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Hi Giano -

I'm pretty much at the beginning of book 1 - I have been waiting for my first lesson this week to see how my teacher wants to incorporate this book along with a couple others I'm using.

I've found the book to be useful, but I expect my teacher is going be much more beneficial than the book. For example, the book shows you a chord but doesn't show how the chord is derived. Or why you can get a 7th with 3 fingers, or inversions, etc. Maybe it's later in the book but I haven't gotten it yet. My teacher touched upon these concepts in the interview! So while I think the book is good I'm not sure how much it will be used in the course of my lessons.

Anyway welcome! Enjoy the journey.

Welcome Giano! I started the Alfred method in January and am ALMOST done with Book One. Yes, like Doug said there are many different types of music in the books. I always TRIED to find the lesson in the music. It was a triumph to get the song right, no matter how much I hated it. I usually hated it because of what it was trying to teach me. See the exhaustive comments in this thread on Blow the Man Down!! Ha! Good luck with you..and this is the place to be with fellow studiers!!

I had my lesson last night...I played SOOO PERFECTLY on Tuesday night...it just flowed, no mistakes. I get to my teachers..and my fingers flew all over the place...and the piano keys looked as foreign as a car engine!!! How can I get over this performance anxiety!!!! My teacher is very sweet and understanding, but I would like JUST ONCE to be able to show her what I have been doing...no the bumbling mass of fingers and missed notes.

Anyone have any suggestions??????

I was passed on The Entertainer--but have to polish Amazing Grace. She assigned me the first song IN BOOK TWO!!! (I just happened to have it along!!) Plus a couple of songs in my Favorites book.

Any help on performance anxiety would be appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

Nancy

I don't have any suggestions for you Nancy, just wanted to let you know that it happens to me all the time too. My teacher is very understanding and patiently waits for me to get it under control. He chimes in with suggestions when he thinks I have stumbled enough. He has explained to me that it is normal and he can see through the mistakes and can tell that I CAN do it and understand the material that is being taught. If he needs to check a particular measure or two for correct notes he just has me play that. If he is checking a questionable rhythm he has me just play the melody one handed. Yesterday the lesson was at a different location and the piano sounded completely different because of the room and the room was very warm because the AC had just been started so I started off terribly. But once I got used to the surroundings and had gone through a couple pieces I started settling down and performed a little better.

I did make the mistake once of saying "let's see how bad I can mess this one up". He stopped me and told me that I was setting myself up for failure by doing that. He encouraged me to think positively and that if I can do it OK at home then eventually I will be able to do it well no matter where I am or who is watching.

I am going to start recording everything to see if that helps and I'll probably ask my wife to start listening to me more often. I haven't decided yet if I want to record with video or just audio but I am going to start with the book 2 pieces. If I can find the time I may go back and try to do the book 1 pieces as well. It would be a good review and help to reinforce the material.

I have no advice on performance anxiety, but I wanted to congratulate you on starting Book 2. Like Book 1, there are some good pieces, and some that you will hate, but I think you will have a lot of fun with it.

Thank you mom3gram and Doug! I am going to force myself to record my practices...I have the same thing with the recorder...rubber fingers!! But maybe by doing that, it will help me play for her. I agree with your teacher, Doug, positive thinking is a good thing. Maybe I did set myself up because I had played so perfectly on Tuesday night...I just KNEW I was going to flub everything up!

OK>..my next question...HOW DO I GET THAT LITTLE ALFRED BOOK ONE GRADUATE!!!?????!!!!. I'm going to wait till I get passed on Amazing Grace, but I suspect that will be next week! I never thought I would see the DAY!!!

Thank you!!!

Nancy

Nancymae. I have the same problem with playing for my teacher. I guess I just want to impress him. Never works out that way. Congratulations on finishing book one. Go to the Alfreds graduates thread and get your little sign. I also have the Favorites book and have found that there are a bunch of the Level two book songs in it. Like Hungarian Rapsody, so that will give you a leg up on book two. Going to try Annies song for the upcoming recital.

nancymae - I wasn't exactly sure how to add the Level 1 logo to my signature, but eventually, I figured it out. Go to the first post by Mark... who is a "true genius" for starting the Alfred's threads. In that first post, is a link to "The Graduate List". Go there and a little bit down from there, is a posting from BazC who designed them (thank you so much!) and right click on the Level 1 logo. Click the properties and a box will show up with a web address (url) and copy it. Go to the "My Stuff" link and bring up your profile. Go down to the signature area and paste that web address you copied which should be this:

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/6058/alfredslevel1.jpg

Add the word image in those square brackets [img] immediately before the web address and [/img] immediately after and it should pop up afterwards.

