Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Alfred's Basic and ALL in One Adult Piano Course Book #3

Bob, you're right! You know, in dutch we don't call fake books 'fake books'. we call them 'pop song books'. Or 'chord approach books' Or 'melody line books'. I heard the term 'fake books' for the first time here at the forum. And maybe it's just because I am a non-native english speaker, but the word 'fake' has for me a quite negative sound to it. Indeed, like you're cheating. But you are absolutely right (and I even said so myself): Knowing chords helps a lot. And playing from 'fake books' has helped me a lot in both understanding chords, and playing them easily. The fingerings of all the basic chords and inversions become kind of 'automatic'. You don't have to think about it, you just play them.

Yep. I'm a fan of the 'double' approach, playing both 'chord stuff' and classical. And promise, I won't call it cheating again!


Goodnight from europe! (way past midnight here!)

Ingrid

Everyone,

Thought I'd throw in an update. I have finished up both Minuet in D Minor, Bach and the 3rd Movement from Clementi's Sonatina 36/1. I recorded and submitted the D Minor Minuet to the Oct. Piano bar, but have not yet recorded the final movement from the Sonatina. My teacher assigned me Clowns by Kabalevsky this past week. I thought it would have taken me a long time, but I actually gave myself the pass on it today. Mark... I remember your submission of this piece a few months ago, so I was somewhat familiar with the piece.

I have progressed faster than I thought with these pieces and I thus think I will be starting the C Major Prelude very soon

Waltz - a famous (or to some, infamous) radio talk show host always claims that he is "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have" - well, you may be progressing "faster than a human being should be allowed to progress"!

I'm very impressed with not only your amazing rate of progress, but also with the quality of it And, as I've said before, your readily apparent enthusiasm and pleasure in playing are the best part - so keep up the good work!

JF

Thanks JF , that means a lot. I think all of us in this thread are doing really great and moving along nicely.

I started the C Major Prelude yesterday. So far, the first two pages seem, to me, much easier than the Clementi D Minor Prelude... mainly because the chord changes are easier to read and perform. Are the last two pages more difficult? It is certainly a pretty piece of music.

Waltz,



I would say that from a 'playing the notes as they are written' point of view the Bach is definitively easier then the Clementi. I was surprised that Clementi was in the tutorial part of the book, and Bach in the ambitious section. And the last part is not that much more complicated then the first (apart from managing the volume in that extremely long crescendo)

But for me, playing the Bach prelude in a beautiful way was (and still is) quite a bit more challenging and interesting to work on then perfecting the Clementi D prelude. (I should add that I am not objective. I liked the Bach one a lot more then Clementi, so I am sure that makes quite a difference)

Ingrid

I’ll second what Ingrid wrote. I noticed that I was able to “read through” Bach’s prelude relatively quickly, but it took me much longer to play it well. Scheherazade on the other hand took longer to “read through” but once there, I was able to finish it up in less time.

Undone

Not that I belong here, as I have my hands full with Book 2 as it is. But I thought I'd mention that, about 6 weeks ago, I asked my teacher to assign me an introductory classical piece... "Something that students generally start with." She gave me the Clementi Sonatina 36/1 (all movements, starting with the first). I admit, I have had a great deal of difficulty with it, but will have it sufficiently polished (to my standards, such as they are) in time for the upcoming ABF recital.

My observation, then, is, "Really? This is a Book 3 piece? What am I doing playing it?"

No need for a response there, but wow, I'm surprised. There is a lot of fun left for me in Book 2, and some of it falls into the category of "Wow, I find it hard to believe I'll be playing that in the next six months or so." To say nothing of what I expect to find in Book 3 (I don't have it yet).

Alwayswantedtoplaythepiano...

I don't think that by definition every book 3 piece is a lot more difficult then a book 2 piece. Depends also on yourself, some types of music are for some people easier to play then others. And if for once in a while you want to tackle something that's a bit more advanced then usual..why not? The Alfred's books are designed I guess to teach you a whole bunch of aspects of piano playing in a certain order..., keys, chords, legato/staccato, varying loudness types of playing etc in a certain order. Every piece has it's specific bit of 'learning'. And shuffling that around a bit doesn't really matter. And (my experience) it's also fun sometimes to step away from the books and learn to play something that you or your teacher reaaly picked out as interesting for YOU!

Have fun with Clementi...and we'll see you around here in a while!

Ingrid

PS: (added after reading John's note underneath) The above is of course still more or less valid, even if it's a different Clementi piece you are learning then the one that is in book 3! I only remembered that it was 'in D', and not whether it had a specific number. Or even that it was a Prelude instead of a Sonatina...LOL!

