Believe it or not, our 17th quarterly Piano World Adult Beginners Forum recital approaches! The recital will be posted some time on the 15th of February, which means that the submissions must be in by 9:00 pm EST, February 14. Please note this deadline is very firm; I cannot start working on the recital until it is closed, and once it is closed, no new entries can be added.

While any and all styles of music are welcome, we do ask that it be piano related.

If you are fairly new to the piano, please do not be intimidated by some of the talent here in the ABF. We all consider ourselves to be beginners even though we may have been playing for some time. And, we LOVE to hear recordings from folks new to the keyboard. So even if you’re on your first Alfred’s method book, we would *really* enjoy hearing from you.

Recital submissions should be in MP3 format. The maximum size of the file is 20 MB. We recommend encoding the recording at 192 kbs with a constant bitrate, as that works best with the online streaming player. At that bitrate, a 20 MB file works out to be about 7 minutes in length. Your recording will be normalized when placed in the consolidated zip files, but your original link will still be available for those who want it.

If you are new to recording your music, there are several threads in the forum archives that address the ways and means. See the "Important Topics in the AB Forum" thread stickied at the top of the AB forum page. Audacity is an excellent "free" recording application that can be used.

Submitting Your Recording:

We will be using again the absolutely marvelous automatic web-based recital program that mahlzeit wrote for us. And thanks to LaValse's extremely generous offer to host the recital program and zip files on his server, it is no longer necessary to upload your mp3 files to box.net or some other file hosting server prior to submitting it to the recital. You will upload your mp3 file to the recital server as part of the recital submission process.

When you have your mp3 file ready, go to:

http://abf.make247.co.uk/

and follow the instructions there. Once you have uploaded your info to the automated recital website, you will receive a confirmation e-mail. You will have the opportunity to revise your submission any time up until the deadline. If you have any problems at all using the new website, or if you do not receive a confirmation e-mail within a few hours, just PM me. If you have not participated in past recitals using this software, you may want to submit your recital piece at least a day in advance in case you run into any problems with it. (Though there should be no problems. Mahlzeit is a genius. )

Mahlzeit's website will use the following submission template to be filled out along with your attached music file. You may want to have your responses to these fields prepared in advance so all you have to do is cut and paste:

Performer's Name: {forum ID and real name if you’d like}
Where you are located: {optional}
Avatar image link: {optional}
Experience: {Yrs/Mos of piano playing experience}
Link to YouTube or other video: {optional}
Home page link: {optional}
Title of piece/composer:
Source of music: {sheet music, improvised score, play-by-ear, etc}
Instrument used: {Piano make, keyboard model, etc.}
Recording method: {audacity, Zoom, digital to PC, etc.}
Constructive technical feedback wanted: {Yes/No}
Additional Info: {Your thoughts on the piece, etc. etc.}


The due date for all submissions is 9:00 pm US EASTERN TIME on February 14, 2010.

Did I mention that the 9:00 pm deadline was firm?

Think "consistency of concrete."

By submitting a piece to the recital, you are certifying that it is an amateur recording of your own performance.

Again, the recital order will be presented in the order the pieces were received, so the sooner you send in your piece, the higher you will be on the list! This serves to reward the folks who feel on top of their game, and it's about as fair as I can think of for all parties. You can revise your entries on the template (e.g., thoughts about your piece, adding YouTube links, and the like) any time and not lose your place in the recital queue, but if you resubmit your recording at any time, for any reason, you will be bumped to the end of the list.

Should anyone have any questions at all on what to do or how to do it, this is the place to ask. Remember, there are NO stupid questions, as we have a steady flow of new members in AB forum for whom this is their first recital, so your questions will probably help to eliminate other members’ problems. Please ask away!

Let's all go out and brave that Red Dot and share a lot of beautiful music!

I'm ready to submit, but I don't wanna be first.

I'm in the middle of another file upload so I'll have to wait until that is finished before I think of uploading my piece. My upload would likely take too long otherwise causing it to fail. I wouldn't want that now would I?

I'm sure someone will get something uploaded before me as I'll be at least a half hour.

Oh, not already?

I'm going to be an 11th hour submitted again.

Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack!

Cathy

Eek, already!

I'll go ahead and submit a Chopin prelude that I made a decent recording of a couple of days ago, which I am happy with. Though I'm hoping to have something else at performance level by the 14th (either Open Arms by Journey or Eyes On Me from FF8), and I'll replace it and bump myself down the list if I do. If I can't get anything else to where I'm happy with it by then I'll just leave the prelude up.

lol Didn't even know there was a recital going on! Wanted to post my piece in the Feb. piano bar, but since this is up, decided to enter it here instead!

I'll submit an entry too, I'm working on a short beginner piece by Beethoven right now.

Question: what is the easiest way to link to one's avatar in the optional fields area of the submission form? Thanks in advance.

JF

1a. (Firefox) Rightclick your avatar in any of your posts, choose "copy image location",
1b. (IE) Rightclick your avatar in any of your posts, choose "properties", mark the text under "address", CTRL-C to copy,

2. go to the field in the form, press ctrl-v to paste

Bunneh - Thanks much! I started in that direction but didn't think to chose "properties".