There might be an easier way to do this, so anyone else, please feel free to chime in!

After I posted it, the word image in the brackets truncated itself to img so I figure it might be confusing ...put image in brackets in front of the address and /image in brackets after and hopefully all will be well!

Nancymae,



When you play for your teacher are you reading the notes from the sheets or are you playing from memory? Where are your eyes when you are playing?

OMG I did it!!! (my little graduate symbol) I was missing one little character! Oy!!! Thank you for your help Emmissary and Doug! I was missing the little / at the end of the image.. It pays to be exact with computers!

wi3---that is the song I am assigned for next week, the Hungarian Rapsody (and my husband thought that He's Got the Whole World was annoying 100+ times). I'm excited to start. I've got to polish Amazing Grace, but my teacher is confident--I am too, considering I can play it perfectly when she is not watching me!!!

JimF: I do both, look at the music and glance at my hands at different places or spots in the music. Sometimes when I look down, they look so foreign to me, like everything I have learned has gone out the window. Now today, during lunch...I was playing just as happily and no problems! I am going to record myself this weekend and maybe that will help. I have that same "panic" feeling with that too.

Do I have to remove my little sign until I get done with Amazing Grace? I'm afraid that I won't be able to put it back out there!

Thank you for all your help everyone!

Nancy

nancymae - Playing it perfectly by yourself, makes you eminently qualified in my book! Keep that logo, Kiddo! A hearty congratuations BTW, and we'll look forward to seeing and eventually ....hearing you, on Alfred's 2!

The reason I ask --- understanding this may not apply to you at all ---- is one of the bad habits I developed back when I did Alfred 1 was basically memorizing everything to the point that I'd stop really reading the music as I played. Oh, sometimes I was looking at it, but I wasn't really reading it any longer. I say a "bad habit" because in my case the easy memorization was a source of weakness under pressure. Some of it is simply that muscle memory, or finger memory, can fail under performance pressure. Getting back to the sheets, finding the right place and reading the notes correctly at that place is a lot to ask if you've not been doing it regularly. Also, by relying so much on memory I was becoming a weak reader,or I should say my reading was not keeping up with my technique, something that I am still working on to correct. Relying on memory got tougher and tougher as the difficulty of my pieces increased. Finally one day, as I struggled with a piece I had played for three weeks and knew well, my teacher interrupted me and said "I hate to see you struggle so hard to find the right note when it is right in front of you on the sheet music."

Of course we are all different and this may not be part of your problem at all.

JimF - I think you bring up a valuable point with your observations about this. I've found that in my case, muscle memory accounted for about 70% of my learning. I thought with some of the earlier pieces in Book 1, I'd memorized them, but when I went to play them sans book, I could play most, but not all of the notes. I'd get to a certain measure and start ummmmm, ummmm, what was that note? As soon as the book was back, no problem! This seems to be a constant. To completely memorize the piece (like the Entertainer) was a lot more work! But, this situation works for me. Maybe it's a good thing in my case. I still have to "read the music" to get through without errors.

If it got hard with Alfred version Entertainer at 20 or so measures, think about something with 70-80 measures. Now think of three to ten times that amount.

I think part of the problem is adult learners want to go fast, to advance from the "kiddie" stuff as quickly as possible. Because they (we) are adults and quite adept at managing to find a way to get the job done come heck or high water, there is nothing to guarantee that music reading skills keep up with the learning of technique. Continuing down such a path just sets us up for hitting a wall at some point in the future.

All just my opinion, and it certainly does not apply to everyone.

Jim - I certainly can't dispute any of your points. There is such a variety of people here at the forum with wildly differing goals and whether they attain them to the degree they desire, is a big, open question.

For example, I gave my old digital piano to an 18 y.o. across the street. He can play rings around me (for the material he knows), but by "ear" only. If I asked him to play anything from Alfred's Book 1 such as Blow the Man Down, he would be unable to do so. He could point out middle C, but not much more. I must admit to being fascinated by anyone who has musical ability without much in the way of theory. But I do realize that at some point, I'll leave him in the dust, since his ability to advance will be severely limited. (Yes, sometimes age and treachery can overcome youth and skill!)

That being said, there is a certain "Lindsey Lohan mentality" that pervades learning music. Those "Learn Piano in Two Weeks" type methods come to mind! But even among the more serious of us, I believe that most of us will reach a certain "comfort level" of an "idealized self" in our playing and not advance much beyond it. The reasons are many - time, money, raw talent and perhaps waning interest will be factors.

I love Scott Joplin, but I doubt if my playing will ever rival Joshua Rifkin's recordings. But I find a lot of fun in thinking that it might! Hope springs eternal as do my "delusions of grandeur"! As far as method books go, YMMV depending on what you put into them and the extras (life experience) that you can "bring" to them! I tend to supplement my learning so my "music reading" skills keep growing, even if my "raw talent" may be somwhat limited!

