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

Ragdoll -- I sincerely congratulate you on figuring out the optimal placement of your Q3HD. I recently bought a Zoom H2 (audio only, if I want video I'll use my iPhone and sync up later), and have been experimenting a little with different recording positions. But I haven't had much time with my new grand yet, so I haven't quite figured it out. If you have any suggestions, they are welcome!

Whizbang -- Kudos for making the best of your vacation, despite less-than-ideal circumstances! I hope it was your left knee that got twisted (because at least you're still able to use the damper pedal, if it was ;)). Oh, and if you're getting tips from perfect strangers, you must be doing well. I'd be so stoked if I were in your shoes!

Allard -- How's your new piano working out, so far? Still in love, I hope? .


jaredm2012 -- Congrats on getting your scales down. I'm sure having those securely in your fingers will help you in many ways that you can't even anticipate yet.

casinitaly -- So, how did it go with your Baroque piece in the end? Did you get your teacher's blessing on it yet? I think it's rather sweet that you found a way to involve your husband in your music studies, even though he doesn't read or play! And getting 'live feedback' on your piano playing must have been very enjoyable, indeed, especially if the feedback was good . Also, your teacher sounds great, being supportive of things that you bring to your lessons yourself. And duets are fun!

EdwardianPiano -- Consistently practicing for an hour each day *will* really help your progress. Or at least, that's what I'm hoping. And I must say, now that I'm not practicing an hour daily due to my living circumstances, I really do feel the lack of progress, so that would seem to indicate that I was making relatively good progress before. I wish you the same!

FarmGirl -- Your teacher must have great confidence in you, asking you to perform on a 'real' stage. Good for you!

SwissMS -- Congrats on the progress you made with the Nocturne. Having an 'aha'-moment like you had with arpeggio's at the end is a great experience. I'm happy for you. And learning to play the piano does indeed strike me as an excellent way to spend your retirement; especially if you can get two lessons a week. Delightful!

MaryBee -- I talk to myself while playing, too. All the time. Even during lessons I occasionally do it (which has already earned me a few weird looks from my teacher). I think a lot of people do this, actually. It's not really a problem, so long as you don't do it during recital performances!

aTallGuyNH -- Congrats on your first improvisation. I started watching the YouTube video you linked, and I thought "he's calling this *basic* ... wow." But then the guy started talking and I got that this isn't you. Still. Great achievement, indeed.

JohnSprung -- If you played for 500 people, and 'many of them' liked it, and then they *moved the piano* (not an especially easy or effortless thing to do) and asked for more, well ... then I think you can't possibly have sucked, especially not 'massively'. Learn to take a compliment when you see one!

Andy Platt -- Congratulations on the 'informal recital'. As one who has been forced to play only in public for weeks now, I can definitely confirm that it gets progressively more comfortable as you do it more often . So good for your teacher to give you many opportunities to do it, and good for you for taking your teacher up on them!


I accomplished quite a few things this week (among them, I got the owner of my as-of-yet unfinished apartment to cough up the money for two weeks of hotel accommodations), but alas, none of them are piano-related. In fact, I had a pretty bad lesson yesterday, where I plowed through the same simple Burgmüller piece for the third time in a row, and still didn't get it right. I'm starting to doubt that I should really continue with this taking lessons thing. I feel like I'm wasting my teacher's time.

Oh, it's no temporary infatuation

She's feeling a little sick, however. Doctor says she needs to wait a few weeks before getting tuned, but I'm not so sure! A few dampers aren't working and now there's an awkward vibration in some of the higher bass strings. The sound reminds me of my earlier attempts at playing guitar, where I couldn't get a proper grip on the strings.

Practise time has gone up a few hours since I got the new piano. I think it'll only go up more once she's tuned.



Good job on getting the hotel accommodations! Now to pick a hotel with a piano so you can practise properly

Hey Allard--If you just can't wait a few weeks, you can go ahead and schedule a tuning now, knowing that you'll likely need another one in a month.

The tricky bit is that I don't know (nobody knows?) how long that first tuning would last. I'd gladly pay for it if it's like two months, or even one, but my teacher thinks it might go bad again in as little as a week. Hard to make a decision without that information available.

I hope I'm not wasting my ears forever by playing on the untuned piano. The problem is mostly in the middle section, where you can hear each tone slowly going up and down.

Don't give up Saranoya! It takes sometime to settle in with a teacher, especially if you have been away from the piano for a while. A teacher wants to hear where you are having problems, and they know that you are nervous in the first few lessons.When I first started back with piano I felt like a dunce. I could not play "mary had a little lamb" without an error. Hang in there!

I had such a fun lesson today. I am at the point with the Nocturne that we are mostly working on dynamics and interpretation. I nailed my troublesome arpeggios and ornaments at the end in the lesson today. My AOTW was my teacher telling me that I played the best she had every heard me play today. That made my day! Hopefully I can start trying to record this soon, and move on to the next project.

I have been using my piano practicing to avoid writing a dissertation (not in music). I finally decided to cut down my practicing and work on my research. I have found that more focused practicing is really helping my improve some rough spots in my favorite pieces. So my achievement: more efficacy while practicing piano and ummm, not using piano to avoid my thesis .

If I am really thoughtful, I can make more noticeable progress in .5 hour of focused studying than in an hour of playing. This site has really helped inform my practicing.

You know what? I kinda like his singing. I'll be in my car listening to a recording and hear the odd noises come through. It's all very comforting. Maybe it's not so bad?

