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Light and Blue was fun, and not too hard for me, as I had to help my son learn it a few months back and the tune was familiar. Hungarian Rhapsody gave me fits, but my teacher seemed to think that I played it better than I thought I did. Morning Has Broken was relatively easy after beating my head against the wall with Hungarian...I got the original down pat, optional version 1 sounded so-so...I tried optional version 2 but I just could not get the hang of it, and my teacher said to just skip it.

I'm working on Alexander's Ragtime Band and Solace right now. Alexander's has been a fun piece to learn, I'm enjoying it a lot. Solace seems much more difficult, and is not as "fun" of a tune...but I'm hoping to be able to play some "real" ragtime someday, and I think the left hand movements in Solace are probably good practice, so I'm muscling through it!

Hi Everyone! Every once in a while, I have to check in to this thread to see how all of you are doing! I'm one of those renegades who ventured over to the "Dark Side" and dumped Book 2 for the Masterwork Classics series. I'm happily ensconced in Vol 3. mom3gram - I actually bought all 10 volumes, so by the time I finish them up, I'll probably be close to being Six Feet Under and I don't mean the TV show!

I still use AIO Book 2 as I think the theory in it, is way better than most of the other series that are in the vein of Masterwork Classics. By happy coincidence, I've pretty much finished up Bourlesq in MC 3 which is also on pg. 100 in Book 2. So I kinda have an idea of where I might be if I had stuck with Book 2. There are some differences between the two though. I've learned to play Alberti Bass a lot earlier (it's in AIO Book 3) but I've sacrificed probably some chord-playing facility, which tends to be more important for pop music. It seems that the pieces are a little longer in MC than in AIO 2. A lot of these classical composers and teachers of the time wrote an endless number of Sonatinas, three of which I'll be coming up to. The good thing about them is that you really feel like you've learned something impressive. The bad thing is that it's like learning 3 AIO songs at the same time. Oh well, it's kind of what I signed up for at this point and I remain glad I did.

About a month ago, I opened up AIO 2 and played Streets of Laredo pretty easily and played through Polovetsian Dances a few times. The authors did a good job with that one. I see on pg. 101 is Arkansas Traveller. I think I'll pass on that!

No matter what method book you eventually settle on, just keep plodding through! We'll all get there sooner or later! Blow The Man Down is starting to fade like a distant nightmare!

Hey Craig, nice to hear its going well. I still keep tabs on the AIO2 crowd too just to see what everyone is up to. I've bought so much sheet music in the last 2 years - I doubt I could ever play it all. But its nice to dream.

Jim

My main goal is to be able to play from fake books for popular music.Starting to get into that idea a little with the Hungarian piece (with the various left hand styles).

The comment about an unexciting piece sounding so much better when the teacher plays it rings true. And that's with out the embellishments that the teacher can use when he was demonstrating how the fake book basic melody and chords can be brought up to various levels depending on how much he threw in there.

Someday.........


just havin' fun,

Jim

Oh, yeah! When my brother-in-law visits and plays my DP, it sounds SO beautiful, even when he is just nooding around or playing from my AIO book. LOL When I play, it still sounds like a plodding beginner.

mom3gram - I know exactly what you mean only too well! It seems that no matter what method you use, that at this point in our musical development, we still have that "beginner sound" that reminds me of a new school teacher playing a song for her class where it sounds like she's "not quite there" yet. There is a "crispness" and "surety" to people who've been playing for many years that we lack. I just hope I get to the point of playing where people will say "Wow, that sounds so good", rather than that implied look that silently always says "Nice ... you're getting better."

quick piece of advice to the wise. get out of any method book as quick as you can an into classical repertoire. all methods pretty much teach the same stuff but keep you in a box, especially alfreds. thats what i have learned. also, there boring. playing classical and older music is soo much fun.

Not if you aren't interested in classical.

And let's remember that this is an Alfred's method specific thread.

mom3gram....isn't P'lasir D'more a beautiful song??? I have memorized it and play it all the time!!! I love the harmony. I haven't worked in book 2 for while, gotta get back into the groove. Working in a couple of different books, but need to get back into a regular schedule. That's what is good about a teacher, sort of keeps you on course! I'm so glad this thread has resurfaced..missed you guys!!! Have you seen Graciecat????

but alfred kind of is a classical method. and believe it or not the only real way to get good at piano is to be classically trained but ill shutup now also who isnt interested in classical music thats where it all started. we learn from the greats. to me playing classical music on the piano is like nothing else

Yes, Nancymae, it's one of my favorites so far. I like all the slow ones with the broken chords - and not just because they are easier.

Joe, many of us like the method books because we need/like the structure. I am not ready or able to just jump into classical yet. If you are, more power to you.

Hmmm....I thought I saw a post from Graciecat recently, but I was reading a couple of old posts today so maybe that's where I saw her name.

By the way, for those who have finished "Scherzo", did any of you find it very awkward/difficult to play that both hands 8va at the end?

joe84 - I do strongly suspect that more than a few people who are now "greats" in Classical Music had the same Alfred's Faber's, Bastien and Thompson method books (or child variants) as we do. Althought, I'm not using AIO 2 as my primary source of learning for new material, I use it frequently as a reference source as well as AIO 3. I'll be forever grateful for the launch the Alfred's Adult series has given me!

