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Of course, I have tension problem in the third part, there are four passages which are to wide for me and I'm working on it. Maybe I should figure out different way to practice those spots, because playing them slowly or in rhythms doesn't help. I don't know if removing this tension resolve my problem, because I just don't feel that it's only this tension an issue.

In my village there is only one teacher. She taught me when I started to play. She teaches only beginners.

Nice to hear from you, neuralfirings Your plate looks dangerously full!

My next Bach is most likely to be the Gigue from the fourth French suite. I have unfinished Preludes & Fugues (2 and 5) and have looked fairly seriously at starting the two voice tenth that I was transported by when I heard it last in recital. These are all from Book I, which I find a bit more stringent and mentally involving than Book II and seems to suit my Teutonic nature better. One of the problems with not having a teacher is spending too much time gambolling and frolicking in the meadow and not enough time on the path to the next gate.

Thank you, Cathy and Doris. It's nice to know that my thoughts provide help beyond the initial target.

Very graciously taken, verqueue. I hope you'll continue to share your journey with us

Continuing to learn piano either without a teacher, after having had one for several years, means you have to be your own teacher. It's helpful to step back every so often and look at where you are and where you're going. I usually take a week off each quarter for this but the end of the year is a good time for a more detailed plan if major changes are going to be made to the regular practise session.

I regularly listen to recordings of my pieces or practise sessions (I just hit record on my DP for the whole session). Recording allows for more objective and more critical listening than when you're still busy actually playing - often overlooking minor flaws so that it doesn't interrupt the flow of a piece. I also listen to professional recordings which really help to "spot the difference" and isolate small areas for detailed work.

If you're suffering from tension you can "listen" to your body too. You really do learn to pick up tension but you have to do a lot of listening and you may need to experiment a lot to get rid of it. Watching YouTube videos for specific passages has also helped me get better motion and a wide array of solutions.

As well as working on improving individual pieces I try to take a look at my overall development. I want to keep a good balance between the various periods and the major piano composers as well as wider areas of expertise. I try to incorporate new reading and new memorising material every day with weekends spent more specifically on improving and maintaining existing pieces.

The quarterly and the themed recitals instil the discipline of finishing pieces on a regular basis and provide a very sharp focus on what I'm doing with those pieces. This allows me the luxury of not having to finish everything I start and still make good progress year on year. It also means I have to spend less time on technical exercises. Putting the finishing touches on recital pieces is about the most demanding work there is for me, technique wise, and the best reason to keep on submitting.

The other reason for staying on the forum is the amount I learn in theory and "other stuff" that benefits the playing in more indirect ways, though no less profound. Some of the lessons I've learned on the forum and been very hard and occasionally humiliating but I wouldn't have learnt them anywhere else and I value them very highly. In my own circle of friends I'm a big fish in a small pond and I get a distorted view of things but on the forum I'm a small fish in a big pond and I get a much better perspective if I'm prepared to take the knocks every so often.

Here on the ABF there's a pervading camaraderie and warm spirit that transcends the usual anonymous postings on internet forums. There's an incredible breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that's readily shared here. It's quite unique and a pearl beyond price.

Amen to that.

zrtf90,
it seems that you know exactly what I'm going through. Can you tell what is your story?

It's so hard to be without a teacher, because it's easy to forget about important things. I've to remember to work on all aspects of playing: learn fresh pieces from various styles, develop less fresh pieces, prepare a final interpretation of some, play exercises, sight-read, etc. I'm trying to do it, but I can't practice as much as in the past.

You're right that I should listen more to other recordings now and record myself, because I don't have enough experience with being on my own. I'm going to focus more on this Schumann Sonata, because it will take some time to learn and I should be ready with interpretation of it in February.

This forum is great, I'm here few days and I already have got some answers for my troubles. So, I definitely staying here.

I second zrtf90's suggestion to record and listen. It sounds so different when I listen to a recording. It sounds different the next day too!

I listen to as many interpretations as I can find (and not just professional recordings, those on PianoWorld as well!) when I start a piece for a few reasons:
1) I'm curious how performers tell different stories
2) I don't have a teacher point out wrong notes, so I rely on my ear to correct me. To do that, I need my ear to really know the piece
3) I often play whatever is stuck in my head, so I guess the listening comes first sometimes

The other thing I like about ABF is how it transcends skill levels. It's Adult Beginner Forum, but really it's Adult Learner Forum (and really we never stop learning right?).

