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

"your coat's on a shaky nail" made me laugh Earlofmar. Sounds like you're moving along quite nicely.

Congrats on the new M&H piano Oongawa and I wish you the best of relationships with her. We spend more quality time with our pianos than with most anyone else so it's a relationship.

Farmgirl: your life is so packed full but I know you're doing things you love. Don't know yet if we're coming to Scottsdale for spring break. Either there or Santa Fe probably.

ATallGuy: it took me years to get comfortable practicing with my husband in the room. And it's never been that he's critical...my practice time is my intimate time with my music....I hate to share it with anyone. LOL.

Going to New York tomorrow for 2 nights unless the weather prevents the flight. I'll pack some music just in case I find a piano to play.

"Tipitina" is finally pulling together a bit .... heard it played many ways. Professor Longhair is one tricky guy. Wish I had a pair of ears half as good as his.

Karen, love it if you can come to Scottsdale:)
We may go out to watch the game with you guys!

SwissMS, it's interesting that your concept of slow and your teacher's concept of slow were not the same! Is she trying to tell you to internalize the rhythm? Good for you working on the areas need improvement. I too often miss those pencil marks.

Earlofmar, I like your positive attitude.

Rerun, sounds like you are making good progress.

I have Piano Club today. I have nothing quite ready to perform. If they are short on performers, I will do Diabelli's duet with my friend.

Have a happy day!

Happy birthday SwissMS - - may your day be filled with delights!

Thanks everyone, for all the encouragement.

One thing I am taking away from this piece is the fact that when I first started working on it I didn't think I'd be able to do some of the things that I actually CAN do now. This has happened several times since I started working with my new teacher..(Not so new now ) and I find it interesting. Start a new piece, feel intimidated, nail a tricky passage, intimidation fades. Of course that's not to say that the whole piece will necessarily come together...but the process is interesting.

FarmGirl, I listened to that Beethoven sonata - very pretty indeed! I've asked my teacher to pick the next one for me and he's going to bring a selection to the next lesson.

Cathy - yes, keeping going really did feel like an achievement. I used to play in a concert band and of course if you messed up you had to find your spot and pick it up ... the band didn't stop and wait for you ! So in a certain sense I've had practice doing it, but it is quite different when you're the only one playing. And it is also quite different because I haven't been doing this since I started piano, just recently. (Were you that poor girl who was asked to not play for dancers
)?

SwissMS- isn't it interesting that what we thing is SLOW just doesn't ever seem to be slow enough from the teacher's point of view? How many times have we talked about our difficulties in slowing down in this thread...and yet we all continue to have a challenge in this area!

Wisebuff - safe travels and watch that tension in your Beethoven! (Funny but the first time I tried a piece by Beethoven I ended up with terrible tension problems - one of the things that helped was dropping B for a bit and playing a jazz piece ! I'm not suggesting you do that, but I found it very interesting that the jazz kept tension away).

Earlofmar - I think it is always valuable to be able to evaluate where you are, and how a piece is working for you. I like shaky nail expression too

Rerun - nice to hear you are making progress on your Tipitina What a cute name for a piece.

FarmGirl - I don't know how you coordinate your days! I get tired just reading about what you are doing!
I think it is such great fun that your hubby is learning to play now too - that's really something special.

Happy Birthday SwissMS

It's like eating vegetables.

It's helpful, but it's no fun and doesn't sound good, so I speed up without even thinking about it. I probably practice sufficiently slowly 10% of the time, at most.

Maybe I need to tape one of these to the piano right at eye level:

This may not sound like an AOTW but it is in my mind. Slowing down is the hardest thing for me imaginable. I have given up trying to record CBTS for the moment because it is clearly not ready to be recorded yet and frustrates me.

