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Post 4000! I guess we're popular, if not super-talented ...yet! We're slowly "transitioning" to "greatness", Alfred book by book!

I agree with you Craig. It's much easier to pedal smoothly on Raisins and Almonds than it is on Scarborough Fair. Even in the 14th and 15th measures where I occasionally fumble a little. I know what you mean by "breathes better" but I am at a loss to explain it to you. I was reluctant to start pedaling on Raisins when I first started playing it after the trouble I had with SF but when I started I quickly found I had nowhere near as difficult a time with it.

Oh Lord...PEDALING!!! I have not been pedaling yet...except backwards!!!! I have been on a digital with no pedals, and now with my new piano, I'd better go back and learn this. Note to self: ask teacher tonight!! Those things aren't just pretty decorations!!!!!

My husband watched me play last night and I had told him about my left hand sounding louder and he said that I am playing with my hand stationary using my arm instead of my hand (more force), but I'm using my wrist with my right, so I'm going to make more of an effort to attack the keys in the right manner. My teacher said that I should be able to lay a book on my hand/arm..and it should be straight at all times. I don't have a problem doing that with my left, but my right is a different story! Why is it so easy to learn the incorrect way??? but hard to learn the right way to do things?????

Luckily, I have committed many tunes to memory (by playing them a gazillion times) so I can watch my hands instead of the music!

Happy Playing!!

Nancy

Craig, only three tries, eh? You sound like my Organic Chem prof. Said about the only way to improve my test grades was a shot of brandy right before to settle my nerves. Tended to make one or two 'brain freeze' errors on every test. Just managed to get through Jingle Bells at a rather, umm, stately 76bpm. Given how much trouble I'm having with it, I'm really worried about the hard stuff (BTMD, etc.)

agentmorgan - Did I mention I majored in Chemistry in college? Everything is memory by association in my book! Bass is played as "levo" or "s" and treble is "dextro" or "r". Always remember "esterification reactions" can be your friend! Make aspirin from scratch and use it after playing Jingle Bells for the millionth time. And while music theory can be hard, I still think it's easier than Calc I,II,III,IV and Differential Equations. In terms of Physics, think of it not as "Blow the Man Down" but as "Moving a Mass by an Applied Force", much like you're moving the keys with your fingers . Those eighth notes will seem more logical!

Thanks for the welcome. My chord changes now sound good on either LH or RH. I'm up to alpine melody at the moment. I thought I'd mention something that has helped learning - I tend to pause and stutter when a chord change comes up in a song. By using a metronome when playing, I am thinking about the next click comming up and it forces me to look ahead ... and the pause & stuttering goes away. Once I can play it well with the metronome I turn it off and can play the piece without the pausing & stuttering.

Lesson results:

I was PASSED on Whole World in His Hands! (My husband is so happy!!) I worked so hard on the hard pieces I really flubbed up My Wild Irish Rose, so I have to redo. I'm almost there on The Entertainer, just a little timing problem.

I need to go back to various songs to do the pedaling on them before moving to book 2. I get the pedaling on Raisins and Almonds--but Scarborough Fair has me puzzled. Why push the pedal down and up on the same note? Do you depress before you hit the note and then raise it afterward? Then depress again? I'm confused.

My teacher gave me Frankie and Johnnie in the Favorites book to help me with my rhythm...it's a pretty cool song. Sort of rag time like Entertainer. So, I will have fun with that one...just hope I can get it up to the speed it needs to be!!

Going to have my 4 year old grandson here this weekend, so I won't get much practice in. So, I will probably be on the same songs next week as well!

Signalfromzero--that is wonderful that you can play with the metronome! I had the same problem about hesitating. Don't worry, more practice and that will go away! Playing with a metronome is a skill by itself! That is awesome!!

Hope everyone has a productive piano experience this weekend!

Nancy

Nancy, you should lift the pedal and instantly press it back down just after you hit the note the marking is below. The idea is to clear the ringing of the previous notes as you start to play the next sequence of notes but keep the new notes ringing. This way all the notes don't ring over each other.

Here's how it should go:

Left hand - Pedal Down, D (quickly lift and re-pedal down) F A, D (quickly lift and re-pedal down) F A, C (quickly lift and re-pedal down) E G, etc..

So in 2 measures of D F A, C E G you would play D, quickly lift and re-press the pedal before moving to F, then A. Then just after you play C do the same thing before moving to E and G. It doesn't do much when you are playing the same chord but you will be able to tell the difference when the chord changes.

Hope this makes sense.

Practice it with left hand only and changing between 2 easy chords like above. You'll be able to tell when you are doing it right.

Thank you Doug, I'm printing this out to put by my piano for lunch time playing! Thank you so much..hopefully we will all get passed SF this week!!! Yeah!

Nancy

I'm so absolutely stoked!

Last night before church I asked the pianist to play the beginning of this one song I've heard her play. I knew the music and knew she was adding in a bunch of stuff. She was breaking up chords and running them up the keys.

This huge lightbulb went on in my head. I came home and looked for a song to try it in. I've spent today playing Amazing Grace REALLY slowly and making the left hand break up the chords going up 3 or 4 octaves. 1-2-3 sorta fast, but flowing. It would be a cool exercise in adding to the music for you guys. It is so fun. It's basically playing the left hand by ear using the music as a guide.

