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It's hard to imagine a greater compliment than being part of this group of "crazy piano people." When I read this thread of the care and devotion each of you put into the loving preparation of a piece of music I am not only impressed but in awe. Piano is not something you can approach half heartedly...it needs a full heart. I've loved my vacation in Scottsdale...baseball is good...warm weather is good...no work is good....meeting FarmGirl and husband was grand. Really looking forward to going home tomorrow to my piano and hoping that the few days away were good for my memory and my focus. That may be my AOTW

Well I did my midterm today.. And it was only in front of my piano teacher and another professor. I was still nervous and messed up on the Hungary piece. Hopefully I get a decent grade:)
my piano teacher asked me if I was nervous afterwards because she couldn't tell. So I guess that's a good thing?:)

Indeed I am pleased, but it was a simple piece...not exactly Chopin's Polonaise in Ab Maj Nevertheless, I'm so glad to have the grasp of this concept in my mind.

Thanks for the encouraging words cas.

Congratulations Augustina, I wager your grade will be pleasing to you. It's great to get "important" milestones in your rearview mirror isn't it?

Congratulations for getting through your midterm. If your teacher did not think you were nervous you must have played pretty well!

FarmGirl, Wisebluff--like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I love that photo! It brings a smile to my face!

Casinitaly wrote: Spent some time at the stove, huh? (Check out the cartoon here .)

Augustina, congrats on making it through the mid-term. Are you a university student or doing this as a later-in-life thing?

Ragdoll, good going on the on-the-fly transcription. I usually use MuseScore.

I like these words of wisdom from SwissMS.
If ever!

So many accomplishments here! You people are awesome!


My achievement of the week (actually weeks and weeks) is:
1. Did some sightreading practice from Essential Keyboard Repertoire vol. 1 and vol. 2. Not every day, but at least some. I tend to memorize fairly quickly and this does not help sightreading.

2. Continuing with Canon in D. I'm usually under six minutes now for the version I'm playing, but more importantly, I've eliminated most of the hesitations--though not all of the random mistakes (grrr). I play this every day, sometimes as a warmup, sometimes as the last piece.

3. Speaking of hesitations: I started Chopin's Waltz in A Minor last spring, but put it aside after a few months (it was too sad after my cat died). I took it up again a month or so and it feels much better under my fingers. I'm still messing up the trill/mordent in m.51, but the rest is much improved, especially in m. 19-24, where before I had a lot of hesitations.

4. Made some progress with Married Life (from the movie UP). The score is nine pages long, and I'm working in chunks, so this may take awhile. The score has only a few pedal notations, but at the (very slow) tempo I'm at now, it doesn't sound that good without pedal.

Thanks guys. Stubbie I am majoring in Biological Sciences at Wichita state. I'm taking this course as an elective:)

I'm 33 years old and decided I wanted to take piano lessons. So for christmas, my husband got me a digital piano and i started taking an hour lesson once a week with a local piano teacher. Last Sunday, I had my first recital. It was probably the most nervewracking things I ever had to do especially since I was the only adult student among 15 5-11 year olds. In 3 months, I was able to perform Arabesque by Burgmuller and Minuet in G minor anh 115 by JS Bach infront of a crowd. The positive feedbacks I received after were so encouraging and motivating mad me want to get better at this. So tomorrow, I'm going to shop around for an accoustic piano in hopes that the feel of a real piano will help me with developing my techniques and play harder pieces in the future.

Augustina,

GO SHOCKERS!!







(appologies to non-fans of march madness)

Jim I love it!!!!:):)

Well Ive just revived an old piece I composed that I used to play on synths, and Im adapting it for piano as it helps with hand independance!

I had hoped I would be able to post something here, today, along the lines of "my class recital went really well, yesterday". Alas. It didn't.

