Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Alfred's Basic and ALL in One Adult Piano Course Book #1

I hope you don't mind, but I added your piece to the opening post...

Mark

I don't mind at all....I'm honored ! ! !
A special thanks to you, Mark, for making available two great tools for me: the Alfred's Thread, and the MOYD thread!

-angelojf

You are quite welcome!

The Alfred threads just kind of took off with all the great people here, I didn't do much...

I've got Cafe Vienna to the level where I can play it for my teacher without undue shame, and same goes for Lullaby, too! I thought I wouldn't make it with Lullaby, but now it's my favorite piece! (haha, where has 'Blow the Man Down' gone? I'm so fickle! ). I'm glad to play my first classical piece, ever! I played it really soft and it sounded nice..to my ears. Now all I need is to show my teacher and I just know..there's probably something I wasn't doing right there! XD

Congrats Marimorimo!

Well done Marimorimo!

I also am right about the same place in the book, working on Cafe Vienna and Lullabye. I finished up with BTMD last week. It's nice to play Lullabye even though I still have a ways to go, it being so pretty and recognizable.

I'm not working with a teacher, and I choose to put my son's practice time ahead of mine every day, so my piano practicing is low man on the totem pole each day! But I am loving it!

On a related note, our new piano arrives on Thursday... I can't wait! My son and I ended up selecting a Young Chang YP157 baby grand. It's pretty small, but it's the Platinum class YC, and sounded beautiful at the dealer. It had been on the floor for a while, so we got a really good deal I think. Can't wait to play it and hear my son play it.

Cheers to all --

Good for you as well Zenobe. You are probably getting more practice time in than I am lately...

I have been lurking for quite a while, mostly because I hit a stone wall with Chiapenacas and my piano time kind of dwindled to nothing. I'm back at it now and have practiced that song about eight million times and it seems I am actually getting worse.

Has anybody else had that experience with Chiapenacas or any other piece? I'm very discouraged. I can play either hand like a pro but my brain explodes when I try to put them together.

You might need that surgery where they slice your brain down the middle and separate the halves.

There is pretty good material beyond "Chiapanecas". FWIW...I did get a ok recording for my file, but tried to play this yesterday and pretty well stumbled all the way through it. It definitely is not worth brain surgery. May be time to move on to something more pleasant?
I started Scarborough Affair this past weekend and I am enjoying this one quite well. There are some tricky finger shifts but the harmonies are different and fun to play.

My brain is apparently way too small to divide in half so I won't go that route. I can play Chiapanecas through, but it is full of mis-hits, oops and it is anything but musical in even my best rendition. Tomorrow is it. If I can't get through two run throughs that are reasonably goof free, I'll move on.

I have O sole mio to do next which I have practiced quite a bit and think I stand a chance. After that I've covered everything else up to Scarborough Fair (did someone say 'affair'?).

I will report in tomorrow one way or another. I'll either be braggin' or complain'n.

Some pieces are like that. My rendition of "Good People" was mostly free of mistakes, but it was full of hesitations and as you say "anything but musical". After a month, it was just time to move on. But, as you are giving it another day - I hope you are braggin' tomorrow.

I'm working on Chiapanecas right now, so I'm right behind you.

I'm still struggling with O Sole Mio - It seems like I've been struggling since trying to play Little Brown Jug - which, by the way, I still hate.
Also, it's a little harder to sit down at the DP when the weather is so beautiful. There's only so much free time after work.

I agree with you dee, the warmer weather is making it much more difficult. But we are actually having the most rain we have had in the last 5 years (good thing we needed it), so when I'd normally go out to the pool after work, its been about time for a thunderstorm to roll in, I loose my satelite internet and and am so thankful to have the piano to sit down to.

