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Valencia, I'm really looking forward to hearing the Mendelsson piece! I know the "team" in RST has been working really hard on all of the songs without words. I think it has to be quite the learning experience. I would have liked to join in but the pieces were all beyond my skills! It sounds like it has been a stretch for you, but I applaud your determination and focus.

Half-step: There is nothing quite like a freshly tuned piano - enjoy it while it lasts!

Sam - Jim put it rather well,...your talent is rather --particular.
I give you all the credit due for dedication and determination -but at the same time I think it is pretty important for those who may not "know" you to make it clear that you, (like a few others who participate in the forum) are an exceptional case. You've got something that has let you get farther in a few short years than many of us will manage to get after a decade.

It makes me think about how some folks get all worried that their pieces aren't good enough for the recital, because there are many others who play so well. They feel intimidated or so far "behind" that they can't believe anyone would enjoy listening to them.
Sand Tiger always has something very encouraging to put things into perspective as to who participates and the different levels, and I think we all work to let folks know that we're here to share the journey - and we do it better if we get to hear each other.

I say all this only because I would hate for someone to pop in and hear Sam's stunning performances and think "oh man, I've been playing 2 years and I'm still working on getting my scales up to speed"...or something like that. I think it is pretty easy to be intimidated or to feel "slow" or discouraged when we hear people who started up on piano well after we did and who are so much farther ahead.

So, yes, Sam's performance certainly is impressive -- and a pleasure to listen to - but let those of us who are not moving at lightning speed not be discouraged or intimidated, just enjoy the music!

I'm still listening to the last ABF recital in the car and I'm still enjoying the performances of many of the pianists with less than five years experience.

When we listen to ourselves we hear the smallest mistakes, and even listen for them, but when we listen to someone else play we're actually wanting to enjoy the performance and tend to overlook the mistakes and try and hear the interpretation or personality coming through or the progress they're making. It helps when the "personalitites" are friends here on the ABF.

Speaking of performances (shameless plug), I've posted pics of my new piano and a couple of performances (my own AotW) to go with them on RST. Andy, if you're interested, it includes my version of Chopin's Eb Nocturne.

My New Kawai on RST

My big achievement this week - or maybe this is a 4-year achievement - is that I've learned to play the basic 12-bar blues in Tim Richards' Improvising Blues Piano. I had his book from the library after I'd been playing about a year I think, & either it was way beyond me, or it was too much of a distraction - can't remember which. Anyway, it went nowhere & I returned it. But this time, I opened it & it wasn't even a stretch to play the basic Beginners Blues - I started playing the first few bars straight off the page, & then I didn't even need the page, because I knew where it would go. It took me 5 or 10 minutes to get the hang of the on/off rhythm variation, & now I can play them both! My teacher's had me working my way around the circle of 5ths with scales, triads & cadences, so I think I'll start transposing the BB into other keys. Maybe not such a big deal for someone who's been playing almost 4 years, but it shows me I've progressed enough that I DO now have a level at which I'm comfortable, even if it's a basic one. I still have a Chapters gift card left over from Christmas, so I think I'm going to spend it on the Richards' book & maybe the Great American Songbook.

Learning to play the 12-bar blues takes a few minutes (given sufficient basic technique) then it takes a lifetime! Enjoy!

Got meself a good free copy o` Schuman`s Impromptu after I`d thrown most o` my music out having retired . . . .I`m too quick to chuck stuff out. And repent at leisure . . . .

Don't worry peterws. Most of it is easily replaced, and if you're like me you'll have the advantage of being able to find the new one.

JoyousSong, I saw that 12 bars blues early on, and skipped it because I was baffled by it. In time I may go back to it.

Week 52: I posted a lengthy anniversary summary as a separate thread, One year and The Passage of Time. As for my achievements, I added a couple of triplets to my new composition, which now has a name, The Passage of Time . I continue to work on Canon in D, Misty Mountains Cold, and plan to do at least Misty next Saturday at Songmakers, the others will depend on the turn out and the mood.