So, as I've seen others do on this thread throughout the week, I'm trying to salvage the positive from what actually felt like a pretty crappy situation to me -- and that will have to suffice, as an AOTW. I got through my Beethoven piece with only one big mistake, which I guess is about as good as I could really expect things to get. But I did horrible on the Burgmuller, and I hadn't expected that (if anything, I would have thought the Beethoven would be the train wreck).

Had a seizure on the way home after the recital, and just as I was waking up, I heard the person who was with me (another piano student, who is also in my music theory class, and so has witnessed quite a few of my seizures already) say in annoyance: "ugh, always the same crap with you." And if I were really as strong and positive as I'd like to be, I wouldn't write about that here, and soldiering on in silence would be my other AOTW. But everything is a struggle. And everywhere I go, I have to justify to people (like the person from yesterday) the fact that I refuse to give up on having some semblance of a normal life, which includes regularly leaving the house on my own for work, piano lessons, and scouting, and so, yes, sometimes being a burden to the people who happen to be with me when something untoward happens. I'm sick of fighting all the time.

I started a list of 'dream pieces' I want to learn to play, because it will give me an overabundance of concrete, measurable goals for the long-term future. In this way, I am hoping that piano can become, and remain for years, a positive force in my life that gets me through the really rough patches -- one reason, among many, to keep on keepin' on.



This is great. If you can do this, you seem to have your stage nerves pretty well under control! I'll take my hat off for that, sir.



Plugging along is good! Especially if you're doing it happily . Also, jumping ahead because you somehow always manage to post at least twice before I get around to following up on this thread, congrats on figuring out what was causing your troubles with focus, and then implementing a solution!



Kudos for finding the positive in something that must have been pretty annoying you!



They *are* tricky, especially once you get up to any kind of a decent tempo. Way to go.



Taking a pretty crappy situation and turning it into a net positive ... I call that an achievement, too. Other than that, congrats on the progress you made with Canon in D and Down by the Sally Gardens. I plan on doing the promised transcription of the YouTube link you posted after I'm done with this thread.



I'd be chuffed if I were you, too!



In my book, any public performance is a massive accomplishment, and doubly so when grades are at stake. So yay for you!



I'd be excited if I were you, too! My suggestion for practice would be: once daily (which is what I've been doing with my Beethoven for the past month or so, and it came out quite nicely at the recital yesterday, though I could have done better). And practice it at different tempos. You might want to play it a little more slowly than you normally do when actually at the recital, to compensate for nerves. But if you haven't practiced it that way in weeks, you *will* attempt to play it at your normal 'home' tempo, and fail.



I'm finding the same thing in my own situation. Glad it works for you, too! Keep on keepin' on, you're in my thoughts.



I sometimes find that, after having practiced like crazy on a piece for a while, in order to progress further, I just need to let it sit for a while. Seems like you figured out the same thing about the Schumann piece. Don't sell yourself short, by the way. If you believe you can do it, that in itself may take you a very long way.



That's a good idea. Maybe I should go back to Mikrokosmos for sight reading practice, too. I liked it the first time we did it (with my last teacher, when I was fifteen), but I wasn't really sight reading then.



Big step in anyone's piano journey, indeed![/quote]



W00t! I didn't think I could do this, either, but I recently did it with my Burgmuller study, which I transposed from G major - D major to A minor - E minor because it suited my mood better at that time. It's a great feeling to know that actually, I *can* do that.



Hear, hear!



That *is* a good thing. Congratulations on getting through your midterm -- regardless of the grade.

Stubbie, there's too much there to quote you, but sincere congratulations on *all* of your accomplishments!

You heard some words. You shouldn't assume a context, a motivation or a basic lack of sympathy. He WAS with you, and WAS looking after you. I expect he would be very upset at any suggestion that he wouldn't, or didn't want to. However, a slightly exasperated "Oh, not AGAIN!!!" is not unreasonable after one of your attacks has delayed and inconvenienced his journey! He puts up with your imperfections. You put up with his.

Just for clarification: I am not *assuming* anything, and certainly not a basic lack of sympathy.

