Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Achievement of the week - what got you excited?

Sand Tiger - Its those beautiful moments "in the music" that make the struggle worthwhile, isn't it? The fact that you have obstacles to overcome just makes those moments that much sweeter.

BrianDX - Whatever you choose, I'm sure you will give it a great effort. Looking forward to hearing it.


No real AOTW for me. Still got a lingering somethingorother bug that is interfering with things. The Debussy is about as done as it is going to get...will try for a recital recording next. My teacher and I have finished a second of the Ravel suite of duets (Beauty and the Beast) and we will start a third one next week. I have a new assignment this week... CPE Bach's Solfeggietto...one of those speed-freak pieces. Obviously this little helping of peas and carrots is intended to awaken my fingers from their usual lethargic state. Should be interesting to see how that goes.

Jimf: Interesting post about your latest experience.

I know that in the 14 months since I've started, I've not yet been sick. We did have a three week hiatus during the holiday season, and it took a day or so to get back in the groove.

However since my wife and I are still comfortably in the elementery level, my guess is the more advanced you are, the longer it takes to get your mojo back after some "down time", whether it was planned or not?

My AOTW is that I just spent the last 8 hours recording all 157 measures of my piece for the ABF Recital one measure at a time, repeating every measure many times. So all I have to do is now sort through 600 measures of stuff and pick out which ones I luck best to paste them all together!

Seriously, that's a joke, in case you believed it. In light of the discussion over on the other thread I couldn't help myself. What's actually true for AOTW, I did in fact finished recording. Didn't do a one-live-take and done thing like last time. Did about 4 takes. Will decide to pick one later or maybe none and record again later. Nah. I think I'm done.

That sounds like more of a torture than listening to a recording of a bad performance!

8 Octaves - LOL -

Cathy

I think that joke writes itself

Tonight I'm going to try to record my "reach for it" piece.
After four takes I'm done for the night, as with this piece, after 4 run-throughs my hands actually start to get tired...

Wish me luck, I'm going to need it

I hurt my hands at the end of July and this week I am finally back making progress at the piano! I hurt myself biking (bruised bone in my wrist) and had to wear a splint for 4 weeks.. I managed to give myself tendonitis in both forearms while I was in the splint, mostly due to typing at work and trying to adapt to using the splint. I was in PT for about 6 weeks to work on the tendonitis.

I'm not back 100% for biking/exercising and I am still doing tons of PT exercises for my forearms which do leave my arms tired but I am pretty close to back to 100% at the piano which feels fantastic..

Currently working on a couple pieces from the Bastien book (level 1, almost finished) and Bach's Musette in D from Anna Magdalena's notebook. I think I will have the Musette coming along pretty well within the month.

I hear ya! Good to hear you're bouncing back.

8 Octaves - LOL, troublemaker! At least you didn't post that on the "one month to recital" thread :-)

BrianDX, my experience so far has been that when I've been away for a week or less I've got straight back into it, but when I was away for 3 weeks it took at least a week to get back to where I left off. In those cases though my enthusiasm was not dampened. Illness affected me slightly differently, as my energy levels were very low afterward and it took a while to get back to myself.

Ben Boule, glad to hear your recovery is progressing well, and JimF hope you are back to full health soon.

My AOTW is that I have taken some steps to arrange trial lessons with a couple of different teachers over the next while, and I have set up some practice time on an acoustic piano later this week (as I only have a digital).

LOL. I recorded my just-assigned Solfeggietto speed-freak piece at 20 bmp for 1/16ths.... now I just have to set the editing software at some speed that's slow enough to sound like me on a good day.

BrianDX - Thanks to MOYD,I don't have a lot of experience with days off from piano practicing. Pretty sure you could count my 5-year total on two hands. My teacher has actually suggested I take more time away from it more than once.

Given the major physical challenges some on these boards have to overcome all the time, I don't really have the right to whine about my case of the sniffles. Mostly it just seems to affect my ability to focus.



Barbaram - Thanks for the good wishes. Good luck with those teacher interviews.

Hi there,

I like to share the next story.