Thank you Casinitaly for starting this thread, and thanks to all the other regulars on AOTW. Posting and reading here have been a big help to me. Cheers.

Where did you get the sheet music for Misty Mountains Cold? I remember really loving that melody when I watched The Hobbit, and I would love to learn how to play it!

And thanks Casinitaly from me as well!! You are probably the most positive force on this forum. Does anyone else here think Casinitaly is really a bot programmed by Frank to inspire all us adult beginners? I think it's the most plausible explanation. I mean, really! People who are that positive and uplifting don't exist in the real world, do they?

You're doing really good, Sam. Face it. Besides...nobody on this forum is a bot...ot...ot...ot

Sam Rose, I found a couple of transcriptions on:

http://musescore.com/sheetmusic

You may have to work out your own arrangement. The melody line is simple.

There are also several tutorials for Misty Mountains Cold on YouTube, but those arrangements were too advanced for me.

Gah! I have no skill with a blade! And I have no skill with arranging either. My reading is very weak (probably among the weakest here) so I would need to memorize any arrangement I wanted to play. Then I run into a diminishing returns kind of a problem. If I picked an easy arrangement, I would have to work somewhat hard to memorize it and then I might not like it enough to find it worth the bother. If I picked a hard arrangement, they are often REALLY hard, and then I could spend way too much time in a way that might be better spent elsewhere. I think the solution might be to spend six months just improving my reading, but that's tiresome and I don't even know how to go about doing it.

There are so many movie and TV scores I want to learn, but I have this problem with all of them...

Sam, Now you are being silly. Are you sticking out your tongue when you type that? Are you confusing the adult beginners forum with the performance degree forum?

A person that can play a lengthy classical piece after a few days with the score, may not be doing prima vista sight reading, but it still demonstrates a high skill level with sheet music. That level of skill probably puts a person in the top 5% for ABF, in terms of learning a new piece from sheet music.

I might suggest you work on arranging. We are talking movie scores, there is a wide latitude as compared to classical pieces. Start with the melody line, add some basic triad chords and inversions, add a few 7ths, 9ths, some arpeggios, trills, and other kinds of ornaments and it will sound all fancy in no time. Trust your ears and your fingers. If in doubt, simplify to three or four basic chords and repeat the pattern. A person can also look up the guitar chords to get more ideas.

I have two AOTW's to report on.

One, although my apartment still has no heating or hot water (both of which I consider rather indispensable if I want to live there permanently), it is now in an advanced enough state of completion that I no longer feel the need to keep the piano packed in shipping foam and blankets all the time. I've been practicing daily after work at my new digs since Thursday. When it's really cold out, my practice sessions still tend to get cut short by finger stiffness, but I feel like I'm slowly getting back to normal as far as practice routine goes.

Also, I sent my teacher an e-mail explaining some of my issues (housing troubles with lack of regular effective practice as a consequence, fear of 'not doing enough' and the resultant temptation to cancel lessons, and some other, more sticky stuff). She was, rather predictably, very supportive in her response, and got me to see that not going to piano lessons anymore wouldn't actually solve any of my problems -- quite the contrary. I agreed to continue to take lessons, and to consider moving to a bi-weekly schedule if necessary. So I don't know if that's an AOTW on my part, or on the part of my teacher, but it's an AOTW nonetheless.

Thank you all for your encouragement, here and in the other thread. Some of your posts really made me think, and I don't believe I would have been quite so receptive to my teacher's arguments if it hadn't been for a bunch of friendly strangers on the internet trying to convince me not to give up!



I'm sure this is no fun to you, but I'm so relieved to read it! You're describing the exact same kind of problems that I am having with my new piano, except that you haven't been forced to store yours in a cold, damp, dusty and all-around inhospitable place for over a month. I'm hoping that the issues my piano is experiencing right now are, therefore, just normal consequences of moving it to a new environment, and that this means they can be addressed without a major overhaul by a competent technician. Let me know, once you get yours tuned and regulated, whether or not the vibrations go away.