My annoyance here is not with the person in question, or with their words in and of themselves. It's with the fact that I *am* an inconvenience to people in my life all the time, and there seems to be no reasonable way for me to avoid that. Suggestions offered up by others -- such as that I should take another person with me wherever I go, or that I should minimize the number of times I go outside the house in a week, or that I should move back in with my parents (seriously?) -- are at best things that would maybe offer me and everyone else in my life a bit of temporary reassurance for a few weeks. At worst, they are recipes for disaster. None of them are viable long-term solutions.

When I say that I feel like everything's a struggle, and that I'm tired of fighting all the time, it has nothing to do with 'fighting' this kind of perfectly normal expression of frustration on the part of someone who has been inconvenienced. It has to do with fighting to find solutions to problems that nobody seems to know how to deal with. It has to do with fighting to keep my 'normal life' going, despite these issues.

And before you jump on this to say that there are people with worse problems who manage perfectly fine: yes, I'm sure there are. In fact, I've met quite a few of these people. But I also know that all of them have had times in their lives when they felt like they were in over their heads, and they didn't know which way to turn anymore.

Like I said, I'm going through a rough patch right now. I am looking at all aspects of my life, and trying to find things that are still worth fighting for. The people on the ABF, and on this thread in particular, have been a great support to me in that, especially (and unsurprisingly) when it came to playing the piano. So I come back here from time to time to report on the ups and downs of my life in general, and my piano journey in particular.

I know you are no fan of the overabundance of praise and encouragement we heap onto each other here. I guess 'tough love' is more your speed, and that's cool as far as I'm concerned. You're right that I shouldn't assume anything to do with anyone else's motives for saying whatever they choose to say. If I really want to know, I should talk to them and ask. But I didn't *assume* anything. I just heard, and got annoyed -- with myself, with the situation, with the world at large. Maybe I shouldn't have. But then, I guess that's just another one of my many imperfections -- as you said, everyone has them, and there's nothing to do but deal with it.

Yes we all have imperfections,and just because you have seizures don't ever think you are an inconvenience or are weak!

>I know you are no fan of the overabundance of praise and encouragement we heap onto each other here.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Sounds like you're getting a lot done, and have good friends. Feeling able to express irritation at a friend's disability is actually a great compliment!

Of course you'll get low sometimes. We all do, and most of us have less reason than you.

This is EXACTLY the sort of mindless, worthless support that I campaign against!

Yes, the seizures ARE sometimes inconvenient to those around you. They COULD be described as a "weakness". Denying that would be idiotic. The point is that your friends and the community in general take it in their stride and, on the whole, cheerfully offer any support you need. Great, isn't it!

I agree with every word of the quote above. I just wish I could figure out a graceful way to be less of an inconvenience .

Maybe it's just me, but the word "weakness" seems to imply that you could instead be strong and not suffer from those seizures. As if some choice is involved. I highly doubt that! And it bloody well is inconvenient. I bet it's a lot more inconvenient to Saranoya than to the people around her. The good thing is, most people can deal pretty well with some inconvenience and be there to support you anyway, for whatever reasons - friendship, the goodness of their heart, guilt if they don't help, salary for doing their job well, whatever it is. We humans are generally social folks and willing to support others in their time of need.

The most "graceful" disabled person I know accepts help quietly, accepts that occasionally she CAN'T take part in something because no-one is available to assist her, and at Christmas sends cards and small presents - "to remind you how much I have appreciated your help over the last year". I expect she sometimes cries on the shoulder of a close friend, and has periods of privately being very unhappy.

This is, of course what she AIMS for. Sometimes, she's a right cow!

She is also a bloody nuisance to local officialdom, fighting for every possible publicly-funded support and service (and sometimes forgets that, though publicly-administrated, these are often actually provided by hard-stretched volunteers!).

I am truly sorry that you have more opportunity to be saintly than most of us :-)