Like Waltz said, some songs took me a couple of days, roughly 3-5 sittings, each for about 30-45 minutes. Some other songs like Solace and La Bamba I just get stuck and go for something else. I would say, on average, it takes me a total of 5 hours spread over a few days to play well the "average" book 2 song. That's my best guess.

The thing is that if the piece looks reasonable to you, and you got the essence of the song, and you like it, you should be able to do it rather fast. There is no way to feel that way with all the songs in book 2, though. These particular pieces seemed easy for me:

Guantanamera, Light and Blue, Hungarian Rhapsody #2 , Scherzo, Waves of the Danube, Sakura, Village Dance, Brahms's Lullaby, The Riddle, Black Forest Polka, and Hava Nagila...at least these are the ones I remember now.

MIM, did you learn Danny Boy?

It's pretty tough so far

Nope,looked at it and tried it a little bit but pushed it aside!
I know I'm gonna do them all soon, no doubt about that.

That helps, thanks. I also started doing as Waltz suggests, playing each one longer at each sitting. Instead of playing a song a few times then come back the next day, I am now playing it 30 minutes in one sitting for the same song. That's working.

BTW, I didn't care for a lot of songs so far in book 2. I had a hard time liking Guantanamera. Had to literally force myself to learn it. Hungarian Rhapsody #2 was ok.

4ever, listen to the actual song (Guantanamera) or a good recording of it, I think you will like it..check on YouTube. Of course people have different tastes.

ok,here is me doing Guantanamera. This is the first test of uploading and checking the quality of both my playing and the recordi Alfred Book 2 Practice ng. Comments?

MIM, great job
. You sounded very comfortable playing that, you really nailed it

Aria from the Marriage of Figaro:

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

Still progressing through Danny Boy
For anyone that's played it: on the second page, the fingering 4-1-4 for the left hand, that feels like crap, anyone agree?

haven't tried it yet, but sounded good to my ear.

Thanks MIM ,

For the question, I meant it for Danny Boy. On the second page there is a measure that has the LH playing (if I can remember) Ab-G-F Using 4-1-4. I see they did it so the 5 finger will be conveniently placed to play the upcoming Eb, but still, it feels awkward for me.

Haven't done Danny Boy either, but I agree,I would use finger 3 on E flat..It's not too much of a stretch to play E flat with finger 3 then finger 2 on B flat. It's also consistent with the scale fingering for E flat.

Waltz, how did you do on Alexander's Rag Time?

It's been a while back, but I remember the first page being fairly easy, while the second being tricky and difficult. I didn't start recording my performances until Calypso Carnival, so I don't have a video of how I played it. To be honest, I didn't Like ARB that much. Are you working on that now?

I'm going back from the beginning and working on all the songs that I played or skipped before. Alexander's Rag Time is such one. The song is not bad, upbeat and lively, but it is moderately hard to play.

Good! I pretty much have managed a similar rendition. If you really want some comment, I would say, the tempo in the second to last measure (scale part) is too hurried - keep it nice and even like the rest of the music before. Great job.

I don't like ARB either. I spent a week on Solace (a mexican serenade), but after Solace, I seriously dislike La Bamba, La Raspa, Mexican Hat Dance, The Streets of Laredo. This stuff is driving me crazy. I decided to do something I didn't want to do when I started this book, skip forward. Last night, I spend half an hour on Divertimento in D. I am much happier now. I thought I was going to abandon this book, but Brahm's Lullaby is lovely, and the music from Divertimento on looks all right, so if I stick with the classical pieces, I'll be fine.

That's great Waltz. You didn't make any mistakes. Good job! Now for the second musical idea in measure 5, you need to cresendo; one louder then the next from f maybe to ff by the third one, then drop back to p for the reprise of the initial musical idea. Go heavier on the first note of the measure 2, and every third note, like a dance. In measure 9, your 16th notes are off, should be a bit faster. Finally use a metronome and speed yourself up a little at a time until the whole thing is 50% faster from your current tempo, it would then be perfect!

Great comments 4ever. By the way, it takes a while to record one of these pieces, especially when you haven't mastered them completely, as you have to stop here and there and go back from beginning every time. It would be nice to record it section by section and then combine them! Is that possible? Ot is that cheating?

