Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Clair de lune from Scratch - YouTube Piano Lessons

Hugh, Thanks for the answer. Yes, it does make sense. No need to re-respond - I will wait for the webinar to hear how it's supposed to sound, etc.

CMOHR

Hi Hugh,
What a great set of lessons and great piece to work on. You really had me hooked explaining the wonderful story as backgroud. I'm a rank beginner working through Alfred AIO book #2 and had thought it would be a long while before I could tackle such beautiful music. Now I can't wait to get home from the office and start on the first 3 measures. Thanks so much for your efforts.

Hugh, I don't know if you're watching this forum *during* the webinar, but we're all in the ustream chat. And by the way, something is off with the sound because the piano sounds like and electric guitar. Your voice is fine though.

yeah, if you open a streaming page, ie click that link on the bottom of your pages, you'll get OUR chat applet which works.

oh and I have the same 76 key keyboard: I just drop the lower e_flat

I can't get to chat on ustream, so will use the forum for now. But, I'm here.

Many thanks to everyone who participated in today's Webinar! Sorry about the early glitches with the audio levels, the goofy camera focus and the buggy chat applets; this was definitely a learning experience for me, but I hope that everyone had fun nonetheless!

The recorded video from today's webinar is already up on the www.PianofromScratch.com website. Again, many thanks for all the terrific questions, and I look forward to "seeing" everyone at the next webinar!

I just wanted to thank Hugh for the fantastic webinar! (even tho I couldn't get in on the chat).
The whole set-up and ideas behind the webcast worked out great! I completely enjoyed being able to take part although just as an observer!
Thanks again, I think you've got a great thing going, Hugh.

Cheers!
CMOHR

Thanks, CMohr! I was a little frazzled with the initial bugs, and more nervous than waiting backstage at Carnegie Hall! I do think this format has a LOT of potential - there's something utterly amazing about being able to teach class piano live with students dotted all over the globe at once! I thought the questions from that chat participants were really, really terrific - I just hope my answers were clear enough and helpful

Can't wait to do this again - hopefully sometime early November! And next time, I'd love to have you participate in the chat room!

Hugh, I'd also like to thank you for the webinar. Although I didn't register for it (and in fact, I stumbled across it early into it) I did enjoy it, and did in fact get a lot out of it. Now I need to get caught up, but that will happen. Hopefully, I can make an useful comment during the next one! And don't worry about the glitches, Hugh... everyone gets opening-night jitters!

Hugh, thank you very much for your very insightful lesson on Saturday @ webinar. Those are very valuable lesson. I surely have learned a lot from you. Can't wait for the next lesson. Thanks again.


Joy (joyjane1028)

Glad to hear it went reasonably well, sorry I couldn't join you as planned. I had a quick look at the recording but couldn't get them to play smoothly, is there any way to download them?

I have to agree the piano sounded terrible, too much gain maybe?

I accidentally had the piano and voice mics switched on my mixer, but didn't realize it until the chat applet finally kicked in (around 40 minutes in - i think it was my own browser's fault) and was able to read everyone's frantic texts telling me about the piano sound! LOL!
I was able to fix up the sound levels for the rest of the webinar. Definitely one to chalk up for the learning curve!
Once the chat was up and running properly, it was so cool to be able to react in real time to everyone's questions and comments!
I'm in the process of downloading the video file from the webinar (I might edit and chop it up to remove the first 40 minutes of offensive piano levels) and will make it available soon on my websites for download and viewing.

I'll be scheduling more webinars very soon. This looks to be an exciting and fun way to enjoy group lessons in realtime over the internet! Hope to see you at the next one, BazC!

Excellent - thanks Hugh!

Lesson #56, m. 41 & 42 Overview

We're just about to start one of the most difficult portions of the entire piece. I explain what makes this part so hard, between the twisting left hand runs and the challenging double-notes in the right hand, then give a preview of a creative solution to make it much easier to play (essentially, using the right hand to once again come to the "rescue" of the left hand). In the next lessons, I'll break down this creative fingering bit by bit, so don't worry - with a little patience and some careful practice, I think you'll be surprised at how well you'll be able to tackle this yourself!

Isn't this way too difficult for beginners to even contemplate?

gabeh98: I am a beginner (5 months with a cheapo keyboard, recently finished Alfred bk#1, never played any instrument before, no teacher) and over the past weekend have managed to get through the first 12 lessons and can manage the first 10 measures without major pauses. At several points I tried to "cheat" and jump a bar ahead of whatever last lesson I had viewed. Each time I was quite intimidated and had trouble working out exactly what was required. Each time when I then viewed the appropriate lesson for that measure, it all came together readily, if not with ease. Measure 10 in particular was such a mystery to me when I first read it that I was sure I would not be playing it for quite some time. After viewing the lesson and an hour of practice, however, I seem to have it down reasonably well.

Hugh: You cannot believe the excitement and childlike joy that I'm experiencing playing a bar like #10 when I thought it was totally beyond my reach just a few hours earlier. Thank you so much. At least through the first dozen or so, the lessons seem perfectly paced to me. One thing about bars 9 and 10 is that they practically beg you to play another measure, so I can't wait for my next session on #11.

Hugh, I was unable to listen to your Webinar so I watched the replay and found it to be very informative. I wish I had learned some of your fingering suggestions before I tackled the piece some years ago. Most of my fingering has been "learned in" and may be difficult to change now but I did get many other suggestions, such as posture at the piano, which I will work on. I hope to watch the next Webinar live and, once again, thank you for all you do.

Hey, can anyone join in here?

I'm finding all this activity truly inspirational and I totally take my hat off to anyone who has been playing for 5 months and attempts a piece like this.

I've also been learning Claire (although not from Hugh's wonderful lessons). I've been practicing the tricky semi-quavery bit in the middle and made this recording. It's slow and without sustain (all the better to show up the problems):

http://www.box.net/shared/u9iocbv8u6

I'm happy for any kind of critique/comments - really, I am!

I want to get this right before speeding up. There is one obvious mistake toward the end where my LH falls on the wrong note, but apart from that I'm not aware of mistakes, so if anyone hears anything, please let me know.

Hugh,

I fully understand your approach to Claire de Lune on these lessons... you need to go slowly and deliberately in order to convey the knowledge of the piece to us. BUT... I've seen and heard your playing of this for PianoDisc (the background video was posted earlier) and, of course, it's different. Here's my question... when you prepare for playing this expressively, how do you approach your interpretation? Any suggestions for us (of course, you have to learn to crawl before you attempt a 4-minute mile...) that can help us when we finally get the whole thing in our fingers? If you want to wait to address this until the lessons are completed, that's fine... we'll get there eventually!

gabeh98:
JimF. said,"... I am a beginner (5 months with a cheapo keyboard, recently finished Alfred bk#1, never played any instrument before, no teacher) and over the past weekend have managed to get through the first 12 lessons and can manage the first 10 measures without major pause.....Each time I was quite intimidated and had trouble working out exactly what was required. Each time when I then viewed the appropriate lesson for that measure, it all came together readily, if not with ease....After viewing the lesson and an hour of practice, however, I seem to have it down reasonably well."

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JimF. I am at a loss for words. I am a beginner too, JimF - you have just inspired me.
Joy