I have given up practicing this hands separate and only doing hands together practice very, and I mean VERY slowly. A good guessimate would be about <70 for a quarter note. (FWIW I can play this EHA at 90) This piece has many 8ths that take me to ~140 which I can do at times and other times not. So... I can now play this through at this tempo (<70) consistently with few if any pauses or clunkers. I intend to practice in this way and hold out hope for FEB 15, if not, another recital or the Piano Bar or just post it somewhere for your dubious pleasure

I see this as a good achievement because I have learned this one without a teacher and started it the week I quit my lessons. I never expect to get anything close to a perfect recording but just something acceptable. Got a bit over two weeks so we'll see how it goes.

"Slowly enough" is the speed at which there are no hesitations or fumbles.

When you fumble, despite an ultra-low speed, it indicates that you're either starting from the wrong hand position or taking an inefficient route to the next position. If you find the problem hard to self-analyze, that's what teachers are for!

Lots of achievements, as usual!

Happy Birthday SwissMS!!!!

jotur, rnaple, Stubbie, wimpian, UKIkarus, casinitaly and FarmGirl Thanks! Thanks for all the encouragement.
As far as I can know the documentary will be available on Internet, too. But I don't know when... maybe March?

eejake52 - Wow, one chapter per month? That's a good "rhythm" Congratulations!

Stubbie - Congrats with those... triplet-quintuplet-dotted eighth+sixteenth...

wimpiano - Good luck with your sight-read sessions! That's nice.

UKIkarus - This is real cool. Transposing the chords is a true achievement.

FarmGirl - Avatars: This is the greatest achievement I've ever read on this thread... Very good! LOL
How do you find time to visit PW...?

barbaram - Wow, so many achievemenst for only one week... Great!

casinitaly - Great! Great! I'm so hapy with your accomplishment. That's a very importante (for your future) and a huge AOTW.

WiseBuff - Good point. A repertoire is fun and and helps concentration / focus. It acts as a guide.

Ragdoll - And the word of the week is: "SLOW".


No AOTW for me. I've been really busy.
This week I played piano twice at home. I did a 10 minutes session on Tuesday, and a 15 miutes session yesterday. Good, isn't it????
Well, let's see..I was filming last Wednesday and I played a couple of pieces, but that doesn't count.

Happy birthday, SwissMS!

Slow. Well, yes. The first week I was practising the oom-pah to play with fiddlers for dancing and tried it at speed it was a train wreck. So I kept reducing the tempo on the metronome until I could actually play it - and that turned out to be - bpm = 60. Just a little over half-tempo And I played it a lot at slow tempos that week before the dance. And in the weeks that followed all of them started that slow, and that was after I had actually sussed out the chords and the progressions. The pay-off was a treat, tho

casinitaly - fortunately I was not the piano-player that would re-do the mistaken notes. Playing thru mistakes is a life-skill for me Being a dancer, keeping the pulse going was really my first priority. Sometimes the dancers had to help by clapping when things were going to heck, and once in a great while the whole set of musicians would come to a stand-still, but mostly we kept right on chugging!

Cathy

Short answer to your question
When do I have time to check on the forum - mostly between 11:30pm to 12:30 am and any waiting time I found at work. I have to be on conference call a lot since I'm mostly virtual working with virtual teams across the globe. It has plus and minus. I mostly work 6:00 AM to 3:00 PM but I have to make myself available for odd time calls with India and UK. So I adjust my schedule accordingly. Like now UK and India teams workweek is over. It's NY lunchtime. So what I'm doing now? Eating my lunch and reading the forum.

My achievement of the last couple of weeks is cracking Alfred book ones 'the entertainer'. This will be my abf recital as it has pushed me to my current limits. The book only covers the first bit of the song and I just want to carry on and play the rest but no music = gutted :-(

Thanks for the Birthday wishes everyone! My sweet husband gave me a week end trip to the Portofino area of the northern Italian coast to celebrate my birthday and we are loving the warmer weather! The hotel even has a little Bluthner grand that they let me play. So my MOYD is intact!

TallGuy: I like vegetables. I don't like playing soooo slowly. Maybe I need one of those snail pics for my piano too.