I'll try to get a decent recording here today. It's not going to be perfect but that isn't the point. It's so fun!

Hello Everyone!

I just started Alfred's Self-Teaching Adult Piano Course which is great except it's not spiral bound so it doesn't sit on the piano too well.

I'm up to page 29 and just started yesterday (got the 4ths and 5ths) - I have already done a lot of music stuff when I was playing bass earlier this year so I have all the notes and rests down. Now I'm just trying to the notes on both staff down.

Anyway I'll be poking in from time to time and to see how others fare. This thread will be the biggest thread on the site if it's not already

agentmorgan, I had a rough time with jingle bells awhile back. Just jump back to it every so often and you'll get it soon enough.

Progrmr, welcome!

Well, I recorded Amazing Grace with the run of broken chords that I added today. (Are they called arpeggiated chords?) I can play the version out of the book just fine, but when I try adding the run through the chords I had to watch my hands and was constantly losing my place on the score. It's choppy with some wrong notes and is way over done with the runs...but at least you can get some idea to what I've been trying to add today. It's fun. I'm glad I asked the pianist yesterday to show me what she was adding to the music she was playing.

I started the song like it's written in the book, then I start over and play it with the runs to better hear the difference. Basically most of what I play in the left hand is repeated over and over as you go up the octaves.

I think I missed a section in the music, but here it is. Anyone else game to give it a try? Doug? LINK

I also started book #2 yesterday even though I still have to polish Entertainer. I'm not sure I'm going to get those 2 measures polished or not.

GracieCat - That was tremendous! It sounded like you've played for 2 years and are going on to Book 3!!! The arrangement of AG in the book sounds too clumpy-thumpy to me. Your's just blew me away! Maybe we should all contact Alfred's and have you do the new series "Improvisations for Alfred's Adult Piano, Books 1,2 and 3"! I'd buy them!

Don't you just love it, when you make a discovery like that, where it just "encourages" you to do more and more! I've discovered similar things through purchasing an "easy Scott Joplin book". I wanted to do the rest of the Entertainer, not just the first part like in Alfred's. This author uses different notes in some spots. I've found that when you're playing a chord, where between the left and right hand, you're playing 5 notes, that they can be split up differently, where instead of playing 2 notes in the treble clef and three in the bass clef, you could do a switcheroo of sorts and play 3 notes with the right hand and 2 with the left instead. This is especially true if the notes aren't far from middle C. Sometimes, this makes what is a two-hand chord, easier to play. It seems to me that a lot of what we think of as "rules to play by", when it comes to piano, are not written in stone ... more like in sand ...at a beach!

No way GracieCat. I am barely through AG hands separate.

That was fantastic though. You definitely have natural talent. Like Craig said, it sounds like you have been playing for years, not months!

Welcome progrmr,

I have the Self Teaching book too and like it for the extra content it has but the binding should have been spiral like the All In One series. I use the All In One spiral bound at the piano and carry the self teaching one back and forth to work with me so I can refer to it there if I want to look something up. If I want to play any of the extra pieces from it I just make a copy of it to put on the piano.

Can I make the assumption from your screen name that you do some kind of computer programming? I do some database development work.

Yep - computer programmer by trade since 1998. Definitely tougher ways to make a buck, but it's pretty high stress most of the time. It's a good challenge though.

I am 100% with you on the binding...my light doesn't shine on the book right because of the way the book sits on the piano. Also the pages blow around when my fan is running. I'm about to just fess up the $$$ and buy the spiral bound book.

Having fun tonight with Jingle bells lol! First 8 bars are coming along...making my hands behave is turning out to be a bigger challenge than I expected!

I manged to pass JB abet with a C-. Going to let it sit for a week to save my sanity then work on it again. I too wish the non-AIO book were spiral bound. Been using a small clip to keep the the pages open. I bet a copy shop could rebind them into a spiral but the clip is working well enough. My fellow total beginners, if you need a break from the book, I suggest the Preparatory Piano Literature by Faber (ISBN 9781616770273). 'Real' music and do-able.

Welcome progrmr. I'm currently working on an associates degree in Computer Programming from the local community college. I had never done any programming before but so far I like it. Good luck with the piano.

Thanks! If you've got the "knack" for it, programming is a great way to make a living - G/L and stick with it if you hit tough spots. It'll click at some point and then it's just a matter of practical experience.



I have officially switched over to the "Adult All In One Course: Lesson, Theory, Technic Level 1" book with the spiral binding. MUCH better. Although I'm a bit dismayed at the attempt to teach note reading by intervals. I don't agree with this approach at all IE "start on G, then up a 2nd, then down a 3rd" etc. IMO, just learning the notes is the best approach.

On page 35 of this book which is introducing G7. Pretty easy, I'm getting it.

Looking forward to hitting that page 50 wall everyone talks about

ok, I need some feedback. Keep in mind that I've been playing piano for about 4 days so even getting through the simple stuff is pretty amazing to me lol!

I'm not sure I'm getting this whole "legato" thing - seems like the way I've always played the notes. Anyway I've got a recording I made which while not great it's good enough to critique my playing.

What Can I Share MP3

Am I doing this legato thing right? If not how do I change this up?

thanks!