Last week at my school, I work as senior teacher, I decided to play piano in the musicroom for an hour. Suddenly the door opens and a junior pupil (13) enters the room. I ask......do you like pianoplaying? Yes, she says......I started pianolessons for two weeks. Then she says....What is your favorite piece? I took a piano sonate of Mozart, sight reading from my iPad..and played......
She says spontaneously suprised.......THOSE ARE A LOT OF NOTES......

Best regards,
Johan B

Lol, just like Amadeus the movie! Did you respond like Mozart and say, "there are exactly as many as required."

Life continues to be very busy, but a bit more pleasantly so rather than frenetically so!

After the disappointment of last week, I had a much better lesson this week - I'm back on track.

Thanks again for all the encouragement!

Did not know this sentence..........nice....

Greetings
JohanB

For a change I did not crash and burn at this weeks piano lesson. There were still some flames but mainly countered by someone playing the piano as if they knew exactly what they were doing. I want that person to appear more in my future lessons.

If that were not good enough I have another AOTW, I finally got an ok recording of my upcoming PW recital piece. I have invested so much time, energy and sheer will into this one piece that even getting an average recording feels like I tamed a monster and can at last think about moving on.

Week 137: I attend two events, the first is the church coffee house. A bluegrass band, and two singer songwriters perform. The band's lead singer got some bad news just before the performance and had to head home, but the show went on, though started a bit late. All are very good performers. The synergy of the parts helps create a greater hole.

The second performance is part of a classical concert series. The Upside Trio is three recent conservatory grads, with the unusual combination of flute, cello and marimba. The artistic director of the series, says she has been to literally thousands of live concerts and can't ever remember another similar trio. Marimba seems to be in fashion for percussionists. What with drum machine eliminating many jobs, a marimba lets them bang out a melody and even chords with four striking sticks.

The second group at the classical series is a pianist James Lent accompanying saxophonist Russell Veirs. Veirs won a local contest and one of the prizes is to get to perform at this other venue. The duo perform several 20th century pieces, including Duex Mouvements by Andr Waignein and Sing, Bird by Takashi Yoshimatsu. These have enough melody and traditional harmony to sound pleasing to me. Some modern stuff is too much for my limited mind. For that matter, a lot of old stuff is too

I don't have much time or energy for piano practice, but do get some in every day. I go back to breaking down my recital piece Between Raindrops, section by section, even though it is well rehearsed. Doing section work with the piece already well memorized, lets me focus more on the dynamics and pedaling. Not that it is anything special, as I remain a beginner beginner, but I find a bit more depth by going back to section work for a piece already well rehearsed.

Had just finished playing in the mid term recital. Did well. Played Grieg's Puck (I did it again since I did not play well for the Grieg recital) and the second movement of Schubert B-flat major sonata D 960. Actually had one guy came and tell me "wow it was such a nice cover up". I covered up for a wrong notes. I never play 100% correct so I take it for a compliment.

FarmGirl- Congratulations on your midterm recital! Recovering from an error is a special skill, so I see the "Coverup" comment to be quite a compliment!

I was able to play well at my ABRSM prep lesson this week. All the pieces were error free, as were most of the scales. This is a major improvement from my first lesson with this teacher two weeks ago. He pronounced me in good shape to sit the exam at the end of November. That is the first AOTW. The second is a discovery that I made about why I played so poorly in my first lesson with him. When I get nervous, I raise my shoulders and tense up - especially in scales and arpeggios. So, I have been focussing on letting my shoulders relax down when I play fast for the last couple of weeks. In the lesson, I would feel my shoulders start to rise, and I would tell myself to relax down into the keys. It worked! It also had a overall calming effect on my playing. Now if I can just incorporate that feeling for the exam and for the recital at the end of November! Next week I need to do the aural and sight-reading part of the test at the lesson. Hopefully I can remember the same calmness for that!

I like this. I never play anything 100% either, and see no reason to change the habits of a lifetime . . trouble is, sometimes if you drop a real clanger it can scramble your concentration (it may have been a lack of concentration which was the cause,)requiring Plan B to be implemented!

I'm currently working on plans B and C. . . plan C may involve a trip to the bar. . .