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It sounds like everyone is doing great!

Whizbang- That sounds like quite an experience. It sounds like you performed very well!

JimF - I envy your adult student get togethers and recitals. I would love to find a teacher who did that with their adult students. Good luck on your recital.

This has been sort of a regrouping week for me. I have been so focussed on my recital piece, that everything else has been on the back burner. So, now I am taking stock of where I am and what my goals are.

The Debussy Arabesque is in the polishing stage and I am targeting it for the the August recital. My AOTW was making a baseline recording that was note perfect, but needs lots of refining. I am really enjoying this piece, and I have to reign myself in and actually practice slowly instead of playing full tilt. So my goal is to work on the slurs and the dynamics.

The Bach Invention is barely started, and my teacher wants me to play this piece hands separately with my eyes closed. OK, there's a goal.

The Liszt is in the developing material stage, and my goal is to get it memorized.

The Barcarolle is on the back burner now that the Grieg recital is added to the list. 38 3 is learned, but the 3 against 4's measures are rough. So, there is another goal- smooth out the polyrhythms.

So, that should keep me busy!!!

Like JimF, I practice at home without shoes, and my teacher recommended to wear shoes while practicing pieces with pedal at home. Howeverl I don't know yet which pair I'll wear at the recital... it depends on weather!

This afternoon I played my recital pieces for a friend of my mother, in order to relieve my anxiety. She's very musical, played piano and sang for decades; I was more nervous than expected, and I made a couple of mistakes. But it was almost a decent pre-recital, and she gave me some useful advices. This is myAOTW.

Moreover, I played by memory two out of three pieces; I'm considering to do the same in the recital, but I'm not sure yet.

SwissMS,

I've also put most everything on the back burner pending the recital, including my Bach Invention. Guessing it will take me some time to pick it up again once the recital is over.

The Liszt Db Consolation is one of my favorites.....would love to play it some day.

Oh, that reminds me to get that Scarlatti piece off my sig line...put it to bed a while back.

By the way, our teacher does arrange the recital, but has nothing to do with the adult student get-togethers. They were my idea last year....and I think I got the notion right here at ABF. Teacher isn't even invited....well, she'd be welcome, but I don't think she needs to chew up her free time listening to us all for the umpteenth time.

Toastie, I can't honestly say I've been in that sort of frame of mind. If I get fed up and frustrated I may just noodle or play old stuff, but I won't stay away from the piano.
Hope you get out of your funk soon.

UK Paul UK - hey nice compliment! I don't get the part about shooting the rat though... Is that slang in snooker or billiards?

GiacomoF - sounds like your pre-recital event went really well. I would not have thought about the shoes issue. I play with slippers or flip flops at home, but with regular shoes (different ones) when I go to the school for my lessons. One thing I learned through someone else's experience was to NOT wear high heels!

Dynambot - You sound like you're in very good shape for your upcoming recitals - that's super! I agree with you that the Grieg pieces have a lot to them, though they seem simple at first glance. Getting the notes right isn't too tricky - getting them to sound lovely and musical is another story!

SwissMS - I am already looking forward to your Arabesque! I'm listening to the Bach piece as I type - that should be a nice challenge to work on ! I think you're going to become our resident expert on Barcarolles! I heard Consolation in our recital this weekend -- you've got a truly wonderful collection of pieces on the go here! I hope we get to hear some of them in Brussels!

Torquenale - Sounds like your experiment of playing for your mother's friend was a great idea! Don't feel pressured to play without the music!

I had a good lesson today - got more pointers on how to get my Siciliene smoother (I've got to...wait for it....SLOW DOWN - for the moment! lol what a surprise).
For First Loss my goal is to play it perfectly accurately next week, - albeit at a slower than performance tempo. I had fun working on the Radetsky march again with "Steve". I don't know where the duet comes from, it is a photocopy from a book he got from a former teacher. It is pretty simple - but challenging enough for us!

I had a pretty good lesson today. I played the RH part of Come Back to Sorrento for the teacher and explained my frustration of not being able to get the rubato down quite right where it changes from Dm to DM. She showed me an excellent tip on a way to help with this and I'm very anxious/excited to try this out this week.