@zrtf90 -- When you say Prelude/Fugue 2 do you mean the C Minor from Book 1? That set is my favorite. I started that piece a while back and got it around 80% up to speed. I guess I should get back to it too.

For the first time, I recorded one of my songs last night. When I listened to it...wow! I really picked up all the mistakes! A bit disheartening as I've always been told your audience probably won't notice mistakes. But, I thought...wow if it sounds that bad how could they miss?! On the other hand, I know where to concentrate on fixing things now.

On a separate topic, I told my teacher last night that I think part of my problem is playing with confidence. I continue to find myself double checking my hand position or am timid on the key stroke. Any advice there?

@Cobra1365 -- I think it also depends on how familiar the audience is with the piece. There are recordings of amateurs that I think are amazing, then I listen to them play a piece that I've worked on and I pick up a lot more mistakes. Even so, there's a huge difference between mistakes and bad playing. There was a post in another thread about a pianist who forgot a piece after the first few bars at a competition. He played a few bars and stopped. He restarted the piece and stopped again after a few bars. Is that a mistake? Of course. But honestly, he played those first few bars with way more proficiency than I would have. So overall, I wouldn't write him off just because of one (albeit big) mistake. When I listen to my recording, what I pick up is emotions I thought I conveyed just aren't there at all. I tend to hear stories in my playing that my probably eludes my audience all the time. Recordings help me realize that.

On the confidence piece, for me, there's a clear moment when my hands have a feel for the music. It's hard to describe. I also suspect it comes after years and years of playing. There are certain patterns my hands just learn to recognize. That's why I enjoy Chopin because even in his most difficult piece the patterns just make more sense. Once my hands recognize these patterns, I gain more confidence. I suspect really advanced pianists and professionals have more of these patterns in their head and thus can learn music much more rapidly. I suppose it's like reading. We start out by soun-ding out ev-er-y syl-la-ble then eventually learn to recognize chunks of letters (words/phrases). I don't know if this is helpful though. Probably not. But I guess my advice is to find patterns in the music and think more about how you can group notes and phrases rather than think about one note, play that note, then the next note, play that note, etc.

Neural...thanks...those words were actually very helpful. I appreciate the feedback.

Yes, the C Minor P & F, the D major and hopefully the E minor. I finished the C major, No. 1, but was never happy with it, that is, my playing of it. Do you have the same problem? I'm very disappointed with my first fugue, sonata, nocturne etc. and wish I'd had more experience and skill before I learnt them!
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This forum started because of the number of professionals bickering posting on the Pianist Corner. I believe 'Beginner' may have been an in joke but as far as I can tell it is really for amateurs of all levels as opposed to professionals.

I've said it before but I think Pianist Corner is for pianists trying to be adults and the ABF is for adults trying to be pianists
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My story?
I started around eight or nine sidling off to the piano room whenever we visited my grandmother and messed around, mostly improvising on the black keys, and ended up picking out tunes from the scores in the seat.

When I was thirteen my sister started piano lessons at school and the piano was shipped from my grandmother's house to our own. At seventeen I was playing a few pieces from memory (still play 'em) but picked up guitar and later joined a rock band. At twenty-three I wanted to learn keyboards and synths as they were getting more common and my sister insisted lessons would be best. So I went back to piano and started lessons in '77 and learnt Fuer Elise, K. 545 and the Moonlight sonata (complete) all in the first eighteen months. I'd never had a concept of difficulty, I just played the notes till I could remember them and moved on so when I started the Moonlight I just kept going to the end of the score! I think my teacher was impressed but it wasn't until we got to reading Liszt or playing Chopin etudes that I understood the concept of 'hard'.

I continued lessons to '84 when I moved away with a company relocation and kept up piano sporadically to 1995, when I became a father, and knew I wouldn't be able to raise a son and play piano at the same time. I expected to pick it up again when he was was five but it was Christmas 2011, recovering from a heart attack, that I went back to the piano and then found PianoWorld. I believe participation in the ABF is one of the most important ingredients in my continued progress with the piano.

Excellent post. I agree on all points.

On the confidence front I would add that playing with others is huge. You just have to keep going no matter what mistakes you make and you reach a point where you can recover from almost anything. Knowing you can do that gives the confidence.

I keep stressing that music is more about time than tune. If you play the wrong notes but at the right time it doesn't create as much interference as hitting it at the wrong time except when it's a crucial part of the phrase, like the last note or the climax. The audience aren't listening for right and wrong notes the way a performer is but processing the music as a homogenous mass. Our clever brains can pick out patterns easily, especially music and faces, and it ignores the flubs. They might notice something went wrong but they can't remember what or where. They only take in enough to form a pattern.