Finally got back to lessons tonight, was supposed to go back two weeks ago but got the kids darn cold and didn't want to spread it around, so I cancelled. Lesson went well. I'm officially up to Cockles & Mussles in the AIO book, up to What a Wonderful World in the Greatest Hits book, and still working on Desperado in the other book I bought. That one will still be a little while, but I'm seeing improvements every day. My teacher agreed that it was a little above where I'm at now, but agreed that if I wanted to work it out, it covered a lot of the same techniques that were in some of the easier pieces she had given me and agreed to trade off several of the easier ones for me to continue working on that piece.

I also got my Hannons book tonight, so adding that in, still doing scales, arpegios and cadences. But I'm happier I think having one bigger piece to work on rather than a half a dozen simpler ones, it keeps me challenged and motivated and feeling more focused.

Glad to hear everyone is progressing so well. I need to get myself moving in the Alfred's book or you are all going to leave me behind and move on to thread #2!

Hi Barb,

You are just ahead of me in the book. I also bought the Greatest Hits book after reading what you and others had to say about it. I have always loved Edelweiss and What a Wonderful World (have you heard Eva Cassidy sing What a Wonderful World? - so beautiful and poignant, especially considering her untimely passing from cancer)...

Anyway one thing I was wondering -- when do you move on from a piece? I can get through BTMD and Cafe Vienna with say only one or two small mistakes. Do you usually get them to "perfect" before moving on? I think if I did that I would go crazy!

It's true - at my age (43 with two young kids) finding practice time is the hardest part. But I love it when I do!

Cheers --

@ Zenobe:

I only officially call myself more or less "done" with a piece when my teacher lets me play the next one. Now, she lets me go ahead with the book, but everything I play by my own is never considered 'done' until it gets her approval. BUT! Even if she lets me move to the next piece, we always go back a number of pages to review past pieces, and to my horror, pieces I have supposedly mastered come out full of silly mistakes. So now in my practice time I decided to practice old pieces too, even though I'm itching to do the newer ones. Just a while ago, I reviewed everything from "Beautiful Brown Eyes" to my current piece, "Lullaby." To my surprise, all that reviewing was actually a good warm-up and made playing my current piece easier.
I also noticed a slight improvement in my sight reading.

Personally, I never go to the next piece until I get to play a piece note-perfect more times than I mess it up. I have a feeling my teacher isn't as strict about being note-perfect, though (she said I'm a bit of a perfectionist )

Zenobe,

I take very much the same approach as marimorimo. Once I know I can nail a song and prove it several times, I officially move on (even if I occasionally go back and make a mistake). But what I do is paperclip back to the last song that was a challenge, for me its still Blow the Man down and that is where I start my warm up for each practice session. I'll probably be moving my paper clip up soon, but BTMD was such a challenge at first, I now enjoy starting there and nailing it on the first try.

I think when you have a song near perfection, it is as good a time as any to introduce something new to avoid boredom and stagnation, but do like I do, and paperclip that page that might still need a little polishing and use it for warm up, and soon enough you will notice one day that it is now perfected without effort. Well, that's what works for me at least.

I never wait for perfection - if I can nail the melody and the notes, I consider it done. Then I play, play, play, play it and practice it until I get the right beat. My teacher lets me move ahead to a new lesson even though the old one is not perfect. Really, how much time do I have left in this world
I am also playing from 2 other books in addition to good old Alfred. I can play Danny Boy ALMOST perfectly and then have several going from My first book of classical music - which I love. I'm playing Fur Elise fairly well.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I like the paper clip idea Barb, I will definitely use that one. It sounds like using the older pieces as warm up to keep them sharp, while continuing to forge ahead at a reasonable pace, will be the best method for me. I find sometimes as I come to the end of a piece without any mistakes, my brain kind of spazzes out and forces me to make a mistake out of panic. Maybe that is a hurdle like any other, and I need to keep on practicing the piece to get over that problem also.

Yesterday was a big day at our house - new piano arrived! I posted pictures on the Piano Forum under the thread "New Piano Arrived Yesterday." We're very excited! If you check the photos out can you please give me an unbiased opinion whether you think the piano is too big for the room I put it in? Thanks!