I have finished up with Lunar Eclipse and it certainly is better sounding than the version I posted earlier, especially the pedaling. Anyway, I'm revisiting a rag I learned earlier this year to try and improve on that as well. She gave me some new minor key arpeggios to practice too.

We've had terrifying weather close to here for the past week so I have been a bit stressed to say the least. TADA, my tech/tuna Ray came to tune my Yamaha the 18th. It is soo very lovely when he finishes tuning. He says it is stable enough now to go six months before next tune barring any tornados or floods of course.

Ha! Brussels will be the first time I have played for anyone outside of my own family since I was eleven years old. I am hoping to play chopsticks without falling apart! However, I will try the Arabesque.

JimF - can't you take your shoes off at the recital? A little weird, I know ^^

Ragdoll - nothing better than a freshly tuned piano! Hopefully a flood won't bring more tuna.

SwissMS - I wonder who will dare to go first at the party. Will be a bit scary, right?

I would be more than happy to go first. Otherwise I will sit there and work myself up into terror! If I do not have time to think about it, I might just forget anyone is listening.

We might have to toss a coin for that

Yay, Cheryl and SwissMS will be (sight-)playing a duet first

Allard, you have SUCH a good imagination

But who knows.....lol

Yes I guess I could....LOL....but I'm trying to feel LESS abnormal in front of a crowd. Somehow drawing attention to myself with public shoe removal seems like I would be pretending to be relaxed...which is pretty funny Maybe I should also loosen my belt, unbutton a couple of shirt buttons, and roll up my sleeves in a real show of bravura
Heck, I'll just take it all off and give em a real show!!

Ugh ... Once again, it's been way too long. But then, I haven't had much to report on since the last time I was here.

Yesterday's lesson was sort of cool though, in a way. I have my piano exam in two weeks. I'll be playing two pieces (one of the Griegs that I'm working on, and then one of the Burgmüllers). I was playing the Grieg for my teacher when I suddenly lost my vision. Kept playing, and when I was done, she said "that was perfect".

Sadly, the Burgmüller was not that much of a success, while 'flying blind'. But at least I know what to work on now, in order to truly master that piece, too. And my teacher gave me some helpful pointers on how to deal with the really tricky spots.

Have I said that my teacher is awesome? Because she is.



I realise I'm coming very late to this, and the recital experience might be ancient history to you by now, but: congratulations! You started to bomb, but recovered? That's even better than not bombing at all!



See, I, for one, can't do 1+3 trilling to save my life. I've tried many times . But I guess, in the end, what it comes down to is that we all have to find whatever works for *us*. I'm glad you did.



This is exactly why I always tell people asking for advice on how to learn the piano here: get a teacher. A good one. A good teacher is worth their weight in gold. Congratulations on having found a keeper!



That sounds heavenly, Irene. And I think it's when we get to this stage with our pieces that 'real music' results. We should all strive to get where you got with the Prelude in C major.



And your mistakes as much more glaring, right? Congratulations on this momentous discovery. Now do something with it!

This is something I've known about, through my own recordings, for a while now, but so far it hasn't led to me having an easier time making a recording of myself (or playing in front of someone, which is basically the same thing).



Quite a workout, indeed. I do not think I could do it (or perhaps I should say: find the motivation to do it). Nice going!



That's a very encouraging thought. I have sometimes wondered how much of the skill we acquire practicing one particular piece is really transferrable. I guess I haven't been at it long enough to experience this first-hand. So thank you for sharing!



Yay for persistence!



Congratulations! It is so awesome when something that's been eluding you for weeks suddenly just 'clicks'!



And isn't that the most important thing of all? Good for you, Cheryl!



Sounds quite astounding. You must have been working hard on building lasting skill in those eight weeks, playing other things!



Sounds like a huge achievement to me! I've been struggling with something similar in a Chopin Waltz I'm trying to beat into submission (but maybe it's just too early for me to try to tackle a Chopin Waltz ... we shall see). Congrats on getting back to the piano after that long of a hiatus, by the way!



Nice! It's one of those gifts that will keep on giving as you progress along the path of learning to play the piano .



I am always in awe of the folks who can do scales at all, let alone competently. They bore me! I guess I'll have to get to them some day, though.