I also suspect that if Mozart were somehow magically transported to the future, he might enjoy Lady Gaga and Katy Perry more than Philip Glass. At the very least, I'd think he'd have appreciated them more at a party! I'd also like to imagine what Bach and Monk might discuss if they ever met.

The other day I was emptying my CD changer and pulled a fairly diverse selection which included Ewa Podles Handel Arias, Glee: the Music Vol 6, Charles Ives Songs:Roberta Alexander, Sir Malcolm Sargent's G&S's HMS Pinafore, and Masterwork Classics vol 3. It's all music! All different, but all the same if you enjoy it!

Anyone know what happened to the Book 1 graduation banners at the bottom of our posts?

mom3gram - Good question. I thought it was something I had done to Internet Explorer's settings. It also did not display in Mozilla firefox either. The funny thing is, that at least for me, for a couple of days, it would disappear and then come back later in the day, but now it's totally gone! There must be a problem with whatever server is hosting that image! Help!

Wow! I had to go all the way back to page 5 to find this thread. I don't really have anything new to add, just wanting to get the thread back up where it can be found. I'm still polishing "Plaisir D'Amour" and "Introduction and Dance". Having a bit of a problem with a couple of measures in "Intro & Dance" but I will get them ironed out. Almost time to get the Christmas music out. LOL

Thanks for bumping the thread, mom. Book 2 is definitely moving much slower than book 1. I'm not enjoying the pieces as much, either. I finished Solace and am working on La Bamba now. Yuck. Like I've said before, though, I'm ok with bulldozing my way through pieces that I don't enjoy as long as I feel that I'm progressing.

As for my supplementary pieces, she passed me on Pachabel's Canon, and I've started working on Spinnerlied by Albert Ellmenreich, which I'm loving! What a fun piece to play! It looks and sounds tricky, but it's been pretty easy to learn so far....I can now play most of it at a decent pace. It's meant to be played fast, though....so putting some speed in it is what is going to take some time.

Is that "Spinning Song"? That's one I'm hoping to get to one of these days. It sounds like fun.

I never did get through "La Bamba". I put it aside, and will come back to it eventually. From what I've seen on this thread, a lot of people either skipped it altogether, some even with teachers' permission, and many just bailed on it after several attempts. I used to have the Ritchie Valens record of it when I was a teenager, and I liked to dance to it, so I would like to be able to play even this not so great rendition of it, but it was making me crazy. I've never completely skipped a piece in Alfred, although I have put a few on the back burner for a while before going back to them. Sometimes it helps.

Yes, "Spinning Song," that's it. Here is a pretty good rendition I found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JG6ZMn8gyc Like I said, it sounds and looks a lot more difficult than it really is, just gonna take some time to get some speed in it. The fingering in some spots is kinda funky, not what I would expect, but once my teacher made recommendations and wrote some finger numbers in, it fell into place rather quickly.

I haven't read through much of this thread...I thought it was just me with La Bamba, didn't realize so many other people had trouble with it as well. It took me a solid week to be able to play it slowly HS. Just barely started playing it HT very very slowly. The syncopation is giving me fits!

Wow, not much activity in this thread. Well, it was an exciting lesson for me this week!

I think my teacher realized how much I hated La Bamba. Could have been the "Ughhhhhhh.....I *hate* this one" that I mumbled when she asked me to play it, I suppose. LOL. Anyway, it was definitely far from polished, but getting better, and she said she wasn't going to make me practice it anymore. So huge relief there.

She also passed me on Mexican Hat Dance, which was a pleasant surprise. I've only been working on that one a week. It was coming along, but I felt like it needed a little more work. But I'm ok with moving along ;-)

I've started on Festive Dance and Scherzo, both of which seem infinitely easier than the previous couple of pieces (or maybe it's just me? I dunno).

Anyway....huge accomplishment to move forward a few pages and ESPECIALLY to get the heck off of La Bamba LOL!

But that's not all! To be brutally honest, I hadn't been practicing my Alfred's pieces as much over the last couple of weeks. Probably because I hate them LOL. But I have been practicing the heck out of the Spinning Song, my supplementary piece. It just sounds lovely to me, and it's so much fun to play! Not to mention that my kids love it too...they walk around the house humming the tune :-). So...last week my teacher said it sounded pretty good, dynamics were pretty good, and that I should just focus on picking up the tempo this week. OK. So I played the heck out of it this week, over and over and over, gradually picking up the tempo. My teacher was really impressed with my progress and, to my surprise, said we're done with this one, let's pick another one:

:drumroll:

(are you ready for this?)

Fur Elise! WOW. Really hitting the big time now! This is real music, folks! The gloves are off. I'm playing on the big kids playground now. No more Mr Nice Guy! Can you tell I'm proud? LOL. Well....proud and nervous. I think my teacher overestimates my abilities sometimes. I only just got the sheet music yesterday, so I only fumbled through the first 5 measures or so thus far. I'm looking forward to the challenge, but I'm a little scared too. No doubt this is going to be a LONG term project, and I'm ok with that. But that nagging little voice of doubt in my head is telling me that this is an impossible feat for me. Well....we shall see ;-)