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Hi Doug! I decided to follow you over here. I have a certain reluctance to leave Alfred 1 ... it felt like "home" for such a long time. But, we must go forward! I got tired of "Bridal March" last night (began to feel like the "stereotyped" old lady with the flower hat, who played it on every TV sitcom with a wedding scene. Not Good!) and started fooling around with Guantanamera.

I know Guantanamera from Pete Seeger and it seems more like a "guitar song" than a piano-based piece, so after playing a few measures, I've had to re-think my approach to it. I have this mental image in my mind .... a young Ricardo Montalban dancing behind my piano with say ...Rhonda Fleming, and he leans forward and whispers "Play it sauve" with the accent on the last syllable.

After attending the George Thorogood concert last night, I can hope you're also working on a piano transcription of the Willard Palmer-inspired version of "Bad To The Bone" We need that extra material!

LOL, I always get a kick out of the visuals you manage to create for our pieces, Craig.

George put on a great show last night. The opening acts were The Fabulous Thunderbirds and Robert Cray so it was a Blues filled night. I came home and dug out my Jazz, Rock and Blues book to see if I wanted to work out of that for some supplemental stuff. Didn't see Bad To The Bone in it though.

Yeah! Glad you guys are continuing on here. How long do you think it'll take us to get through book #2? I'm predicting a year.

I read somewhere Doug that you said your teacher said to skip the first two songs. I have to agree that they wasn't much to them.

I don't recognize Guantanamera at all. I'm almost finished with it...maybe next week I'll have it finished. I'm spending some time getting through the rest of my Bastien book #1.

Gracie - I'm with you on your assessment that Book 2 will take about a year. I'm concentrating on Guantanamera but I find the pedaling is slowing down any progress I'm making quite a bit. If I don't use the pedal, I can get through it about twice as fast, altho' the term "fast" is relative! Trees move faster than I'm playing it! Somehow it was much less of a problem to pedal semi-well for the Bridal Chorus than this! I figure at this point I better learn to pedal correctly, because if not now, when?

I've also noticed the effect of the "extended hand position" on some of my nearly polished Christmas music. Those C-G or D-A 1-5 and 5-1 combos are becoming B-G and C-A! I try not to look at my hands and just read off the page when I play. But from the G-D-G stretches in Guantanamera, it's starting to feel like my hands grew a bit! I'm sure this is a good thing in the long run, but now I have to play some older pieces with more care and forethought or I "overshoot" those 1-5 spreads! Willard and crew are "sneaky" in how they do this! Notice how in measure 1 you use the 1-5 for the C-A and then in measure 2 you use 1-4 for B-G? Stretch those tendons kiddies! It's a plot ... I tell you!

Hello all,

"Deep River" on page 76 (of my edition) of Book II, measure 1, right hand, begins with a half-note tied to a quarter note. Why isn't it notated as a dotted half-note?
--
Jack

I think it's because on the third beat the chord changes to aug C, with a G #. So even though the note in the right hand is shown as E only, it is possible to add another note there, and so I think they put the quarter note E as a place holder if you will.

I'm now polishing Guantanamera and Theme from the Overture. I don't mind playing either piece. Having some trouble putting in the pedaling on Guantanamera.

I did finish book #1 of Bastien's that I was going through. I'm working on Oh Danny Boy as well. Not much else until the kids start back to school next week.

HI Everyone (waving!)

Wanted to let everyone know that my teacher signed me off of my Book One on Wednesday! I actually did not freak out while playing, except in the last song. It's just so werid...I can be going along fine, and then I look down, and see something foreign...like I'm trying to play carrot sticks or something!! It's frustrating for sure!

But, I did play for my mother on the phone the other night..and made less mistakes. My mother said that my musician father always used to say not to worry about mistakes, the average listener thinks you are improvising!! Ha!

So, now I'm on the Bridal March and Thumba....??? which is a pretty song. I also have a song in the Favorites book, but I can't remember the title..it's by Beethoven...lots of right hand work.

Next time I go we will be in that Blues song that looks hard, so I think I will skip ahead, just to get the melody or bass down before class.

Not doing much practice this weekend...going down to Irish Fest in Milwaukee to dance a jig or two!!! (I play the tin whistle, so I'm hoping to meet up with some fellow tin whistlers!)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Nancy

That's probably "Light and Blue". I found that one hard. It sounds really good if played well, but I never really got it to that point.

The Irish Fest sounds like fun.

I have a CD called Autumn in New England which is mostly piano, but there is some tin whistle in it and I love the way it sounds.

oh Light and Blue is really quite simple - I am an adult learner - (very adult) and am now self teaching - and I could get it - just do the right hand first and then the left is just simple chord work - you will just need to get the tempo - short long - going. Its a favourite and i feel i am cheating my listeners - its just so easy - I dont want them to think i am playing anything complex!! AND it makes you feel good about your piano playing !!

Hi Nancy, glad you're here now.

I started Light and Blue today. I did the 1st measure several times, then the next measure several time, etc. Some of it sounds like random notes and some of it sounds good. It'll take some time to work through.

Well, I guess that's why I often feel like I don't really belong in Book 2 - I'm self teaching and I found Light and Blue to be difficult. In fact, I find most of the pieces in Book 2 to be difficult. I do manage to work through them eventually, but I'm always shocked when I hear how easy they were for some others. In the case of Light and Blue, it was a rhythm thing. I could play all the correct notes, but it sounded just like GracieCat said, like random notes. It took me forever to make it sound recognizeable. I think it helped to listen to John Frank's recording at the beginning of this t hread. I could "feel" the thyrhm in his recording and could try to emulate it.

