Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Achievement of the week - what got you excited?

You bet I will post something. At least some pictures. I got confirmation from everyone and really looking forward to it.

Happy virtual recital party to everyone, I am listening to some recital as I type. Happy real life party to Farmgirl and all those attending in Arizona.

Sinophilia, congrats on completing book 2. It must be a nice feeling to close one book and open another. I read your comments on the recital thread, and listened to your submission. You play very well, especially for one year. Keep in mind that those uploading for the recital tend to be in the top 10% group. and some may have other experience such as childhood lessons or time on other instruments that they may not be mentioning. I'd guess that there are hundreds of beginner pianists with one year to two years of experience that read this forum, and fewer than ten uploaded for the recital. I am guessing that most of those hundreds that listened to your recording are thinking: wow, that is a high level for one year—that's what I thought. Also keep in mind that some people are practicing for many hours a day. One year at 15 minutes a day, is far different from an hour a day, or three hours a day.

Stubbie, thanks for the link to PianoMonica's Canon in D rendition. I enjoyed several videos on her channel. It makes sense that a person with the passion needed to organize the quarterly recitals and stay with it, would be an accomplished musician. (Thank you to Monica K too.) The Canon in D arrangement that I am working on is more of a grade one version. I haven't seen the method book arrangements. Mine is in the key of D with 85% as one note melody line on the right hand, and single whole notes on the left hand. Even with this simple and shortened arrangement, I am playing it at quarter speed. Oh well, Canon in D is one of my all time favorites. I want to learn, even if I am starting with a very simple arrangement. Progress feels exceedingy slow.

Week 49: I find another arrangement of Misty Mountains Cold, from the Hobbit movie. This one has the lyrics that the dwarves sing in the movie. I find a YouTube tutorial from Susan Capestro that uses the D-flat major key to improvise New Age music. Fooling around with Db Ab eb db on the left hand (fingering is 5-3-1-2 for those that want to try it) gets me to something that sounds like meditation music. It is the four note arpeggio on the left, and single notes on the right hand. I have tried to play meditative music, but found it to be elusive, until now. The irony, is that with the fingerless gloves spanning Db to Db octave and Eb above it, is a chore and takes a lot of energy. To me the recording has the mood of falling rain, which is a good thing for meditation. For the curious, here is a link (Casio PX-150 set on vibraphone).
https://www.box.com/s/cazpz7k3todipcqkk2mg

Another thing I do is hook up the computer and Casio PX-150 for MIDI input. After some fiddling, I get it so that I can input notes into MuseScore using the keyboard. It feels like magic. I'm not sure how much I will do with it.

I attend a concert featuring Victor De Almeida on viola, Harout Senekeremian on piano. I could keep learning for a hundred years and still not play like Mr. Senekeremian does for Sonata for Viola and Piano by Arthur Benjamin, the piece is beyond difficult, and rarely performed.

It is three weeks until my piano anniversary. I have been thinking about that, and gathering thoughts about my one year adventure.

Have a good week everyone. Cheers.

Awwww, what a sweet dog, Farmgirl!

My cats wants his attention too when playing. And when he doesn't get it, he starts meowing. I need to program a meowing anti sound app for my iPad someday, heh. -.-

PattyP, interesting to record one hand en accompany the playback with the other hand. Smart!

Toastie, playing 15 minutes is good! That means you still have enough concentration to play.

Sand Tiger, the piano becomes more fun to play in time, so any piano anniversary is a good one!

Okay, so the above was two days ago. At times like those I think to myself, “Golly, maybe I’m ready for that Tier One 7’ beauty I’ve been coveting for so long.” I have visions of sitting down at a really excellently prepared, visually stunning acoustic grand and melding body and soul into it as my fingers coax a most heavenly sound. It’s a lovely fantasy.

But then, reality sets in. Last night I sat down at my Kawai DP for a little late night piano tête-à-tête expecting something wonderful to happen. Well, something happened but it wasn’t wonderful. I couldn’t play to save my life! Even working the hands separately with my pre-recordings was a disaster. My playing was sorry, to say the least. All my lovely fantasies of a shimmering Tier One piano coming to life under my touch morphed into a tired, beat up, out of tune, landfill brute, effectively mocking my vision and me playing like a nightmarish specter.

Some days ya’ win ‘em, some days ya’ lose ‘em!

Hey PattyP!
If you can afford it and have space for it, I think you're ready for it!

Love this sonata! It is thrilling so thrilling- gives me shivers. Chopin's sonatas are truly epic! I'll never be able to play ANY of that Jim- nice to see you are learning a section- I hope you enjoy learning it.

I'm on Joy To The World by Handel ( one paged version in Alfred's)- I'm finding it quite hard (shows how low my level is......) but like the challenge. I think i'm improving though.