Does that make sense?

I don't know about you, but my fugues are always a jumbled mess. Ha, and here I say fugues as though there's more than one. I've only worked on the C minor, and I didn't even finished learning the notes.

But you've inspired me to revisit this fugue and (at least) finish learning the notes. I found it helpful to focus my practice session around a few bars at a time. Today I tackled this middle section in the C minor fugue.

It's both fascinating and frustrating. Instead of the three voices complementing one another, I feel like they just clash.

I posted the sheet music and my recordings here in case you are interested.

@neuralfirings: I'm sorry to interfere, but I listened to your practice recordings - I think when you practice "showing voices" you should pay attention to articulation in ALL voices, I think it will help you with clearing the mess.

My fugues printed scores are always colorful, I color every theme with color of a voice (so there are as many colors as voices). It's easier to memorized them in this way. I recently read Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor and I think I will tackle it after Schumann recital. Bach is great!

no no no, please DO interfere!!! Without a teacher, advice and critiques like this are very important. So thank you. I will aim to post another recording with your suggestion after my next practice session.

Yes, this particular fugue is quite easy to manage in two bar units right up to the last three. With many pieces it's enough to work a bar or two plus the next note but here (and frequently with Bach) it's decidedly better to add the next beat onto each unit. I also find it worthwhile leading into some units with half a measure of one of the voices.

I could never get on with colouring the score. It would put me off dreadfully. I prefer to work each voice on its own until I could hear it properly phrased and articulated in situ. It's very difficult with Bach to keep the work to a phrase at a time because the voices overlap so much but that has to figure into the practise session once the player has the wherewithal to play enough bars fluently from any starting point. A fugue thus has as many starting points as voice entries and each entry goes on to the next phrasing point of that voice. It's slow but each voice gets emphasis in context.

I practiced last night and realized I actually don't understand your advice. Sorry, but what do you mean articulation to ALL voices? Do you mean articulating all voices at the same time rather than playing one at a time?

The reason I separate them out is so I can hear any melodies that I might want to bring up at certain points--beautiful moments that I miss when I play them all together.



I just posted another practice session (also with recordings) where I go into the last few lines. Are you talking about the octaves being difficult? I learned the notes, but the octaves sound very aggressive. It's tricky here. I want the octaves to sound grand since it builds up to the finale, but I don't want it to sound too out of control.

For your reference, my latest practice session: http://pianonot.es/2014/11/voicing-continued/

No, I'm talking about breaking up the piece into manageable units. This piece falls easily into two bar units throughout except M29-31 - a three bar unit.

Until I saw your site I knew nothing of the octaves. There can be no octaves in a Bach fugue without breaking the rules. Parallel fifths or octaves are not in Bach's musical language! Handel might do that for show (as in Zadok the Priest) but Bach never would.

Chopin may tell a story but the Baroque writing is one prevailing mood, one 'affekt', one emotion. No story.

Bach takes a thematic idea and turns it upside down, back to front, augments it, contracts it, and maintains the harmony and counterpoint. It's like a mathematical exercise. It's not a story.

neuralfirings:
I know what you were trying to do. It's a standard exercise to play polyphony. I meant that when you play one voice louder you shouldn't play the others with sloppy fingers. It means for example that your sixteens should be equal in duration in all voices. You should play the rest of voices in piano, but with proper articulation. The main voice should be played in forte with almost the same articulation. It will cause that you'll muscles memorize the piece in proper way, not a clumsy one.
It's better to begin from playing only two voices with final fingering. It means that you should know exact fingering.

Maybe it's because my poor English :(, I have a problem to put my thoughts into words.

Oh, and if I were you I would choose a different edition - some urtext without articulation and dynamic marks. Bach didn't write those marks.

These discussions often go beyond me or where I currently am, but I find them motivating - knowing how much more thoroughly one can know a piece.

SwissMS - only got a 1/2 hour at the piano last night, but I got there at all because I thought - SwissMS would do this!

Cathy

Hah! Thanks jotur! I am glad I motivated you to practice. Sometime you just have to do it!

I had my last lesson before my exam tonight and I was unusually nervous. The scales and arpeggios were far from perfect. So, naturally, I came home and practiced the heck out of them. I think it was just nerves that tripped me up, but it was a early warning sign to be ready for the the exam jitters. At least my pieces, aural and sight reading went well!

Good luck on your exam. We'll be cheering you on!

And both Jotur and SwissMs inspire me to practice.