Jim, when playing through Alfred #1, it's hard NOT to have muscle memory. I think the answer is in playing a variety of pieces as we go through the book.

As far as glancing at our hands during jumps. I do that. BUT, I found if I practice the piece enough (Amazing Grace), my hands finally get to the point where they know how far to jump. Then again, that's muscle memory. BUT, I found myself (in pieces since then) seeing the bigger interval spans and jumps a little better as I go. It's all a learning process.

I generally play by interval and feel we have to glance at our hands as we learn the spacing on the keys themselves. (This would apply to playing 6ths, 7ths, & jumps. Even an octave spans takes some time to feel.)

I definitely don't want to have to memorize a piece to play it. My goal is to read music well, and my thought is that it would be better to play a larger number of supplemental pieces. (That was one of the reason's I quit lessons.) The teacher would have me practice a song for 3 weeks. By the time I finished it (in her eyes) I was sick of it and had it mostly memorized. In my eyes, generally I was finished it after week #1. I had learned the notes, rhythm, dynamics may not have been perfect, the pedal was spotty. The second two weeks were spent "perfecting" it. (It did take more than a week to smooth some of those songs out.)

There are times I have to make myself read the sheet music instead of reading my memory. If that makes any sense to anyone...

Gracie--that does make sense, making yourself read the sheet music. I find myself doing just that too, and like you said, it is easy to do with these short pieces. I try to stop when I find myself trying to memorize the notes and go on to something else. I was doing that with Findlandia. Both hands had two fingers in play, so instead of reading the music and letting myself learn the fingering, I was looking at my hands, and trying to remember the music. Yes, that is a bad habit, and that is an excellent point Jim! I will be sure to concentrate more on the reading of it, instead of the memorizing of it!

Well..I'm going to dust off my recorder and just turn it on. I AM going to get over this performance anxiety crap!! I want to be able to play for my grandchildren and make little cd's for my Mom of the music I'm playing.

Thank you Doug for your congrats!! I feel like a little kid with a star on my first assignment!!

Thank you everyone!

Nancy

Congrats Nancy! Don't forget us little people!

Passed both Saints last night. Hope to pass through Harp Song next week.

agentmorgan - We promise not to forget you! That's one of the best things about the Alfred's threads. There are a large number of people who have moved on and have been through all of the problems and pitfalls you will experience at some point. I'm sure many of us will check back to see how all the new people are coming along and will offer "advice and sympathy" whenever it's possible! I'm hoping for some of that myself as I move through Book 2. To paraphrase Ben Frankin ..."We should all hang together or else we will hang separately".

Memorising vs reading is something that interests me greatly as a beginner. I'm picking up Alfred's next week as I'm moving house at uni this weekend so I'm taking a break atm, and just looking at pieces far too advanced for me like "To Zanarkand" (although I do have the first 8 measures down, albeit pretty sloppily).

But I've been playing a few bits for the last 6 weeks and I think I can play every song I know but 1 from memory. I find the best way for me to learn a song is measure by measure. This means I have each measure down so well by the time I move onto the next part I don't need the sheet music anymore. I'm guessing this is a pretty bad habit to slip into but when I read the music my brain just can't keep up with my hands because it's already partly memorized, and my short term memory is pretty good so I remember the first few measures immediately after playing them for 20 mins for example (although I need much more work to get the piece up to speed). I guess I just have to work at it.

Giano, welcome! What part of the song do you think people remember the most when you play it? The end. That's what they hear last. Back when I took lessons, my teacher said she starts with the last measure of the song and works backwards. By the time she gets to the beginning of the song she has the end worked out.

That's really great........for someone who is advanced. LOL (I think she may forget what it's like to be a new student) I told her I couldn't do that because I wouldn't know what finger I was on as I came into each measure. That's the biggest problem I have on unmarked music. What fingering is best?

I'd suggest you find some music on your level to practice with. It's good to have a piece above you that you're working on at the same time. The music on my level I can play through, slowly, with both hands together from the get go. Yep, there are errors, and my tempo isn't steady as sometimes I have to stop and think, but I can still make it through to the end.

When I "memorize" a song, it not something I'm actually trying to do. It's just something that happens from practicing and playing it a lot.

The best advice is to play a song slowly from the get go. Don't speed up until you can play the whole song. If you have the first measures of a song memorized and up to speed, it's just going to be a train wreck as soon as you get to a problem area. Don't play the song any faster than the problem area. Play the problem area over and over and over until you can play it well. Once you've done that, you can speed up your tempo.