I'll bet it did! .



I've known this to be true for quite a while. And yet, every time I sit down at the piano, I'm tempted to just let loose and play. I make progress in baby steps, where I could be doing leaps and bounds if I focused my practice a bit more. Congratulations on having accomplished what I wish I could (and know I should) do!



Practice makes perfect. It's a cliché as big as a house, but cliches don't usually become cliches unless there is more than a little bit of truth to them. Congratulations on sticking with it!



I am very late responding to this, which means that others have already said what I wanted to say better than I could. But I, too, think that your teacher's job is not to ask "why can't you ..." about anything. Her job is to answer that question (preferably with your input), and then help you find a way to do it anyway. One of the many, many reasons I appreciate my teacher as much as I do is that, like Andy Platt's teacher, she would never say something like that. Her response when I'm having trouble with something is always: OK, I see what's going on here. Now, how can we solve this? I don't know that I would stick for very long with a teacher who consistently did the opposite of that. On the other hand, it sounds from your recital report as though you do have a good thing going with this teacher. Congratulations on the nice performance, which you described so beautifully!



I feel for you, Toastie. I haven't had my heart broken in a very long time, but I got some less-than-stellar news of a different kind last week. I know that music will help get me through the resultant rough patch. I sincerely wish the same thing upon you.



This is such a marvelous idea! Will try it some time (although, probably not in front of my teacher or anyone else!)



I think this is really good advice. In the six or so months since I started with my current teacher, I've never not played a piece I had learned for 'a few weeks', but I have sometimes let it sit for a few days. Often I find that I play a piece better after such a 'pause' without even trying. It's as if my brain just needs time to 'absorb', and that happens regardless of whether I keep playing the piece or not. Anyway, congrats on getting this far with your Bach piece!



Well, that's the mother of all AOTW's, isn't it? . Without being able to play, there would be no AOTW's at all.



You'll get there! I can hear the 'cacaphony' you speak of in your recording, but I can also already hear the melody clearly. Now it's just a question of calming the jumble beneath it a little bit .



Like HalfStep, you get my sincere congratulations on actually being efficient in your practice, as opposed to knowing you should be more efficient, but spending most of your time at the piano 'goofing off' instead. I should really sit down and figure out a way to follow your example that works for me.



Uh ... good for you! I didn't even know those two things existed ... let alone what the difference between them is. But thanks for explaining it to this n00b.



Congrats on the new teacher. That *is* really exciting. I hope you guys will 'click', and that you can enjoy a long and fruitful relationship with this teacher, which will take you to your end goal of being able to compose at the piano!



I think the fact that you can even consider doing this is a big achievement in and of itself. I wish I were that comfortable playing the same piece in different keys! I think I'm going to make that my new long-term goal. Thanks for the inspiration!

You overestimate me Sand Tiger! I worked on the ballade for an incredibly long time. I can NOT just look at sheet music and play it a few days later. I can hardly "sight read" anything at all, even the most basic children's melodies.

As far as arranging goes, my knowledge of theory is very limited. I know how to make major and minor chords and scales (sort of) and that's it. And I don't even have any of that stuff memorized yet. All I've got down pat is the natural major and minor chords in their root inversions. I simply have no idea how to tackle theory, and without an approach to it, I have no way to advance at it. It's rather frustrating, actually. So in many ways, a majority of the ABF is far ahead of me.

Wow...I don't know if I can keep up!

First of all --- Rnaple! Ron, I missed your post on getting a new teacher. I'll be very interested in seeing how your skype lessons work out. My lessons will stop in the summer and I've been seriously wondering about having a few over July and August via skype....keep us posted please!

Richard - congrats on your new piano - it's a beauty!
I enjoyed listening to your "sample pieces" --- I think it is rather splendid that you can pull those pieces out and just play them at that level. How lovely to have these in your repertoire!

Allard - hang in there! Your piano is settling in. Very soon you'll have it tuned-up and you'll fall in love all over again!

