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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
Anita, I think it's a very good exercise, to keep the music always in front of you and try not to look at your hands too much. I guess I unconsciously memorised much of this piece, anyway, but I couldn't play it without the music so I must be reading somehow. From now on I intend to do it all the time, except maybe for Bach pieces, where hand movements and positions are a big part of my memorisation process. And the very fast pieces, those will probably need memorising too.
1. Battle Hymn of the Republic 2. America the Beautiful 3. The Marine's Hymn 4. The Caisson Song 5. When Johnny Came Marching Home 6. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! 7. Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet 8. Let the Rest of the World Go By
I played at a memory care unit today. One of the folks was a professor of English; who informed me that this was no time for piano, he had work to do, and this was his office :\ After I'd played a couple of tunes he asked me to come over and talk to him, so I did. Turns out - the last two papers I turned in were not written by me, and therefore I was getting an F+. I said it was a good thing I majored in math. The staff mostly dealt with him, but by the end he was telling me "thank you, it's time to go now." Fortunately I only had 3 more to play. Ai yi yi. It can be stressful. Equally so to him, I'm sure.
But, onward and upward!
Cathy
Cathy Perhaps "more music" is always the answer, no matter what the question might be! - Qwerty53
I work in laundry in an assisted care facility overnight so I don't have too much interaction with the residents except for one. She comes out once in awhile at night and she knows she has Alzheimer's. Last night was particularly rough she was getting irritated which makes me think it's getting worse for her. Her family's moving her out in April which is probably why they haven't moved her to the memory care building.
I know it's frustrating for the care givers and I'm sure that they forget it's frustrating for the residents as well so I know how you feel.
Anyway back to the challenge. Rigadoon I have memorized but I have issues in a few spots and those are going slow. I've decided to leave out the ornaments, frills and trills (I should've started learning that with it from the get go). I'm hoping to record it Sunday before my kidlings show up if I can get my kinks worked out.
XXXVII-XXXIX
Casio Privia PX-160 Yamaha PSR-160 Piano Playing since November 2014
[quote=sinophilia]Finally my 11th piece, an arrangement of Handel's Air from Water Music. First ever recording where I actually read the score and didn't look at my hands very much. Still a bit nervous, double notes not very nice, not as expressive as I wished, but here it is.
Nice work sinophilia and ditto on the reading the score issue. Since I began learning piano I memorised everything and could not follow a score. Since taking on this challenge I am reading the score more which I think is a good thing if I can get quicker at it.
@sinophilia I'm going to try that with these next little pieces I've got lined up. Thankfully they're all on the same page :p Giving Purcell a break for a moment to get some more things in my binder done.
I always end up staring at my left hand though only. Occasionally I'll look at my right hand but only if I have to jump somewhere else really quickly. I think it's a habit I picked up when I'm playing the bass and I've playing something difficult I always stare at my left hand.
Anyhoo...Here's #12 Rigadoon with it's goof ups. *slaps self* That middle section has been throwing me fits all week and not likely to get any better by tomorrow so I went ahead and recorded it this morning after work. Yeah, I'm crazy like that.
XXXVII-XXXIX
Casio Privia PX-160 Yamaha PSR-160 Piano Playing since November 2014
Anita, I didn't get the link to your piece. In fact, lately I haven't been getting the link to anyone's pieces in their posts, but I DO get the link if someone else "quotes" it in their comment. Weird!!!
Here is a re-publish of all my 2015 pieces in one place for easier tabulation:
..... 11) Canario - van der Hofe (OF) 12) Minuet in F (Leopold Mozart) (OF) 13) Phantom of the Keys (N Faber) 14) Glad Cat Rag - Nash (AR) 15) Rage Over A Lost Penny - Beethoven (AR) 16) Andante (J.C. Bach) (OF) 17) Etude Energico (N Faber) 18) The Tempest (N Faber) 19) Hava Nagila (AR)
Yamaha C2X | Yamaha M500-F Groucho Marx: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." Curriculum: Faber Developing Artist (Book 3) Current: German Dance in D Major (Haydn) (OF); Melody (Schumann) (OF)
@Mom3Gram That is odd that it doesn't include the link. I'm wondering if it's because it uses the boards video tag instead of a straight out clickable link. Let's test that...
I'm working on something called First Waltz from the 1892 Standard Graded Course of Studies for the Pianoforte in Ten Grades - Grade 1 Book. I'm looking at the score instead of my hands since they don't really jump anywhere and they basically rest on the same set of keys. This is also helping me with sight reading. This one is actually going well just a few concentration issues but I should have that cleared up in a day or so.
I'm also trying hard NOT to memorize because then it would be just too easy for me to look at my hands again which is what I do. And since they're on the same page It'll be A Study in Fluency then and untitled one I'll just call Allegretto. I plan on doing the above for all 3 little pieces then figure out what to do after that.
XXXVII-XXXIX
Casio Privia PX-160 Yamaha PSR-160 Piano Playing since November 2014
Thanks for the birthday wishes, Cathy and Judy. I had a great birthday.
