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Hello to all,

After two weeks of battling Musette and Musett's Waltz I am moving along to Battle Hymn of the Republic. All that bouncing over the keys with Musette took me a long time. I kept bouncing to the wrong keys.

How is every one doing with their respective practicing?

I'm up to waves of the danube now.. probably my favourite piece in the book so far..

I have been learning some other pieces in between the alfred series, mostly other classical pieces from the yamaha book (the 50 built in to the p155).

So far I can play 3 out of 50 :-)

Having a nice time too!

the songs in this book are too easy

Are we talking about Alfred's Book 2? I wish I could say the same thing

yeah i find them easy. almost too easy

So when did you start playing?

Which piece are you doing in Book 2?

i started in about 2009...and right now im on olympic procession...i been going too slow and getting distracted tho lately

Not easy for me.

I'm still trying to get to grips with Canon. But it is comming slowly but surely.

I am finding most of the songs in book 2 are easy(ish) but they do need a a bit of work to get right.

Meanwhile. I am reading through the theory part on scale degrees in book 3..

(Keeping in mind that I skipped the Mexican songs...) I'm finding that the songs in book #2 aren't that much more challenging than book #1. If you look through the book, most of the songs have nothing more than blocked or broken chords in the left hand. I don't think the songs are all that difficult. (I'm not saying they're all easy.) It's just we're working in other area's besides this book.

Doug, you work on a lot of other material. (Like you should.) If you just concentrated on one song from Alfred's you could get it in a week or less, easily. But you're working on scales, theory and other material along with probably working a full time job.

For those not working with a teacher, I would like to encourage you to tackle a harder piece along with your work in Alfred. This book is great because it has short pieces to learn on. For myself, I've seen a lot of growth over the last 4 weeks since I started doing some challenging supplemental pieces. I needed someone to push me to work on something harder. Now I'm seeing progress again.

I think I've gone through 5 supplemental pieces in the past month. They're challenging, but not overly so. They've been working my left hand a lot more. I have one difficult piece that I work on in just small sections. This piece really through me off because there were no finger numbers written on the page and she won't let me write number and note names on the page. LOL I'm really enjoying other material more so than Alfred. I will continue with Alfred, but with a lot less focus.

I'm really enjoying my new teacher. She is encouraging me to be note perfect right now.

Headphone amplifier....I'm ordering one to plug in between my digital piano and my headphones to boost the volume. Right now I have to play with the volume all the way up on my piano when I wear my headphones.

Last year at this time I was working on Blow The Man Down. It's so good to look back and see how I've progressed. It's not as fun to look forward at what I need to accomplish though. I can't imagine every playing well, but I'm having fun trying.

I agree that for the most part they are not all that much different from the book 1 pieces. I get most of them pretty quickly but there always seems to be one or two parts of each piece that gives me trouble. It's usually whatever the new concept or technique happens to be so finally overcoming the difficulty is satisfying. I occasionally go back to past pieces that gave me trouble and am pleased to find that they aren't troublesome anymore.

You are right GracieCat, that if I concentrated on one piece at a time it would only be a week or less to learn but I am always working on a couple older pieces, my supplemental piece and scales, etc..

As of my last lesson I am finally past all of the Mexican pieces. I'm currently finishing up Festive Dance and Scherzo and should get the OK on them next Wed. I am happy with the way both of them sound. I am just starting Introduction and Dance. Still plugging along on My Heart Will Go on but making slow progress with it.

Funny you mention Blow The Man Down, I was going through a few of the pieces I recorded on my digital and that was one of them. It reminded me of how far we have come since last year.

I've seen a few people this past few weeks talking about the Book 2 being easier. Sadly, I'm not finding that yet

However, I do agree with the posters above who say to add some supplementals in too, rather than just bash away with this one book.

I guess it depends on your favourite styles, but I like the classical pieces, so I looked into Bach, and uncovered what the rest of you no doubt already knew, i.e he was a titanic genius!

I supplemented with :-

Minuet in G (BWV 114)
Prelude in C (BWV 846)

Also, looked at playing around with :-

Prelude C Minor (BWV 847)
Goldberg Aria (way outta my league, but it's a masterpiece!!)

starbug,I'm supplementing with the book "Easy Piano Classics" Here's a link. There's a place on that page you can click to see the contents of the book. This book is right on par with Alfreds book #1.

I've never liked classical music, but I'm really finding it fun to play on the keys. Much better than just banging chords in the left hand.

My lesson yesterday was awful. I couldn't put two notes together. It would help if I could have some time to really play on her piano. The keys are much stiffer than the one's on my acoustic. It's hard to just sit down and play a piece without having some time to adjust to the different feel. She really got onto me about hitting wrong notes. I was frustrated as I could play the stupid song at home just fine.

