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Very admirable perspective....

Saranoya I'm so glad you're getting back into your groove!!!

SandTiger: If you were so inspired, I bet something will come to you- some way to modify the piece to fulfill your expectations. Hang in there!

Giacomo: Great BD video for SwissMs, that made me laugh....
Congrats on solving the mystery! I too have made the "go even slower" discovery rather recently (and also after five years) so, if you were thinking you should have caught on sooner.... you've got company! I fully agree with you on all the benefits to be found when you really do hold to the slower tempos for longer than you want to. I find that I'm not so anxious to move on any more, because I am actually feeling little changes (for the better) every time I sit down to play.

8Octaves, congratulations! That's a wonderful achievement! What a great reward for the hard work you put into preparing for the exam!

Palmpirate: I don't remember which post I wrote "If you memorize a piece you own it in a special way". I think I've said it several times. I don't always memorize my pieces...sometimes to my regret - but I think my percentage of memorized versus not will go up in the future because of my new AND implemented "take it slow" approach. We shall see.
Good for you for insisting on your piano-only time! I haven't done any crossed hands pieces yet...I can imagine the brain twisting involved.

Malkin - that's neat! I had a similar experience using 2-5, which used to be very uncomfortable, but now it is second nature...well, almost.

Wisebuff: I haven't done any of Papa Bach yet. But from what I've seen and heard (and read here) the road is tricky but the rewards are many - enjoy the journey!

FarmGirl: don't we all dream of having "music days" Hope your business trip was short.

Brian - the first time round your teacher probably felt it wasn't the right moment to insist. She probably felt you weren't going to be able to get better at the broken staccato chords at that time. Take it as a compliment to your improvement that now is the moment to work on it.

Barbaram - 20 bpm over your comfort zone? That's a lot! Do take care of your injury!!!

ClsscLib: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! Hope your day is filled with joy - and lots of good music!
I love that Chopin Waltz. I plan to work on it and get it to performance level later this year. (I hope my teacher will help me on that!!)
Prima vista is such good training - congrats on your improvements!

SwissMs - the quote you cited is in TrapperJohn's signature
I'm adding YOUR words to my siggy line! I think the desire to move ahead is very strong in all of us!

verqueue: That's going to be a challenge! I hope you have fun with it. Your selections so far sound like excellent choices.

whew. That was a lot of catching up!

MY ATOW is just getting to the piano while feeling lousy. I have been down with a bug of some sort which has not been conducive to stimulating interest in anything requiring being out of bed. I even cancelled my piano lesson - the first time in five years! Fortunately the worst seems to be over and I hope to get some good practice in before my next lesson.

Cheryl, I wanted to get my two schloberers to do this, but they would just eat the plates.......




Hoping you feel better soon.

Giacomo

You're better than me for sure. I felt lousy yesterday and just watched a movie instead of practicing piano. I decided to give myself a break. I will practice today I promise.

I hope you feel better soon.

(to dogs) aaawwwwwwwwww

Cheryl,
Sorry to hear your not feeling well
Hope you will feel better soon.






What a bantastic card (thinking about stealing the idea now!)

Honestly, this week my biggest achievement was maintaining a regular practice schedule of at least 15 minutes or more. I'm hoping to increase it to 30 minutes in the near future.

Awwwwwww Giacomo, you're the best. Love those dogs!
I feel better already.
Thanks for the good wishes everyone

Brucrpiano, being able to increase how much you can do in a day, or in a sitting is a big step forward. Good for you!

Hello .... I wanted to thank everyone for all the words of encouragement when I posted back on the 21st trying to figure out "where I belonged" It was so good to hear many share the same frustrations and it really did renew my enthusiasm for playing. I continue my Diabelli Sonatina in F Maj ..... I have completed the Rondo (very very slow) but I can get thru it. I have also started an "easier" piece as some suggested. Heller Etude Opus 47, No 15 ..... so far so good.

I do enjoy reading all the comments and success stories to keep me inspired !! Thank You

Yes, I feel a bit foolish in hindsight!
Pretty sure it's very minor but continuing to take a rest from anything likely to stress it until it's fully better.

Sorry to hear you have been sick, hope you feel better soon!

