Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Recital 37 --- Call For Submissions

What are you waiting for???? Go for it, chopinoholic!
Don't forget the deadline date: 15/feb.

@Chopinoholic:
Of course. Quoted out of the ABF Recital FAQ

Haha, ok CarlosCC, I'll join!

And Wim, I really need to check those FAQ. Thanks.

The More Chopin the better, way out of my league apart for some simpler versions and snippets in my lesson books that I can fumble through. I always love to hear Chopin

Veel Geluk.

chopinoholic, I think 'beginner' is more how you feel about it yourself. I'm also posting still here. Not because I play beginner pieces but because I still don't feel very confident at the keyboard. Still searching for the chords, trying to get the memory work faster, and trying to get it all feel easier. Probably I would count as an intermediate but there's no forum for that, the next step is the pianist forum but that seems more for the above-intermediates

Thank you Richard.
I doubted the lesson would go well because I've barely touched the piano all week, and at my skills level, that kind of "lapse" generally leads to problems.
I have to all effects, abandoned poor Tchaicovsky, and I hardly touched the 3rd movement of my sonatina. However.....It actually went very well indeed. Feeling under par gave me more incentive to get my tempo right, from the start, without rushing. This gave me all the time in the world to get things right. I had one flub in the second movement where I lost track of my triplets, but managed to keep going without everything falling apart. I got a "very good, nice improvement" from my teacher and permission to speed up the second movement!
I will still wait til the weekend to record, (just 1st and 2nd movements for now) - but I have hopes

Great to hear, wish you well.

I'm delighted your lesson went well, Cheryl. You should never doubt the improvement that can come even from a forced layoff. Up to a week now and then is actually a good space to allow the material to take shape in your head and come out more naturally.

Too much practise without rest forces mechanical actions into our playing when a day off every so often would allow the brain to sort out the mechanics and concentrate on bringing out more of the music. Even a change of piece for a week can do wonders without neglecting the instrument entirely.

The better you play at your lessons, the less the teacher can improve so a week without much progress can actually lead to tips and techniques that'll provide a bit of a rocket. A teacher's not going to sit there and say they can't help you if you've done no work!

OK, I'm in with "Fairytale", Einaudi. (#34)
I know I can do better, but I'm going to have some busy days at office next week, and I don't want to miss my 17th recital.

Looking forward to listen all the pieces!

I'm pretty sure I will be resubmitting my piece - so everyone below me will move up one when I do. The problem is that an original piece is always a work in progress, and I wrote something too hard for me to play!

Sam

Thanks Alexandro and Richard.

It was a very pleasant surprise, that's for sure - and the nice thing was that we moved on to some refinements I didn't expect to be touching on.

What the experience tells me is that this "new to me" way of really studying a piece thoroughly ,truly slowly, taking longer than I thought I would ever spend on it --- is paying off. I believe that the next pieces will actually be learned faster than a few months ago because my focus is so much improved. Time will tell!

Hi chopinoholic;

Boy oh boy do I have a lot of thoughts about this.

First off, I have participated in two of these so far, and for the most part it has been a positive experience.

The real heart of your post I think is based on the term "beginner". The problem is, virtually nobody has the exact same definition, even in the context of this recital process.

I've been at this for 17 months now, and I've always been interested (maybe TOO interested) in "where" I am in terms of playing ability. For a lot of reasons I have trended toward the National Piano Guild's definitions of basic ability levels: Elementary, Intermediate, and Preparatory (Advanced). There many many sub-levels in each main level.

For me personally, the term "beginner" is more based on how WELL you play, not how LONG you have been playing. And I equate the term with the "Elementary" level.

The problem I have always had with the these recitals, is that based on my definition of "beginner", there are in fact very few at that level that submit pieces. Most submissions seem to my ears to be well past that. And that is an issue I struggle with; it nearly kept me from posting something for this go around.

One of the quick ways you tell about the general playing ability of the field is by looking at the composer list. At my current ability level (roughly Elementary C/D) there are very few pieces in their "original form" that I can attempt to play that are worthy of this fine group. If you look at the current submission list, most of the pieces are either in their original form, or actual compositions by the submitees!

So everyone has their own definitions of these things. To be fair, there seems to be a good mix of late elementary, intermediate, and advanced players (all of whom I highly respect!).

Unfortunately, to my mind, I seem to be toward the bottom of the skill level group.

Brian, the only way to solve that, it by 'true beginners' (as per your definition) to actually submit. Yes, we have a lot of really good players here, and I love to hear those. But that shouldn't intimidate us to leave them the playing field. I for one will submit as soon as I have a piece to send in, which I fear may not be this time, but then the next.