AWTPP - the Clementi Sonatina Op 36 is not a Book 3 piece - it is not found in any of the Alfred editions - it is, however, often assigned as a supplementary work for students in any number of organized, instructor-directed programs of study, including those currently in Alfred 3, which is the case here (and not infrequently for those still in Book 2).

JF

And just a short update from me. Had my weekly lesson yesterday, and 'Come back to Sorrento' is done. Nice piece, I may keep it in repertoire, it's one of those well known tunes that's nice to play if any potential audience wants to hear something familiar, that's not too classical.

I flipped to the next page of my book, which is the Peer Gynt, but my teacher asked whether I'd not rather work on another Yann Tiersen piece first. She played me a couple of the pieces in my book, which I didn't know, and I decided to take on 'Le Moulin' Beautiful music! (copy of a youtube link, if you want to hear what it sounds like...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_ISqRLM25A)



Greetings,

Ingrid

Clementi Sonatina Movement 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0w_qMWvA7M

Clowns, Kabalevsky:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHD5iQBS3ps

Went ahead and recorded both today since I may not have time later in the week. I am more happy with these recordings than the Bach Minuet in D Minor, which I felt I played poorly after hearing myself in third person.

As always, your watching/commenting means very much to me, thanks,

W

Waltz - Great job on both of those. I would imagine it took a lot more work to complete Clementi’s third movement, but I must say I particularly liked “Clowns”. It sort of reminded me of “Calypso Carnival”, but in a more advanced form.

Undone

Great work (as usual)

I think I'm going to be taking a break from #3 till the new year. I've got (lots) of books of movie music which is one of my favorite types (and one of my main draws to the piano) so I'm going to pick out 10 or so pieces and teacher and I will concentrate on those for the next 2mths..

Then I'll pick back up with #3 in Jan and will move on and probably alternate each week with some Movie/TV/Narada and Alfred.

- SC

Undone and TTigg:

Thanks so much for watching and commenting

TTigg, I think it's cool you're moving out of Alfred's for a while. There really is an immense amount of music "out there", and it's satisfying to actually pick and choose the ones we want to learn. I'm really curious which you'll be learning from the movie books, keep us updated, (and post recordings )

Yeah yeah I know I'm really behind on the recordings side. That's something that's been bugging me for a bit. So it's time to "take charge" of my time and get "cracking"
- SC

What type of movies do you generally watch?

How long you got?
I watch a lot of action movies but my original interest in Piano came form the "soundtracks" and "instrumental, or solo as I now know it's called" pieces.

It's funny to find music from one movie, then go look up the composer and find out yep, he's done several of the pieces I've loved in other movies. I am going to be hitting some of the "Twilight" pieces first since my daughter is "well into them" and her 16th is coming up in Jan

After that it'll be a mixture of stuff like....

- Arthur's Theme
- Forest Gump - Feather Theme (yes I'm going to re-visit it)
- Once (Falling Slowly)
- Music & Lyrics (Way back into Love)
- Against all Odds (Against all Odds)
- The Notebook (main theme)
- Corpse Bride (Victors Piano Solo)
- Harry Potter (various)
- Lord of the Rings (various)

Then there's the TV stuff

- Cheers
- Hill Street Blues
- Friends

+ all the other good stuff inc some classical. I'm going to focus on movies/TV from now till Jan. Then head back into Alfred and do at least one Movie/TV each week (every other week) on the side.

- SC

Victor's Piano Solo!!! I am quasi-learning that right now. I think it is above my skill level, but I'm fooling around with it. Danny Elfman is a very interesting composer. I don't know much about Twilight, but I hear "Bella's" whatever (song/theme?) is all the rage right now

I've been playing around the last little bit with "This Is Halloween" from Nightmare Before Christmas, which is also an Elfman song. It's interesting, because when I got the sheet music and it was 8 pages, I figured it would be like most songs and have a lot of repeats. Not so much! Each verse is just slightly differeent. Elfman does write some pretty neat stuff, tho.

Otherwise, I am still slogging, er, working thru Moonlight Sonata in Alfred's 3. It's been very slow going. At my lesson this week, we turned over to page 3, but page 2 still needs a lot of work! And page 1 is far from perfect! I think I am going to really immerse myself in it for a while, study it more, listen to recordings, all that, to see if I can't get a better handle on it. After that, who knows?

Hi All, I have managed to finally get through all of "Fur Elise". i will be playing it for my instructor tomorrow. Hopefully, I can play it for all here if I don't get too bogged down with work this weekend! It's a good feeling:-)