That's awesome, Andy! I'm jealous of you. Here's to hoping I will be able to post a similar achievement a year or two from now.



Congrats on your first festival performance! Must have felt good to survive that .



Three cheers for having found a teacher with whom things 'click'! And who cares about his age? My music theory teacher is about the same age as my youngest brother. To me, my brother is still 'the baby' of the family. But I don't see my music teacher in that light at all.



It may be relatively slow, but at least you're keeping at it. So many others in your position (feeling as if their progress is unsatisfactory) would have given up already. *I* almost gave up, three months ago, for this exact reason.

But here you are, and you just keep plugging away. I say again: yay for persistence!



A while back, on this thread (it may have been before you got here), we talked about the Pareto Principle as applied to learning piano: ninety percent of the effort, when learning a piece, goes into ten percent of the improvements. You get to 'reasonable approximation of what this *should* sound like' relatively quickly. But to get from there to 'I'm proud of this' ... that's a different bag of chips. So keep at it. I'm sure you'll get there before you know it! And yay for the lightbulb moment!



Congrats on overcoming technical and confidence hurdles alike, and actually posting your first recording, rnaple!

/me makes a note to go listen to it some time soon. Sorry! I've been neglecting PW somewhat, lately!



Please do! Unless you already have, and I just missed it.



This. This is the achievement that beats them all: smiling about the little things. Sometimes we forget.



It does sound like a good idea. And it sounds like you did pretty well, so yay for that. Also: I always take off my shoes when playing the piano, because my leg is too heavy to lift when I'm wearing shoes, and I can't move my ankles, so I *have* to lift my entire leg. I do it at recitals and exams, too. If people can't live with that, it's their problem, not mine.



Sounds like you're hitting it off with your teacher now. Good for you!



Glad to hear it, 'cause that makes two of us .

Some updates:
The rules were changed due the different quality of videos in contest (some were professional videos, others were homemade videos - like mine). The jury doesn't want to reject a competitor based on the (less good) quality of the video, so they decided to do an extra step to find the finalists. The extra step is restricted for those who had "good performances" and... I'm in the group
So, I will present my version of "Indaco" next 15Jun in Lisbon, live, in front of the jury. Let's see what happens next.

I just have to decide what to play: "my" Albert Hall version (ABF recital #26), or the original version. Any opinion?

My AOTW was the English Folk Song. I played it cheerfully and with correct dynamics too. The dynamics have been giving me fits but this song I've actually done a better job at expressing the dynamics.

CarlosCC - Congratulations being making the first cut selection! That is really an accomplishment. I would play the version that fills your heart the most. That will let you be the most expressive. Good luck and keep us posted!

CarlosCC thanks for the update. We are all rooting for you. I vote for the recital arrangement, because you are likely more comfortable with that. With the nerves that usually come with a live performance, the more comfort the better.

No clue - but awesome! Congratulations!

JimF -- whatever you decide to do about shoes, DO NOT try to play while wearing hiking boots! (Tried this at a lesson once.) Oh, and don't try it like the baby, either. I think you have to be under 2 years old to get away with that.

Saranoya -- that had to have taken some high-level concentration, to keep playing while having your vision fail. It sounds like you're going to nail that piece when you perform it. Good luck on the exam!

CarlosCC -- that's awesome news! I read that a good way to make a choice is to flip a coin. Well, there's just a little bit more to it than that. Or have a computer flip the coin for you, and take part in an experiment.


This past week I've been working on expression, dynamics choices in particular, applying it to two Chopin Preludes. My teacher, who is usually stingy with praise, complimented my playing on both of them! Is he getting soft, or am I actually starting to get this? For the next two weeks I have to work on (the more difficult for me) tempo changes and rubato.

Marybee - Thanks for the sugestion , but I've decided to play the version that I'm more comfortable - I agree with SwissMS and Sand Tiger -.
Congratulations for your progress with the preludes!

Sand Tiger - "With the nerves that usually come with a live performance(...)"
Well, my mindset is to do a "good practice session" in front of the jury. I'm usually a relaxed guy.
And the true is that I'll have to trust my memory just because I didn't write a single line of "my " version. So, I think it's time to start working!

SwissMS - Yes, I'll keep posting the updates. It's important to me to have your kind support. Thank you.