Anita, I was able to click on that one. I like the piece, and you played it well. I don't know why the links don't show up lately. I was able to get them when I first joined this thread. Now I just see the text telling about the video, and a blank space. I like listening to all of you play your pieces, and I make notes of ones that I would like to play some day.
I have never recorded myself - one of these days I have to figure out how to do that. I'm hopeless with technology though.
Weird. Wonder what that's about and if what you're experiencing showed up about the same time the select language box did.
I started out with a crappy cell phone (i.e. doesn't make calls or texts but can hook up to wifi) and a recording app and a SoundCloud account. Since I got this new computer this month I have a crappy web cam and a Guitar Hero usb microphone and can do videos now when I couldn't on the other computer (the audio got blown).
Takes time to figure out the recording. When I was doing it with my phone the app would glitch which would cause the recording to also have glitches so if you start off that way be mindful of that might happen.
XXXVII-XXXIX
Casio Privia PX-160 Yamaha PSR-160 Piano Playing since November 2014
PianoStudent88 - as far as I can tell, and IMO, you can make those decisions yourself.
I don't see hard and fast rules here - what I see is an idea to help spur us to play more pieces so that we're not stuck on 5 or 6 hard pieces in a year. A way for us to get a lot more varied experience than perhaps folks who are being encouraged to do only exam pieces. A way to explore many pieces to a "pretty good" level rather than a competition level. A way to help our fundamental skills become more solid as a bass for working on more advanced ones. A way to build confidence and musicality in our playing, or reading, or in my case, my ear and arrangement skills and varying on the fly.
The challenge serves us, not us the challenge, to paraphrase someone So I don't think, really, even the "40" in a year is quite the point. Whether you do 40 in a year, or 40 in 3/4 of a year, or 30 in 3/4 of a year, or 80 in a year as some folks might, is just a way to encourage playing more music.
Others might find the 40 sacred, but not me I think we're all in this for what it does for ourselves, and it's a happy thing to share with others.
Cathy
++1 Exactly
Liebestraum 3, Liszt Standchen-Schubert/Liszt arr Sonata Pathetique-Adagio LVB Estonia L190 #7284
I recorded #13 just waiting for the video to process. Meanwhile my cat is holding my left arm down for me for some reason. It's making it hard for me to type let alone get on to the next piece.
Thanks Yeah once she turned around on my lap and sat on the keys and it scared her. I had nice little claw marks on my legs :p
She tends to jump up in my lap when I turn away from the keys for a moment. She's like "Oh you stopped now you can pet me for a bit instead of that keyboard you're always playing".
I spent some time and reorganized my binder. I put most of my done pieces in the back so I'm not leafing through those to find the ones I've not tried yet. I've got 15 left of the ones I've printed out and I'm going to try NOT to print any more until at least half of these are done. That's been a bad habit of mine print it, put it in the binder then never get to it
XXXVII-XXXIX
Casio Privia PX-160 Yamaha PSR-160 Piano Playing since November 2014
A bit late to the party, but I definitely want to give this a try I'm not very good at completing pieces. Most of the time I learn parts of songs and leave it at that.
Hopefully this will motivate me to finally learn to play complete songs.
Whenever I have one finished, I'll record the end result.
Anne H: After some careful thought, please remove my entries from this list. Based on the difficulties of most of the pieces posted here, I can't in good conscience post my much simpler pieces.
Thanks, Brian
Yamaha C2X | Yamaha M500-F Groucho Marx: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." Curriculum: Faber Developing Artist (Book 3) Current: German Dance in D Major (Haydn) (OF); Melody (Schumann) (OF)
Anne H: After some careful thought, please remove my entries from this list. Based on the difficulties of most of the pieces posted here, I can't in good conscience post my much simpler pieces.
Thanks, Brian
Brian, your own 40 piece challenge is exactly that; your own challenge which cannot be compared to others. The only real rule of the challenge is to learn as many pieces per year as possible (the 40 is really arbitrary in my view). The bulk of those pieces are going to be what you consider relatively easy to learn, no matter what the grade. It is important they feel easy to learn as the objective is to stay engaged with the early learning process we lose quite quickly with our "main" pieces and gain the benefits from that. To that point the content/complexity or grade does not matter in the slightest. I would like to point out that all of the pieces I chose last year were preliminary grade pieces. While this year I am trying to chose mainly grade 1 pieces I will have to add some preliminary grade pieces for the outcomes I am trying to achieve.
Remember you do not even have to post your recordings here but if you do depart the club I hope you continue on with your own challenge.
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So I don't think, really, even the "40" in a year is quite the point. Whether you do 40 in a year, or 40 in 3/4 of a year, or 30 in 3/4 of a year, or 80 in a year as some folks might, is just a way to encourage playing more music.![[Linked Image]](https://www.pianoworld.com/ABF_Medals/medal_c_5.jpg)
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