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My two Grieg pieces are nearly ready for recording!! The second one is finger sapping. I`ll have two takes at the most, then - too late! Leave for another day. (Best time for me is in the morning when me brain works) . . .

Ragdoll, may I ask you which Gershwin book you are using exactly? I can't seem to find approachable Gershwin transcriptions.

I had a lesson this afternoon, I needed the teacher to define my homework (regular lessons will start again in october).
I got some Bach and some Schumann (the first I really love, with the second it's always a struggle). Then I made my proposals: a couple of pieces from a contemporary german composer - Michael Proksch; in his book Piano Poetry there are 30 or more pieces, from quite easy to very difficult (for me, of course), and since the cd is included I listened to everything and picked up two of the easy ones for the summer. The teacher agreed.
Then, I dared to ask if it makes sense for me to give Mozart's Fantasy in D minor a try. And she agreed again, and gave me advice on how I should study the fast runs that I consider the big technical difficulty of the pieces. It's a long pieces for my standard (5 pages), it's Mozart so it looks simple but it is not. I love the piece and I'm not in a hurry, I don't need to have it ready for polishing the first lesson in October.
I'm so happy I have new and lovable music to study!

Congrats tourquenale....that's what it's all about.

Great Ragdoll.... READING... Go for it!... We have this billboard here. A guy on it. Says: He couldn't read this until he was 70. I think about that and apply to music. I cringe.

peters....you know what they say about morning and realizations.

I had the same problem, they all seemed to hard to tackle. Then one of my offspring gave me this for early mother's day and I am trying out several of them. They're pretty simple transcriptions but certainly there's room for some improve with them. The name is just "Gershwin".
ISBN-13: 978-0-7692-0894-7. I'm not sure where it came from but I'm sure amazon has it... they have everything it seems at least for beginners like me. FWIW, it has a nice selection as well.

I hope you're not dissing me Ron.? I have been trying to better this for a while and was still very weak in the f clef...especially the ledger line notes. That has vastly improved lately and I attribute it to these later current three pieces. I have depended waaaay too much on memorizing to my detriment

Oh no. I thought I was encouraging. I think it's great you're working on reading music better. Too many don't.

I'm working hard on the same thing.

This one I believe: Gershwin

Well I'm glad to hear it. I guess I saw a snarkage where there wasn't any. I've never seen you be snarky to anyone here but admit it took me aback for a bit. I just read it wrong. I used to think sometimes I may be 70 before I learn to read well.

That's it I think, at least the pieces look the same and same arrangements By Brimhall. Mine has a different cover but may be an older or newer printing.

Thank you Ragdoll and Andy! It's available only as ebook here but it's fine with me

Other than getting my piano upstairs (3rd floor appartment without an elevator!) last tuesday my biggest excitement and maybe frustration is my "homework" I got from my teacher.
I'm struggling with this:

It's easy to play with only the left or only the right hand, but the two together ...
Back to practice!
By the way, it's hard work but I like it. Great instrument

OK, you may start laughing now

I am laughing a bit... thinking how much I struggled with these kind of things last year! You will master this in no time

lol ... it's funny, I've practiced it soo many times today and yesterday that I can actually play it (more or less) but somehow I have the feeling that I'm not really reading the notes, just some of them. The rest is just from muscle memory I think.
How can you read two staves at the same time and play?

With practice I struggle with this too, but at the end of the day the sheets are mainly there as a guide... you learn each hand individually and piece it all together in chunks and yes you will inevitably memorize things.

As long as you memorize them correctly that's not a problem, it's when you go memorizing it wrong it becomes tricky as you have to re-learn something and break the habit

Indeed

Only with lots of practice can you read and play the two staves at the same time. Ultimately though the pieces you will soon be learning will be too complex to read and play simultaneously and therefore more and more you will be relying on you memory and your muscle memory. As a rule of thumb unless you are one of the very few gifted with good sight reading abilities your sight reading skills will fall behind your playing ability. We are often told to sight read two levels behind our technical level.

It comes with practice and experience. Some players can sight-read what may seem to us to be impossibly complex music note-perfect! In my musical world, many players have a technique of scanning the printed copy (maybe including chord symbols) and playing the MUSIC, rather than the literal notes. Piano parts for popular songs are generally best ignored anyway! And, on a rather more everyday level, every church musician needs to be able to sight-read a hymn tune pretty well.

It will come, if you have talent and application. A situation where you NEED to regularly perform new music is also useful. Enjoy and thrive!

It`s worth noting that we all do the same with writing. We read aloud from letters. Letters become words, words become phrases, sentences . .Typists hear, and type. Pianists see and play. It`s got to be practice.