Peter: I'm listening to the Impromptu as I type. I see that it takes Valantina Lisitsa 10 minutes to play it... I can't imagine tackling a piece of that length! It is truly beautiful though. Will we hear it in a recital at some time?

Joyoussong - the 12 bar blues pattern is so much fun. I had a friend get me started on it a while ago and it is really neat to see it showing up in some of the pieces in my jazz, rags and blues books. Once you know it, you've got a whole world opened up to you. I have the book you mentioned too, but I haven't used it much lately. I got his Jazz book as well....have barely cracked it open. I had planned to work on both and then when I got my new teacher I got sidetracked with other stuff.
You should have a great time with this!

SandTiger and Sam - I think it is interesting to see how you both work with what is available other than just the sheet music. I don't have the patience to work with youtube tutorials.

SandTiger- happy pianoversary! I commented on your thread ---but to sum it up here: I really like your articulate expression of the insights you've found over the past year!

Saranoya: I'm glad that things are starting to become easier, but wow... you still have to put up with a lot of problems related to your apartment! I'm really glad you let your teacher know what was going on and that you got (no surprise) such a supportive reply from her.

I never imagined that this thread would become such a staple of the PW diet for so many of us. I'm glad I started it, because it has been a vehicle for getting to know a wonderful group of people here in PW - the joy of this thread is that whatever you give to it- you get back in spades. It has taken on a life of its own, and I'm just glad to be a part of it.

I don't really have an AOTW. I got a version of Canon in D (from a Dan Coates arrangement) and I'm trying it out. I like it a lot, and I find I'm extremely relaxed when playing it, but I'm not sure that it is "the" version for me.

Oh thank you so much. You are encouraging!
I just had my first lessson. Might seem strange on Sunday morning. this was the only time we could work out that would be stable. The lesson went great. Taking me right from the beginning. He's happy using Alfred's all in one Course. I'm surprised he doesn't have any problem using the camera on my laptop for now. If there is something he needs to see better on my hand. I will adjust to show him. No big deal. He is really good. He is middle age. So I can relate to him easier. Has a degree, juliard training, owns his own record company, composes, produces, performs, and teaches. He is still very down to earth. Not cheap either. And I'm so happy with Alfred that our first song is one of the greatest that I love: Ode To Joy. It went great. I'm really excited.
Finally getting into piano, right. I've had so many problems in the past trying to start piano. Finances ruined twice, had to quit before getting going. I've wanted this for a long time. I want to learn seriously. I want to create my own music eventually.
EDIT: I wanted to add. My biggest problem right now is fighting my parrot (base) mind. To copy. That is my enemy. My enemy in music. I keep trying to play Ode to Joy the way it is engrained in my heart. Not the simplicity as written in the book. When I know darn well that the 9th symphony starts with it like that! My base mind, my nervous system must obey my heart. That is how I live. But my heart must obey what is written on the page. Gee... especially those last two notes. Doh!

Oh casinitaly... I hope someday you might help me to criticise my Italian for songs like Caruso, the Prayer and some others of Adrea Bocelli I admire. I think he's the best opera. He uses much dynamic range.

I spent the last hour setting up an album to finally upload piano pics! The achievement of the month really!

http://baldwinpiano.shutterfly.com/

That is a gorgeous instrument!! What's the model and size? I may have missed it when you posted it originally.

I hope it brings you joy for decades to come

Thanks Sam Rose, I love it. It's a Baldwin BP152. I actually finally took the time to set up an album to post based on a related thread. You may or may not be interested...

https://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/2030385/gonew/1/What%20Goes%20Around%20Comes%20Around!.html#UNREAD

I went piano shopping in Germany a couple of weeks ago, and look who followed me home!





Needless to say, I am very excited! I purchased it for the same price that I sold my M&H BB for in the US, so it is like an even swap. I have missed having a grand, so this is a dream come true for me! Now, if I can just play well enough to justify it!