JF

Hi can I use a harpsichord sound for my submission ? (digital piano) Or is it only piano sound? thanks

Harpsichord sound is fine, Albany. We've even had some of the full-blown "band in the box" submissions with other accompaniments, too. All that's necessary is that a keyboard of some sort was involved in making the music.

I can't believe we've got 18 submissions already!!

Whew! My first e-cital/recital ever. Yes, the little red light does play a factor.

Thanks for setting this up, Monica.

This is fun!

Glen

I don't know if it was the song, but this time I was really beginning to get annoyed with the re-takes. It's such a predicament. In the beginning, our first takes are fresh, but the mistakes kind of throw a monkey wrench into it. Then, when we finally get the piece reasonably under our fingers, it's lost it's freshness and musically it ain't too good although the notes may be right. Do you share this dilemma? The answer may be to set lower expectations as far as pieces, choose something that can be done without wearing out the record button and have a more spontaneous result. Thanks for listening to the rant. In May I'll probably be back to 10 redos and leaving a trail of expletives from the piano to the living room.

Andy

Similar thoughts shared. Maybe something light and bright for May... flowers and all you know.

I've taken the liberty to familiarize myself with some of the pieces already showing on the list.

Sorry, Ken, but when I search for, "Minuet fait par Monsieur Bohm" on You Tube I get:

"No videos found for “Minuet fait par Monsieur Bohm”"

and this redirected search: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Minuet+fait+par+Monsieur+Bohm&search_type=&aq=f

After the initial disappointment of having no search results, the topic of the redirected search made me laugh (juvenile, I know).

So, Ken, here's wishing your submission is much more in tune and better sounding than these search results!

Mines in and trust me when I say I had to dig deep for this one!

I ended up playing an original piece by ear I've been using to practice fingering and scales with.

I'm doing something really stupid and that is to restart the recording every time I make a mistake. While this is a good method should you want to make a zillion attempts at getting a good one, it is inefficent as hell..(not to mention nerve racking!)

From now on I'm going with the *leave the recorder on the entire time* method. My wife, dog, cat and sanity will be all the better for it I'm sure.

Battle of Britain?

Argh! I don't know if I'll be ready to submit in time. The two recordings I have now are... in a word, sucky.

LOL

Cathy

Eh up steady on now (many Brits in 'ere) Hmmmm, well I guess I'm almost ready to take a crack at one of two possibles, going to be a busy weekend!
- SC

Just got back into town - we were up in the mountains for our anniversary, for 10 days. (I did practice every day - took my keyboard with.)

Holy moly! 21 submissions on the first day?! Time for me to get really busy recording! Going with the Bach this time - hope I can get a decent recording soon!

LOL. That was funny

I can't believe it's time for another recital. Time sure is flying by. I sure would like to try to squeeze something in, but my past track record hasn't been to good. I do enjoy listening to everyones efforts...keep it up.

Les

Translation: "sucky" for ShiroKuro means "near sublime perfection" for most of the rest of us

JF

The ABF server has been down all afternoon (UK). Resolved now. If you failed to upload earlier, try again, it should be OK. Let me know if not. Ta.

You know, for 16 recitals in a row I have been using the stop-start method. It involves... click on Stop, Control+F [file], Control+N [new song], N [do i want to save previous], and then click on Start... each time I make a mistake.

No wonder I have been gradually worn down mentally by that Red Dot! Time to try the 'leave it alone' method!

I just played my recital piece a few times without having the camera and red dot going. That sure felt nice for a change.

I usually go with the just keep playing strategy especially early on when I know the entire piece still needs work. Just remember that playing the rest of the piece after some sort of mistake should at least be easier since you messed up and took all that pressure off.

However, once I get a few decent takes I can get into the stop/start mode especially if I have not made it all that far before the unfortunate blunder. However, I will still play to completion from time to time just to keep the other parts of the song fresh for that time when I do make it there so I don't bomb that part due to lack of playing it. It can be a difficult balance sometimes.

There may be one or two points in my recital recording where I managed to hit some adjacent notes but when I go back and ponder exactly how many notes I hit correctly during that 4:06 or so it really is a good performance overall!

JF, I am torn between whether I should protest or say thank you! While I do appreciate the vote of confidence, in this case sucky does really mean sucky. Sigh. I had a good practice this morning though, so I remain hopeful.

And by the way, I highly recommend the "play through" approach, it does something to the nerves when you stop and re-start the recorder at every mistake.

My approach is to make several "practice" recordings, until suddenly one of them sounds good enough to submit. I try to give the best possible perform I can, but I try not to get hung up on "I need to get a recording to submit." So I always assume I am going to play all the way to the end, and use whatever recording I get as a learning tool. And I try to refrain from judging the playing as I play (i.e. no thinking "oh, this could be the clip I submit"). I just try to focus on playing it and enjoying it. It might take a little longer this way, but for me anyway, it makes the recording process a lot less stressful.

Of course, that's what I'm saying now. Ask me again on Feb 13th...