Still working on the C scale in parallel motion. I can go up two octaves, but I can't get it together coming back down. She added 2 octave C major arpeggios. If I can't do a plain scale in parallel, I can't see accomplishing arpeggios both hands together. I suck. I hate scales.

Gracie, Do you ever play any other pianos besides yours & your teacher's? I used to have a terrible time with my brain freezing when I was playing my first teacher's piano;. It wasn't anything to do with the teacher; she was about as far from intimidating as a person could be. She suggested I should get used to playing other pianos, not just my own, so I've tried to do that occasionally. One of my neighbours has a piano that I play once in a while, I took some practice sheet music on holiday last summer & played my cousin's piano, and, just once, I went & played in a piano store for a bit. I think it's helped - I don't mangle things nearly as much at my lessons with my new teacher (who's not intimidating either, but not as much of a softy as my first teacher)

My current teacher tends to point out my wrong notes as soon as I hit them - he tells me what it should be - but I've learned to just tune it out. I told him a few weeks ago that I'm almost always aware when I hit a wrong note, so he doesn't need to draw it to my attention, & that when he tells me it should be, for example, G, it's essentially meaningless because when I'm reading music I'm not really thinking about letters - I associate the dot on the stave with a place on the keyboard - so he might as well be telling me it should be Q#. Occasionally, I'll misread something, & I appreciate it if he points it out afterwards so I can correct it. He's getting better at telling me afterwards & just zipping it while I'm playing, but he still does it sometimes I just ignore him.

Since I've been working with this new teacher, Alfred's has been on hold. I'm doing Beyer etudes - almost finished - & one of the things I like about Beyer is that some of the scale exercises are really interesting. I've been working on an Am that sounds to me like vampires sneaking around (or goblins, depending on the weather outside.) If you'd like to try a couple, pm me & I'll try to scan them & email. CM & Am have been the most interesting so far.

JoyousSong,What is the title of the Book that you are working on?

It's Beyer Preparatory School Opus 101. I didn't start at the beginning, because I already had nearly 2 years' playing, but when I started with this teacher, he recommended it. Parts of it are REALLY boring - I actually lost it with my teacher one day, I said "This book is SO boring, it doesn't even feel like music to me!" - but it's not all like that. My dexterity has improved an awful lot in a few months, my hands work a lot better together. & I can read better, especially being able to work out how things like dotted eighth notes fit into a passage. Now that I'm closer to the end of the book, the etudes sound a lot more musical (it could be that my playing's improved; maybe the earlier stuff wasn't as boring as I thought) There are only a few scale exercises scattered throughout the book, & they're much more interesting than just running up & down the scale.

Amazon has it; So does Sheet Music Plus.

I'll amend my earlier comment: the pieces in AIO Book 2 don't get easier (they are in fact more complex), rather my ability to play them has increased. Or to put it another way, it seems to me that the learning curve is not linear. It took me forever on some of the earlier pieces, but now--only a shorter version of forever, lol. Practice along with the passage of time does make a difference.

On another note--I was outside doing some spring cleanup on the landscaping around the house and got a small sliver under the skin on my left little finger, on the pad. You know, the part that comes into contact with a piano key. I got the sliver out, but my finger is still a little sore. Do you know how often you hit a key with LH5 in a piece?! Ouch!

Carol, I don't play too often on other pianos. I have an acoustic and digital here that I switch between. I go up to church and play on theirs some times. In fact, I play one day last week. My teacher mentioned that I needed to play on others as well. I really need to make a point to do it more.

GracieCat, I have been much more aware of the differences between my teacher's acoustic and my digital and how they affect my playing at my lessons lately. It seems to throw me off a lot more now than it did when I started lessons. I don't know what the reason is but it takes me a while to adjust at each lesson too, and I share your pain about being able to play the 'stupid things' at home then flubbing them up at the lesson. It's not nerves anymore as I am very comfortable with my teacher at this point. I don't have an acoustic available to me to get any time on between lessons so I'll just have to deal with it.

I'll add to the discussion on the pieces in book 2 by suggesting that our skills are developing and that perhaps it's normal for them to seem as easy because our skills are keeping up with the difficulty of the pieces, yes?

I'm with Doug. The pieces in Alfred 2 are NOT easy for me. I sometimes have to put it aside and work on much easier pieces in another book in order to not give up entirely. As for tackling a harder piece, the Alfred pieces ARE my harder pieces. Joe, I'm impressed that you find them too easy. You will probably finish Book 3 before I get to the end of Book 2. LOL

I just spent 10 days at a watercolor painting workshop, so I will be a bit rusty today when I sit down at the piano. Still working on "Festive Dance" and "Mexican Hat Dance".