Verqueue - well done getting the piano job, hope you enjoy it.
I see that we share another hobby, though I suspect your climbing abilities, like your piano abilities, are far ahead of mine (sweeping generalisation here re all French climbers being insanely hardcore).
I don't get to do much climbing these days - it's a lot easier to make time for piano with young kids around than to make time for climbing.

Richard G - glad to hear you are feeling enthusiastic again. I find this a great community for keeping me positive as slowly, slowly progress. Like so many of us, I can get frustrated and feel I "should" be learning more quickly. One of the biggest lessons I've learned here is that it takes as long as it takes, and it's about the journey not the destination!

BrucePiano - getting a consistent practice routine going is great.

I can lead only routes below 5.10d (6a+), so I'm not even intermediate . In bouldering my hardest boulder was 6b+, but I think I was lucky I did it. I'm very short (153cm), so a lot of routes are harder for me than for my friends. I started to climb 2 years ago, it's a great sport. But I don't want to push myself too much, because I'm scared of my fingers sometimes. It helps me resolve some mental problems in piano playing too, making fast decisions, etc. I think it's one of those things which keeps me away from madness .

Why don't you teach your kids to climb? This is great sport for kids. I see some families in my climbing gym and in rocks also. Kids are climbing, then adults, and they are all happy. The youngest kid I ever saw was about 3-4 years old...

I now have both LH and RH memorized for Tambourin. Never thought I could get the LH memorized but I did that tonight. Now if I could just play a few of those sections a little quicker and up to the same tempo I play the rest of it I'd be okay. I'm never going to play this up to its proper tempo because I've heard it and that's insane.

I'd rather stay home and work on that piece than leave for work in 15 minutes *sigh*. Breakthroughs for me always happen right before I have to leave. Hopefully I'll remember what I did in 8 hours when I get home at 6am and play through it.

Today, I finished out the month of January with twenty light green, six dark green and regrettably, three yellow and two orange days on my practice calendar. That means I achieved my goal (to play every day, and get in at least twenty hours of practice this month) by quite a wide margin. Next up: to have a month with no orange days (those are the days with less than 45 minutes of practice).

On the downside: that means it took me twenty-one hours to learn the Allemande from Händel's Harpsichord Suite 437. I'm a slow learner. But I guess I'll just have to accept that.



Me too! However, if I'm going to go see a live performance, I'd prefer to sit some place that will let me see the pianist's hands. In practice, that's very unlikely in most places.

As for your songwriting efforts: keep trying, I'd say, but it doesn't seem like you need much external encouragement in that department. You are amazingly self-motivated, and I admire you for that.



And you're not sure that's an achievement? Well, let me tell you then: that's an achievement! And not a small one, either. Congratulations!



In certain circumstances, it can be hard to carve out time that's "just for you". I don't know the ins and outs of your daily life, but I imagine that if you have a family, and/or important professional responsibilities to keep up with, then this is a major achievement indeed. Good for you!



My response to that is "duh". The longer you practice, the less you need the sheet, and so the less you look at it. Right? That seems so logical to me ... but you call it a "mystery"? To be honest, I don't get why you would even *want* to still be looking at the sheet near the end of your learning process on any given piece. But probably that's just me!



I currently feel the same way about Händel ... You're not the only one who doesn't learn naturally. Congratulations on approaching the summit!




That's as tangible a sign of good progress as I've ever seen . Your teacher knows you can do it, and so the bar has been raised. Be proud of that, Brian!



That's a huge achievement! Especially if you did that with anything written by Chopin :p. I did something similar last week (though not with Chopin), and it felt great!




That's not an un-achievement in my book. The achievement here is that you learned to apply the same process you apply so successfully to your "hard" repertoire to the "easy" things as well. It's the kind of achievement that will keep on giving in the future .



Nice! That's huge! Can we have a live recording when you're done?



Amen to that!



You're a stronger woman than I am ... I hope you're feeling better now!



I've noticed in the past month that once I manage to get into the swing of things, then I just want to keep going with regular practice every day. No more need to drag myself to the piano, or put on a timer to make sure I actually do practice for at least fifteen minutes, or even look at the clock at all. So keep it up, it will get progressively easier. At least, it does for me!



The achievement here, I think, is that you've now learned how, when it comes to piano, few things are truly impossible!

