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

Nope, I play most things by memory. On the other hand my sight reading is dreadful!

I'm terrible at memorizing music. I learned to play clarinet from sheet music (even in marching band) and have never been any good at memorizing or remembering it. I hope to get better, but it's going to take a lot of training and effort.

Just got my All-in-One...looks like many of the songs are the same but the content around it is a bit different -- that's a good thing -- and it's the "comb" binding version. Yea!

I finally worked out Little Brown Jug a couple days ago and I play it pretty well now up to speed.

Now I'm on Rock Around the Clock from the Greatest Hits book. I was so happy when I learned and memorized the intro in about 10 minutes. Then the verse took about an hour. I'm going to try to bang out the chorus now and luckily the song is very repetitive. Maybe I'll play this one at family gatherings since Bill Haley's (grown) kids are in my extended family.

Good for you Leon!

Turns out the chorus is the toughest part

Can I join in ?
Adult beginner been playing for 8 weeks, learning major scales, chords and arpeggios.
I have Alfred's Teach Yourself To play Piano and is on a par with book one.
I have just managed to sight read/play up to Lavender's Blue and will be starting form there pg48 in my book.

Nope. Get outta here!

Seriously though. This is the best and most supportive piano forum I've found. Sounds like you are probably already ahead of me.

I'm trying to get Jingle Bells down without making errors. I'm having a bit of a time getting the hands to do the right thing. Guess that's the breaks when you've played a melody instrument (clarinet) most of your life.

Enjoy!

Welcome aboard Ejay...it's a good ride. I believe there are several here that are about where you are.

Just started learning in mid January. This book is awesome. I'm stuck on "Blow the man down" ...."Lavender's Blue" took me a while too but I finally got it. Anyone else really like playing "Alouette" as much as I do? Seriously, I still go back to that from time to time just to build up my confidence again ha ha. What really threw me off was when the book told me to start playing "C" and "D" with my thumb and shift my other fingers over a note. It was confusing at first.

Welcome, Romolo. We ALL got stuck on "Blow the Man Down". :-) Then, one day it just clicks and you have it. It sounds like you are moving through the book pretty quickly.

I liked "Alouette" too. And I still sometimes get confused when I shift my hand (See my post on forgetting where my hand is).

What really threw me off was the fact that for weeks I've been playing C with 1, D with 2, E with 3, and so on, but then the book just changed it, just like that. So every time I saw a "D" note on the staff my index finger would move on it's own when the new rule was that the thumb should be playing that. Same thing with notes E,F, and G. Confusing!

"Blow the man down" is hard That's it for today. I'll try again tomorrow.

Just finished with "Greensleeves." We're getting there!

Romolo, Mom3gram, just wanted to say I'm lovin' Alouette! I'm kind of skipping around and pushing forward a bit (even though I know I need to work on various exercises) and jumped to this one just to try it out and WOW! It was really the first time, playing with both hands felt natural. I've been struggling even with Jingle Bells but Alouette just seems to flow, my fingers go where they are supposed to go. Will keep working on it a bit and then maybe post a recording.

Hey everybody...I'm finally getting the hang of "Blow the Man Down"...FINALLY! I'm going slow but that's the only way to learn. So yay!

Good for you!

Thanks! lol

That was actually pretty fast, Romolo. I think it took me weeks.

I'm still here and reading but not progressing. I haven't spent more than 15 minutes at the piano total in the last 2 weeks and I'm still in significant pain. I had to skip my last lesson. My teacher is looking into some method to reduce injury, but I think I'm a step ahead of her.

I just learned on Friday (from a different doctor) that my doctor shouldn't have given me Zithromax with Lipitor because it causes muscle damage (which I was working very hard in excess of 2 hours per day on the piano during that time). I then did more research and learned that all the pain, numbness and tingling I'm having could be directly related to my Lipitor. So I quit taking it today, going to start some natural approaches to cholesterol and healing the damage caused by this drug.

Please wish me luck and healing, I really want to get back to this, and I'm praying it won't affect my kayaking this year.