Thanks for the comments. Regarding the 16th notes: pianonoodalexman had them being much faster, and he generally plays as by the recordings on the cd, as opposed to as written (generally). I don't really think mine are "off", but they could be played faster I suppose, but I didn't feel it necessary. I am certainly not playing them as 8th notes...

I have often pondered this. I then considered various scenarios and their ramifications. My ultimate conclusion was this:

Could I play, individually, every measure of the Revolutionary Etude? The answer is probably yes! Could I even come close to playing them together? Absolutely not. I probably couldn't even string two or three measures together. This is at one end of the extreme. The other end could be argued as well. Pieces that have many repeats are an example of. . . is it really necessary to repeat this page 3 times, without error, to feel I've mastered the piece? No, I wouldn't think so at least. If you can do it once, you can do it thrice. Precision comes with time, not learning.

For some inspiration on how to play ARB check out this guy. One day I'll be able to play like that...doesn't matter if you like this kind of music or not, it's the style and ease of playing that gets you with this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLreM3gs6N4&feature=related

Who's your favorite player?

My intermediate goal is to play Ballad Pour Adeline. I like Clayderman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JaHNMoVjpo

I don't really have a favorite player, but I did really enjoy watching the performance of Clayderman. That's a nice song

This is the song that made him popular some 20 years ago. It has some of Beethoven's Fur Elise style and technique I think.

I wonder who Adeline is. . .

play that well and you'll get your own Adeline.:-)

You shouldn't stop when you are recording. Just plan on recording yourself playing the same thing many times in one session. You may need several sessions. It's all normal.

There is a limit to how many edits you could do for one piece before the flow seems all wrong. Some pros say 3 is max, others say 5. It is really up to the artist. Obviously pros are very critical, so they are often editing not for mistakes but for feel, interpretation, but certainly for mistakes as well.

I've read comments from professional pianists about how they would play the same piece from beginning to end several time for the recording engineer. They say 5 times is the minimum to choose something good; 7 to 8 times is common. When they like the intro from the first one but the middel from the 3rd one and ending of the 4th one, they splice them together. One pianist say that he doesn't like to splice where there isn't a natural pause in the music, so he would replay certain part again for the recording. This is standard practice for an audio recording.

When it comes to video this is why the pros use at least 3 cameras. More camera angles allows them to splice different sections together while switching to the view of another camera and the audience just think it was intentional.

Many Youtube videos are often "live" performances. People use one camera, which does not allow them to make edits without it becoming really obvious an edit was made. Most music videos are not live though. They shoot the video without recording the sound.

Live performances always have mistakes. That's why if you say here's a recording of my live performance, your listener will automatically understand you've done no edits, and well mistakes are part of being human.

When studio recording first came out, the purest were all up in arms about how that's not real because in the studio, the artist cheats with impunity. That's why even today, the ultimate measure of someone's ability is still in front of a live audience. This is also why my kids piano teacher makes every child give recitals even if all they could play was Old MacDonald Had a Farm using just the black keys.

If you watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo82ipPkTRY&feature=related, you'll notice that not only did the then much younger Li win the competition, but he won despite making lots of mistakes! No one is perfect.

Hmm... I haven't seen others version this... never heard the Alfred CD either. However, I've heard the actual Marriage of Figaro opera many many many times. It's wonderful.

So far, everything I've played in both books I know well. I mean not that I know how to play them, but I've heard them in their original form somewhere (except for the stuff written by Palmer), most if not all of them were not composed for the piano. For instance, Guantanamera was a huge hit song on the radio when I was a kid; must have been 40 years ago. Didn't like it then, don't like it now. In book 3, in the ambitious section, everything there were originally composed for the piano.

This song brings back memories of the 70's for sure. Adeline was the daughter of composer Paul de Senneville who wrote this nice little song. He ask a bunch of pianists to audition to record the song, and one of them was young Richard Clayderman, whom Senneville picked. Millions of singles sales later, Clayderman was forever associated with the song.

In the 70's there was a huge wave of light-weight classical music including Clayderman and Paul Mauriat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfkIWnThTB4
My parents had these LP's playing all the time at home.