Wisebuff- so untrue- many adults have achieved- the brain keeps on making new pathways all the time if it gets used. You are so going to prove her wrong!!

Brilliant!!! I've got an encouraging teacher as well- I was really tired when I had my last lesson and messed up a lot but he kept me going and gave me pieces to work on ( one lof them blues - yikes!) from Alfred's a few pages ahead that I find hard he but says I can learn them. Good job it's half term at the college I work at as I have LOADS to practise this week for this Friday.

Boo to the lady- I also hope she has no adult students!

FarmGirl - your dog is funny and cute!

That is great Andy- I love this nocturne!

Oh the piano party was so much fun. I wish I could share with you the whole evening in a movie format. Thanks to Mr. SH's suggestion, we asked each participants to share their piano journey with us after everyone's performance. It was a really good thing because we felt like we got to know each other quite well.

Sam captured all the audience (they were intently listening while he was playing). He received highly favorable compliments and some good advise from my highly accomplished guests. Three out of the eight guests have piano performance degrees. One has a doctorate. These are seriously wonderful compliments and sam should be proud of his accomplishments. I am very happy for him.

I'm not surprised that Mr. SH has an incredibly caring and sensitive side. But I was blown away by the sound he brings out of my piano. His music did not sound like a sheet music but rather spoken words, sound poem like. I felt his feelings coming directly through the notes. He could make the piano sound like guitar or harp many times. He has great control of his fingers. I cannot believe he had to overcome such bad hand injuries (ask him. I don't even want to write it here).

I played the first because I wanted to make myself available to look after our guests. It was funny that everyone praised my level of concentration. I discovered later that one of our guests tripped on the floor (there is a slight level difference) and fell on the floor during my performance. I had no idea. She was ok. I did not hear anything. I performed better than practice although there are tons of area of improvements. My teacher hugged me(smile).

Carey is something else. He could play anything. I liked his phrasing and I do think he us one of the few performers blessed with the "it factor". He captivates you and take you into his world which is very romantic (of course he was playing Chopin). He is putting together YouTube performance. I warned him he might get many marriage proposals - he laughed.

My teacher played Rachmaninoff piece I forgot the names. It's not his preludes but much more difficult piece. Obviously she has mastery and I may add gigantic hands to play Rach pieces. Anyway I did my best to describe the evening. I wish I knew how to include the link to my post I made in "forum members parties".

Party Link

Thank you

AOTW... playing in the recital!


I wound up submitting despite not performing it for her.

As I've mentioned in a prior post (somewhere or another), my wife actually doesn't like the song -- or actually, that's putting it not strongly enough -- she objects to it. From her perspective it says "sure, you could do lots of stuff to make yourself better, but you're OK enough as you are". So we talked about it, and she just doesn't want to hear it.

We had been doing this odd little dance over the past several months where she was saying she would like to hear it "maybe some day". It turns out that this was mostly because she felt bad about it and was worried that I would never do another song for her. I assured her this wasn't the case, and that I was ready to move on to another song at this point.

So, I double-checked and asked her specifically if she was OK with me posting it to the internet. She didn't "get it", meaning she didn't understand why I would want to share this with other people, but she was OK with it. I think she also didn't "get it" in the sense that she couldn't imagine why anyone would be interested in hearing me play, but here we all are!

That conversation was on Tuesday evening, so I had 48 hours to shop for cabling, re-learn how to record to Audacity, and do subsequent post-production noise reduction, and get a decent take -- and go to work and watch my kids in the evening, and so on. I had lots of technical problems, that wound up taking me down to the wire with literally 10 minutes to record, just enough to do a single take and listen to it and decide it would have to be good enough. Then I frantically tried to get rid of the hiss and jack up the volume in about 45 minutes, only succeeded on the hiss and not the volume.

Blech... ...but I did it and it was great to get that under my belt, and get some constructive feedback subsequently.

My 2nd AOTW is starting to arrange the next song and having it go so well. This is going waaaaay better than the 1st song around a year ago. I'm using MuseScore this time (which is amazing given that it is free) vs. a Finale trial version. I am now able to do in a couple days what took weeks previously.

Studying music theory has helped a lot. I can look at a chord that I know I can't manage (I can do an octave + a half-step, 9ths are possible but a real stretch) and I now have a clue about how to do an inversion or which note(s) to drop so it will sound less full but serve the same musical purpose. This is a big difference from a year ago. OK, not a piano AOTW per se, but related.

Thanks for everyone here on this thread... it's made a big difference to me to have this outlet in my "piano journey".

FarmGirl -- For all the hype, that "party" looked awfully tame.

FarmGirl - Thanks for the update on the party. It looks and sounds like it was a great time!

Congratulations to everyone that did a recital submission! The music was all excellent listening!