Good luck with it, GracieCat. It's a great piece, and once you get it down you will really like it. I think you will be passing me by one of these days. LOL

I use the cd for the Alfred Series to guide me - since i self teach. Now i dont know if that is a good idea and if i should be able to play without having to listen to it first (hoping an input from a teacher here ) - I am working on bk 3 ( i skipped parts of bk 2 - thats the advantage of not having a teacher who will make you do what you cant! and dont want to!) and now i just listen to the cd and pick a piece that sounds inviting to me. Before i had the cd - the sight of the page with all the squiggles was totally daunting - but now it kind of makes sense. I am not yet in the neighbourhood of being able to feel the music by just looking at the sheet. So i hope i am doing the right thing.

Hi Mala! Sure, why not? Listening is important. I would also suggest that you have one piece ~ can be easy ~ that you learn on your own, w/o listening to it first. You could play the melody, sing it, whistle it, conduct it, walk around the room and hum it... just have fun. If you mix it up, each method will help the others. Good luck! Gretchen

Mala, can you read the music or are you dependent on playing it how you hear it played first?

hi
I read music and do pretty good there - thats the first aspect i worked at - just that once i have heard the melody - i can then get a sense of the mood -at the moment i am struggling to get Pachebel's Canon in D right - I have the notes and know them mostly - am running through fine - but i just dont get the sounds i hear on the recordings and ofcourse I am also working on Alfred's - I think the problem with me is that there is so much I want to accomplish - i just go from one thing to another and in the process i think i waste time - Should i stick with one kind of music - should i first concentrate with just going through Alfred's?

I feel at this point that a lesson with a teacher twice am month or even once (if the teacher knows the path i should take) is what i need. Havent found the teacher that i want to be with!

Hi Everyone! - From a lot of the comments above, it seems to me that many of us develop a condition I'll call "the Alfred's Book 2 Sophmore Slump". I have to include myself in this group. I'm finding that my musical interests have widened since finishing Alfred's Book 1 and I can quickly lose focus on the material in Alfred's 2.

For example, in book 2 I'm currently working on "Guantanamera" and my progress is such, that the world's glaciers will have melted before I can play this piece at tempo. I just can't seem to muster much enthusiasm for this. I don't feel the same way about the "Overture from Raymond" though. That piece I really like and I find myself playing it just to get away from Guantanamera. It seems that for pieces I like, I'm willing to devote a lot more time and effort to and try to minimize contact with the ones I don't. I'm getting to the "picky-picky-picky" stage in what I want to play.

In the interim, since my last post, I received my books from sheetmusicplus.com.
These are:

Masterwork Classics 1-2
Masterwork Classics 3
Titanic (Easy Piano)
Jurrasic Park (Easy Piano)

The Masterwork Classic books come with a CD that features just a piano (yeah) where you can hear the dynamics (pp to ff) very clearly. The Book (1,2) recommends starting it after page 8 in Alfred's Book 2. She (the author)mentions that these books are not as closely tied to Alfred's as the Greatest Hits and All-time Favorites books are, but I suspect you could substitute one of these classical pieces for an Alfred's 2 selection. The "usual suspect" composers who wrote pieces for people like us are the type you find here (Bartok, Czerny, Turk). For people who like their music a little more to the classical side, this series seems like a suitable alternative or supplement! I'm going to continue in Part 2!

Part 2 - I just had the feeling that if I had made that last post any longer, I'd go to another page to retrieve a link and lose it!

I think that for many of us, having "supplements" for Alfred's 2 will keep us going a lot longer. Just playing a few pieces from it, over and over again, gets "old" fast. If Alfred's starts to feel like "eat that cauliflower - it's good for you", it's time for dessert ...or at least bribe yourself, so you can get through the less attractive material!

For me, I spent about 4 hours yesterday with the dessert. Playing "Welcome to Jurassic Park" made the afternoon disappear. I bought the Easy Piano version (there is a similar book for Intermediate Players). The easy version sounds almost just like the Intermediate Version (a big plus!) - the left hand part is less complex in the easy version.

Here's the Intermediate version played by a talented young man who also composes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96KHBFDdEiA

I wish I had hands and fingers the same size as him! The easy version has some fingering numbers and it was relatively easy to figure out some of the unmarked notes. That was always a big concern to me. Some easy books don't give any and at this point, I'm not smart enough to figure out the complete fingerings for many of them. So this was a big plus to get through about 15 measures of it and have it sound really good!

So, my future plans include playing the supplemental pieces I really like, to increase my ability to play the Alfred pieces I'm not enamored with. I guess we all have to come up with whatever methods necessary to keep us on track!

What are you doing to alleviate any Alfred's 2 boredom?

I stopped somewhere in the last one third of the book, and picked up a book on learning to play using a fakebook, and it's been a wonderful experience. I take free sheet music from the web and play stuff I like.

Hey ya'll!

I actually started tinkering around with book two a month or so ago. Unfortunately, I am feeling the Light and Blue blues and haven't really felt motivated to go much further. I am happy it's not just me
I bought the book, though, so I will get through it.. someday. Thanks for pointing out about the link to it at the beginning of the thread, mom3gram - I will be sure to listen to it to see if I am even close.