, Brahms's Lullaby, The Riddle, Black Forest Polka, Divertimento in D, and Hava Nagila. I had some difficulty with most of the other ones,like Alexander's Ragtime song.

That's cool, welcome to the forum. On which piece are you now working?

I'm reviewing stuff. Here's the thing, I stopped piano practice for about 5 years (ouch!), as I got busy with all kinds of other things. However, I have been doing keyboard material, mostly learning by ear, but also looking up some sheet music. The good thing (for all of us)is that even after so many years, it takes about 30 minutes to play back a song that I did before with no mistakes, even better than before! That's encouraging.
I took Book 1 in Aug 1996 then paused for about a year, then took L2 I guess around 1999, off and on for about 2 years, then started various sheet music stuff for a while, then stopped practice completely since around 2004. Now I feel I'm back with vengeance. Wish me luck.

Ah, that is an interesting background. You have been playing for quite a while, even with the hiatuses, and I bet you're pretty good. This forum, and the Alfred threads, are full of dedicated people who provide mutual support in a friendly community. You should consider sticking around, it's fun hearing stories to which you can easily relate and sharing your own.

"How critical is it to be able to recognize notes by ear?"

I don't think I can name any note by ear. I know there are some people with perfect pitch, but I'm not sure that would really help.
Recognizing intervals seems to be learnable and more relevant. The ability to say that's a "C" doesn't strike me as being at all important. Maybe that's because I can't.

My two cents.

Love's Greeting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWAAXkmV9hg

This piece has really frustrated me. . .

I have actually passed the Aria from the Marriage of Figaro as well; I'm on Danny Boy.

Waltz, I have now turned to Solace, one of those songs I skipped before, and I'm finding it a bit challenging. It looks easy. I have to get used to playing G with the 4th left hand finger and stretch the 5th left hand finger to C, a good fifth interval for those two weak fingers.

MIM, I can relate to your experiences with that piece. There are a LOT of stretches in it, but I think it is one of those pieces that just gets easier as you practice. I think that is an excellent piece to learn, however. It is challenging and it sounds nice to play. Out of curiosity, did you learn La Bamba when you last played from this book?

Yes, I did La Bamba and I thought it was fun, but I never mastered it. It got messy after a few measures! I'll be going back to it soon.

That's great you found it to be fun, but in order for it to be fun you had to play it pretty well, which, to me, is an accomplishment. Feel free to make recordings and post them here. I'll listen to them, and there are many here that are working or have been recently working on the Theme from Solace.

Yes, that's why I didn't list La Bamba as one of my favorites, because I still can't play it well.

I will post some of the songs I can play once I get set up for
that, and would appreciate your feedback.

How many times do you guys & gals generally have to play a song like Solace or La Bamba before you learn it? I mean from stone cold to playing it pretty smoothly, with maybe a couple of mistakes, but no longer hunting for notes. Twenty times, 30 times. Three days, one week? Just curious.

You're already on Theme from Solace? Didn't you start this book last week? Regardless, it will vary by piece, by person, and by practice style. I dedicate around 45 minutes a day to practicing my current "new piece". I'm currently on Danny Boy, and I'm guessing by the time I finish it will have taken me 7-8 days (only a conjecture) as opposed to the one before it "Aria from MOF" took only 2 days. As by my recordings, I don't consider myself to really "master" the songs, I simply play them to where I feel comfortable, which is another variation in any estimate you'll receive.

Did I start the book last week? Seemed longer.... 30 years ago, I used to be able to play at the intermediate level, but that was then. I've been away too long, so I have to start again from scratch....

I'm asking to get some perspective. If beginners are moving about the same speed as me, mastering a song after 10 to 20 passes, then I am doing something wrong. But if it takes a beginner 100 times to learn a song, then I just need to practice more. My head is saying this music looks simply, and my hands are saying this is hard!

Thanks for the input, though. Sounds like I need to practive a bit more than I have been doing.