Ragdoll, sounds like your persistence is starting to pay off -hand in there. What does EHA stand for?

Carlos, surely playing while being filmed counts????

Cathy, glad it wasn't you! Keep on chugging !

FarmGirl, I don't think I'd like your hours!

Paul- looking forward to hearing your Entertainer in a few weeks!

SwissMS - sounds like a great weekend! And how great that the hotel has a piano. If you don't get to play it tomorrow morning I have a suggestion for you

Oh sorry Cheryl, I thought it was a common term. My teacher used to write this acronym in my notebook to indicate she wanted me to practice Each Hand Alone (and faster) or BHT Both Hands Together. Other times she'd say HS or HT but never wrote these terms in my book. <shrug> I guess it was just her thing and it stuck in my head.

Yes, I think the consistent SLOW practice hands together is helping a lot with my progress on this. I also think that by doing this EHA at a faster tempo made me want to do it at this tempo during practice with both hands. That's why I have given up the separate hand practice for awhile.

SwissMS, belated happy birthday to you. Delicious cakes must be available in Swiss. Enjoy!

A belated happy birthday to SwissMs. The comments from your teacher help keep us all humble. You are one of the most accomplished pianists on this beginners section and yet still are getting those kind of comments from your teacher.

Week 98: practice is still sporadic. I make minor progress on the cover of Colder Weather. It will likely be spring before I am ready to play it, after the song title loses its immediacy. I spend some time transcribing Tracks in the Snow and also try some recording. On my Casio PX150, the recorder flashes red on two LEDs when running. Covering the flashing red lights helps a bit.

It takes me three days to produce a basic score. Looking at the transcribed sheet music brings mixed emotions. On the one hand, it is a measure of how far I have traveled on my piano journey in 23 months. I am writing, playing, recording and notating original piano music. On the other side, the dots and lines look so simple, so beginner-ish. Ah well, I am still a low level beginner. I am progressing, however slow the progress may seem. Notating and recording yet another original piece of piano music is another mile marker on my journey.

I am getting a bit more comfortable using the MIDI interface and MuseScore. It is still clumsy for me, but better than it used to be. Like almost all computer programs, if I worked with MuseScore every day, I'm sure I would get a lot better at it. Sometimes I wish I was musically inspired like some others on the forum seem to be. Tracks in the Snow, did not feel inspired, not one riff, not one musical phrase. It was mostly the product of hitting piano keys for hours on end, until something sounded interesting enough to keep. The title came after the piece was near finished.

For the Mozart Cousera I catch up on watching the video lessons. I can't play most of what the instructor is showing us now, so it is theoretical. I sometimes just listen to the audio and wait for interesting sounding music to come on and then go back to paying attention. I will start another Coursera next week on Songwriting with lyrics. Perhaps I will actually do those assignments. The Mozart assignments felt like too much for me in terms of cost vs. benefit.

Welcome to the new folks. Have a good week everyone.

It was a busy and good day. I went t to the college for the Studio class and lesson afterwards. In the evening I went to opera.

In the studio, played both Chopin Nocturne and Bach prelude for the class mates. My teacher told me that Bach got a lot smoother but I needed to fix tempo. This was the first time playing through the nocturne in front of others. It was not musical and hit lots of wrong notes on the last page.

During the lesson, we addressed those weaknesses.

For Bach - I need to use metronome (she discovered that I neglected it). Whenever there are trills in either hand, i tend to hurry those 16th notes. I told her that i would fix them at home but she insisted that I fix them during the lesson, well at least one time, saying "You have to show me that you could do this". She was happy that I brought up certain melodies and cool counter melodies. She like the way I brought up the counter melody in my left hand and connected it to deceptive cadence and took a tiny pose before next notes. She also agreed with me adding some additional trills in the second page where there is none. Since the first page has lots of trills and mordants, iMO it called for a couple more trills towards the end.

For Chopin - we discussed how to rubato it effectively and added more dynamics. I will see how i can shape this up this week.

Have a happy piano week!