Verqueque, what a great opportunity to play and set the mood for others and yet not be the focus of attention. You embody the music.

8Octives, what repertoire did you perform for RCM level 6? I'm just launching my effort toward that goal so am working several choices and I have to dust off the theory books. SwissMS, am I correct in thinking ABRSM level 6 is a more difficult level than RCM 6 because they only have 8 levels? Don't get me wrong the exams are challenging at any level because it takes such attention to detail and the stress of being tested adds a different element. Supporting one another will be great. Although I can memorize anything in oral language, I'm not proficient at memorization of piano music. I've read books and tried a number of different techniques but it doesn't file in my brain the way I want it too. I go back to the sheet music and can play the piece with only an occasional glance so I'm thinking that my brain has included the page as part of the whole sequence of knowing the piece.

I think ABRSM runs a grade or so higher, and they have some other differences. I am playing Bach "Sinfonia in G minor" which is grade 9 RCM, (which seems too high to me), Schumann Sonata in G Theme and Variations, which is rated grade 7 by RCM, and the other one is an arrangement of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" that is really nice. The other major difference is that scales and arpeggios (tonic and diminished 7th) are required in all keys, major, minor harmonic and melodic, plus a handful of contra scales and chromatics. That means a lot of time working on technical stuff. I only have to learn the three pieces, while for RCM you have five. So I guess each system has its challenges! I really like the Celebration Series Level 6 books. There are some really nice pieces in there!

[quote=verqueue]
We just were at a Chopin concert and it was amazing -Alexandre Tharaud - and he played Fantasize in F min Op 49 - outstanding performance. He also played Nocturne E-flat Op9 no2 , very well known short piece. an lot of others of course , I just mention those two.
Later we were that last in for dinner in a hotel where they had a pianist playing. He was an older fellow , maybe Cuban, had tambourines, and bells set up around, and quite an impressive bank of audio equipment. His music was loud and lively for a bit, quite a contrast to our evening. But we were the last diners, and I bet he could have left and hour early if we hadn't shown up! Then he calmed down and just played around on the keys. One of the pieces was the Nocturne Op9 no2. He murdered it with his 'jazz' rendition but it was still pleasant to listen to. Then he got into some things - film music - that you could tell were his personal favourites - that was what got our applause and earned him a tip. We were the only ones there by then and I guess he felt he could play for himself a while at the end of the night.
What I mean to convey is, although you are being played to entertain in a pleasant way for people who are not really giving you their full attention, if you take time to play some things from your heart some of them will stop and appreciate your love of music. Not only will you feel great but you will make them feel good too! Enjoy Valentines!

Hi WiseBuff, I have only finished RCM Level 5 and am studying RCM Level 6 right now. It will be a while before I'll worry about which repertoire pieces to choose play but very likely the Schumann Waltz in A minor, op. 124, no. 4., a sonatina from either Kuhlau, or Clementi, and one Bach. Generally, I learn some 20 pieces for each level before I even think about the what to play at the exam. So much depends on how I feel about specific pieces, and I won't know until I've learned them. Also, my teacher has a good deal of input on what I should choose. At the moment my feeling is I won't be ready to take the exam until 2016.

Do you know the exam syllabus for RCM Level 6? The 3 repertoire pieces is only roughly about half the exam. You need to be very clear on the other half starting with 2 etudes, and technical elements.

According to ABRSM, RCM Level 9 can be substituted for ABRSM Grade 8 for fulfilling the pre-requisite of the ABRSM Diploma Exam, so I would say ABRSM Grade 6 would be similar to RCM Level 7.

Week 151: The new Ipad is a useful tool, though it also brings distractions. I scan in the sheet music for several songs at the local library, including When I Fall in Love. I like the digital format so much better than making paper copies. I am using a very basic app TinyScan and have to do manual page turns. I need to memorize anything that I am going to perform so it isn't a big downside. I try the Ipad video camera and could see using it to make piano videos.

I play around more with Garageband. Unfortunately, the keyboard sounds might be the weakest of their instruments. I enjoy the viola sound very much, so much easier than a real viola. I watch a couple of GarageBand tutorials on Youtube, but for the most part find it overwhelming.

@Saranoya It always seems impossible at the beginning. I think I have to stop thinking about the impossibilities and work towards the possibilities It might be less frustrating for me that way