I had my first lesson in two weeks. My teacher was conducting workshops in the US for the last two weeks. The good news is she was pleased with my progress on the Invention. It is memorized hands together and up to about 2/3 tempo. That bad news is I went TOO far on the Arabesque. Seems I am not getting the Debussy choreography very well yet. So, back to two measures at a time, and more work hand separately. Between the polyrhythms and the different slurs in the right and left hand it makes my brain hurt. Once again I ask myself why I have to be impatient and rush things. I know better!

So, I will count my progress on the Invention as an achievement of the week - particularly the endless trills. I had a lot of trouble getting them subdued enough so the leading hand melody could sing. That left hand trill was tough! Here is a funny. This is the one song my husband asked me to please practice with headphones. Played slowly the trill section can sound like nails on a blackboard. Someday I will have it to tempo and I will test it on him then!

Another Achievement: I walked into the glassed in showroom of the pricey grands and tried out a Steinway, a Fazoli, a Bösendorfer. and a Blüthner. I fell in love with the Blüthner. It was just what I want. Now if I just win the lottery...

I think I could easily fall in love with any of those! And if you figure out how to win the lottery, let me know.

Step 1: participate
Step 2: ...
Step 3: profit

(Sorry, I know, bad joke. Lotteries are actually a terrible investment, with a negative expected payout.)

FarmGirl it looks like your piano party was first class for talent. I have friends that used to be in Scottsdale, they have recently moved to a country house in Wickenburg.

AFA my AOTW I can now play the first 20 measures of the Canon in D with BH, it's says Tempo Andante Moderato but I play it at the present time about Tempo Amosey alongo! I'll get there though as I'm becoming obsessed with this piece. Especially after hearing PianoMonica and David Ganz (I think) play it. Now it's beginning to get a bit trickier in RH. I have a lesson tomorrow so I just hope I can present my progress so far with it and not embarrass myself too badly.

Also, I'm reviewing some older pieces for the recital my teacher has coming up for students soon.

Congratulations to all the players in the recital. The performances were very, very good. It is a lot of fun to watch everyone's progress. I hope the players know that for every person that leaves a comment in the recital thread, there are probably hundreds who listen and don't comment for one reason or another. Thanks for sharing with us.

Farmgirl, your party looks like it was a smash hit with all the players. Wow, what a talented group!! And I've got to tell you, even though I swore I wouldn't write about any individual performances this quarter because I don't have time to do them all..... Your Brahms was superb. I think your new teacher(s) are really helping you blossom as a player. How you do it with a full work and travel schedule is beyond me.

My AOTW is doing a little better playing from a fake book, something my teacher has been helping me with. We started out just doing some basic left hand chord patterns under the RH melody. Then we started altering the harmony a bit. And this week I've been just using RH to play both the harmony and melody at the same time. Once you can do this adding more harmony in LH makes it come out sounding so rich and full. Sure keeps your brain working trying to get to the chord changes on time with the right inversion and alteration needed to keep the melody notes on top. How jazzers do this on the fly in real time leaves me kind of speechless. Fun stuff.

Tempo amosey alongo --- I love it! I think you should put that in your signature line Ragdoll!

Once again I've let things get out of hand - so many posts while I was focused on the recital!
The party at Farmgirl's place sounds like it was absolutely wonderful - we're going to really have to work on having an INTERNATIONAL party over here- We've got folks in Italy, France, Germany and Switzerland. Now, wouldn't that just make everyone very jealous of US ?
(I wish!).

FarmGirl, I love your dog Emma. I really do. She 's wonderful.

TallGuy - I'm sure you'll find a song to play for your wife - one that she actually likes

Sand Tiger - I've been watching the numbers creep up to your pianoversary you've really made some great progress this year!

SwissMS - I haven't played any Debussy, but I've looked at the scores and done a lot of listening - his stuff is just plain tricky! I think you are up to it - it is a challenge, but you'll do fine!

Patti - sometimes it is a real roller coaster - things come together beautifully one day and fall apart the next. As you progress you'll notice more of the coming together days than the falling apart days. Hang in there!

Jim - sounds like you're going to have a great time with some Chopin! That's really exciting!...EDITED to add since you posted as I was typing: and you're having fun with a fake book! Very cool. I don't know how "they" do it either, but I'm trying to learn!

EdwardianPiano - Joy to the World is one of my favourites - I have an arrangement I like from the Joy of Christmas book. I hope you have as much fun with it as I have been having.

I hope I haven't missed too many posts!!!

Today and yesterday I feel I have really got the swing of my baroque piece going at a great tempo (and how kind of everyone to not correct my mis-spelling of baroque in the past umpteen posts!!) It hit me yesterday that I'd been adding a c in before the q! bah!

Tomorrow I've got my lesson and if all goes well, I will FINALLY be launching into the Heller piece!