And to everyone else: It's so much fun to hear about your achievements. It's like a newspaper or magazine column with installments and its fun to "watch" everyone grow. I lurk(erratic poster syndrome!) a lot in this thread because it's rather motivational and keeps things in perspective.

Finished Unit 4 in Faber's Adult Piano Adventures! Also learned how to recognize Key Signatures!

So my teacher thinks my 3rd/4th finger trills and mordents (esp. right hand, my worst hand) have improved tremendously. And I sound musical. Hurrah! The hard work is starting to pay off.
(This is on Couperin's 7th Prelude from L'Art de Toucher.)

Three weeks ago, 3rd/4th finger ornaments in RH were virtually impossible for me. The two fingers felt tremendously tied together, this is not my good hand, and I am not at all young.

Hey Half Step
What's your topic?

For clarification - I am invited to play in the student recital as a guest at the community college purely because I take lessons from a professor. Since I'm not a piano major, they have to call me a guest (LOL).

Saranoya - I echo SwissMS on her post. Sometimes, or many times, we all have not so hot lessons. I just had one. She makes me sight read something that I haven't gone over (I told her so) and tells me how slow I'm reading. I know I have to immediately recognize the patterns and my hands should automatically fly to the spot at speed, but it did not happen. I don't like it when she says "why can't you...". It seriously pi** me off. But I won't give up. There will be better days. Let's hang on.

I'm with you on that. Sometimes I think my piano teacher should say that to me but she never does. But I think it's more reasonable for the teacher to say, "That was a little slower than I would have thought for someone at your level. Looks like we need to focus more on reading for a while ..." or similar.

Torquenale: Isn't it satisfying when you can heard the progess taking place!

Saranoya, thanks! My baroque piece is coming along quite well, and I'm finally at the point where what I'm doing is "polishing". My goal is to record it and submit it to the Piano Bar.Which Burgmuller are you working on ? Is it Number 7?I STILL can't manage that one, I have a lot of difficulting holding the "thumb" note and playing the other two...but I do love that piece In Italian it is called Limpido Ruscello. If you are working on number 8....those 32nd notes look scary to me!!! Congrats on getting hotel money !! Don't worry about having a rough lesson -remember we all have those days. Next week will be better!

Allard, no one can tell you how long the tuning will hold - but if you have other concerns, why not call your technician and discuss the matter? Some tunings seem to last forever and others seem to last a short while - there are a lot of factors. One thing with having an acoustic is that you have to develop a certain tolerance for it being a bit out of tune in-between check ups. I'd get mine tuned every month if I could afford it. I'm pretty convinced I'm going to move up to 3 times a year instead of twice a year.

SwissMS - the best your teacher has ever heard you play! Wow, I'd be on cloud nine over that! Congrats! Can't wait to hear your Nocturne!

Halfstep: I think a lot of us are (finally) coming to understand how to practice better and more efficiently. It is really quite wonderful to see how much more quickly things move if your efforts are properly focused!

AimeeO, I really like your analogy of this thread being like a little newspaper! And yes, I find that we do help each other keep some perspective!!

Warlock: You're really swimming along now! Getting comfortable with your keysignatures is one of the fundamentals you need to have under your belt - that moment of recognition and realizing what you're going to be dealing with is part of the excitment of starting a new piece!

Eglantine --- congrats on improving your trills so much - but do tell! HOW did you improve so much?
What "clicked" into place for you?

FarmGirl: You know, I don't think a teacher should be asking you "why can't you do xyz". I think she should be telling you why you can't do it.
A great deal of the time I know my students are making mistakes because they aren't paying attention to what they are doing. But if they are paying attention and they still can't do it, I have to help them figure out why. Asking why can't you do this isn't very helpful (unless of course the answer is...because I didn't study it!).
I'd be irritated too, if my teacher said that to me!

So are you giving a "special guest performance"? That sounds impressive!

I think it should be the other way around. I often ask my teacher, "Why can't I ...", and then he helps me figure out why. So I'm with cas on this one. Next time your teacher asks this, you could reply, "I don't know. You tell me."

+1 to MaryBee & Cas.

FarmGirl... you are very talented. You shouldn't be made to feel that way. Actually nobody should, regardless of talent.

Your teacher isn't a bad person. She wants you to succeed. Look for the positive reading of her comment, rather than the one that demeans you. Could it have been mild frustration at HERSELF: "Now, why can't I explain this point to this student in a way that works..."? Teachers feel this sort of thing a lot.

If my teacher ever asked me 'Why can't you ...do whatever...?' Either I would expound some brilliant and random and incorrect diagnosis of the problem OR I would say, "I don't know why; you tell me."

Which was the RIGHT ANSWER! The wrong response was to sit there feeling you'd been attacked. Unless you're dealing with a man with a gun in a dark alley, it's very unlikely anyone is trying to harm or demean you. Especially a teacher. Look for the GOOD meaning.

Of course it is all in interpretation of tone of voice too.
When Farmgirl originally wrote about this she wrote "my teacher says" ---you've written "if my teacher asked"

To me, these are not simply a slight difference in word choice - I think there is a clear "point of view". My teacher "says" is a sort of "mom-talking-to-a-teenager" saying "Why can't you keep your room clean?" - It is a rhetorical question, a complaint, not a sincere request for information.
My teacher "asks" is potentially, a sincere request for asking the student what they feel is the problem.

However, I'm pretty sure that if FarmGirl's teacher had asked in a way that invited student introspection, FG wouldn't have been irritated, she'd have felt encouraged to explore what might not be working.