On that note, I've scoured the old recitals for some 'easier' pieces, and 'less experienced' players. Of the hundreds and hundreds of entries I've seen so far, there are maybe a handful of people with say some months to a year experience. The vast majority are people who've played for years and years. I'm not saying they shouldn't, on the contrary, I love to listen to them! But I'd also very much like to hear pieces more within my range, played by people with less experience.
There's a bit of 'oh good, I'm not the only one struggling with this or that' in that, and also, if all I ever get to hear are big pieces played by brilliant players, how on earth am I to judge my own playing (other than as totally and utterly pathetic)?
I was lucky to find a few 'small' pieces in the Tchaikovsky recital. Loved that. That's the kind of pieces I might be able to play, at least in the near future, so those are nice to hear played with skill as well as less so. In the quarterly recital there's very little of that.

We've discussed this many times in the ABF over the years. The official title of the recital is "Beginner and Beyond".

Many solutions have been proposed, everything from kicking out the better players to having a separate recital for only beginners. But none of those "solutions" are really workable. Who do you kick out? Who decides who is a beginner? The ABF is full of people who have worked very hard, sometimes over many years, to get to their level of playing ability.

We have people who have participated in every recital - and they have improved tremendously over that time. We also have novices in every recital. All are welcome.

Sam

I don't think anyone said anything about kicking
I absolutely don't want an 'upper' limit. I'd just like to see more people at 'lower levels' submit.

Brian,

FWIW, I don't think that ANY of my (admittedly few) submissions to the ABF recital were in "original form" - and NONE are my own compositions. (Mainly because I don't HAVE any original compositions. LOL.)

What I often do is find a piece that I'd like to learn to play - preferably one that's just a bit over my head - and then simplify it a bit, as needed to fit my current level of ability. That usually means simplifying some complex chord voicing. My goal is to strike a balance between stretching a bit but not too far that it frustrates me. That's what I've again tried to do with my submission for this recital.

Everybody is at a different level of abilities. I see the ABF as an opportunity to take a few chances by stretching one's ability a bit.

I'm sorry Sam but I must not have made my point very clear.

I am in no way implying that anything is wrong that requires a "solution". My point simply is that some of us at the bottom of the scale can be quite intimidated by the talent level here. I can see that very clearly in the way some folks at my level have not been consistently participating. I miss some of these folks a lot.

I think if you take a look at the last 5 recitals or so, I think you will see a noticeable skew to the more experienced players. My guess is that the overall skills distribution of the folks who post here is more evenly spread out.

I'm offering my own opinion as to why that might be. Nothing more, nothing less. Certainly nothing for anyone to get defensive about.

Which is a problem only the "some of us" can solve

Cathy

I think what separates us from the Pianists Corner is the generally accepting and gracious way people regard each other's playing. Yes, experience levels differ greatly. But unless an indiviual requests a critique from a fairly advanced player, most all other comments are enthusiastic and encouraging. The point of these recitals is not to point out every little detail the player needs to improve. The point is not to discourage people's early efforts at the piano. Quite the opposite. We hope to encourage people to stick with the journey and become more experienced players.

I am one of the fairly advanced players on ABF. But, no way am I ready for the Pianist's Corner. I still need my teacher to help me in learning strategies in difficult sections of a piece. Heck, I need my ego stroked just like everyone else. Yes, I have my little performance pianos in my signature. Every single recital I go through performance nerves and anxiety that has me question why I do it.

I started submitting to the ABF Quarterly recitals because finally this was a forum where other adults taking lessons could share their music. I would hope that the more advance submissions acted as motivation to the less experienced players. We were absolute beginners once too. And most of us remember the struggle and consternation involved in learning piano. That's why we support and encourage the beginning players here.

I often feel totally inadequte to comment on certain genres of music as they are quite unfamiliar to me. But when I comment I alwyas try to applaud the effort it takes to learn a piece, record it and the guts it takes to share it on ABF. That's what ABF is for me. A big support club of fellow pianists. Piano is such a solitary activity for the most time. Many practice hours go into learning pieces. Anyone unfamiliar with learning an instrument just doesn't get it. I've had people question why I can't just play anything put in front of me. They reason that if learning to read means knowing the letters and sound out the words, and you don't have to "practice" reading a book. Then why isn't learning to read music and then just playing any music put in front of you the same thing?

I know the real begninners sometimes feel intimidated by us more advanced players. But the overall attitude of the ABF is so accepting that there is no reason to "less than" anyone else here. We are all our own worst critic. The generally encouraging nature of most people here is what makes the ABF so special.