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My ATOW is that I have got the venue sorted out for the European Piano Part (EPP) in July.

Whew.
So glad to have that booked!

I have just fallen in to what your username means! Cas In Italy. All these years, right over my head. I didn't see the pun in the name of Popeye's girlfriend until quite recently.

Totally forgot about this. After fighting it for two years I finally got reading glasses specifically for the piano two weeks ago. So far, so good.

My AOTW is something I realized while on a 3 day cruise last weekend... For certain venues and audiences, hitting the right notes isn't at all important.

I was sitting in the piano bar on board with a perfect up-close view of the piano player's hands, about as far away as my teacher would sit. She was singing and banging out old jazz and pop standards. Banging is the operative word. My discovery was that she missed almost as many notes as she got right! Well, that is an exaggeration, but she missed a lot.

I was watching and listening intently....every third or fourth chord she would hit a clunker that was clearly out of place and not a fancy extension of some kind. And her voice really wasn't that great either. But, and here's the thing, NOBODY NOTICED OR CARED. Well, except me. She never, ever missed a beat and was great about correcting the mistake if the same sequence was repeated. And she played and sang with great energy. But, subtle dynamics and sensitive musicality?.... fuggggetaboutit. She had two dynamic levels, loud and louder.

I guess I found this interesting because I have been working on and thinking a lot about lead sheet playing, improvising, and those folks who seem to have repertoires of dozens of songs.

Hi Jim
It's reassuring, isn't it, that our expectations of ourselves is higher than the audience's? The same thing is true for classical audiences, but certainly to a lesser extent than the tolerance on a cruise ship. I went to a symphony performance last weekend where the orchestra was almost 1/2 beat slower than the soloist for about 4 measures. Did the audience care? Nope. There was still a standing ovation. It was an eye opener for me, as well... and I think will really help with my performance anxiety.

These are really great anecdotal evidence that we are more critical of ourselves than the audience. I will remember these when I do my recital this Sunday. Of course, most of the audience will be there just to hear their child play, and won't be listening too critically to the three adults that are going to play. So - no worries.

Best of luck on Sunday! Thank goodness there are two other adults playing; I once had the experience to be the only adult playing along with 20 children in front of over 500 people. It was not pleasant.

Clearly she was used to "keep it rolling" - which is really important! --- I agree that we are certainly our own harshest critics - and we should lighten up a bit.

I had a similar experience.

I noticed at an event where I was turning pages that the performer made tons of errors - but if I hadn't been standing right beside the music, reading and watching I probably wouldn't have noticed, (they weren't horrific errors and the pianist recovered brilliantly every time) -but I was fascinated to see how many there were and how little anyone minded. Everyone was caught up in the overall impact of the piece.

On my own ATOW: I got a few "good" comments from my teacher - they seem to be appearing with a little more frequency these days - very exciting!
Also - I got confirmation that as of next week I will have my 1 hour a week lessons! woohoo! I am delighted.

My achievement of the week is having excellent practice sessions every day for at least one hour, though often approaching two hours. Starting with a new teacher has refocused me and given me new direction which I badly needed.

Since I started every practice session off with 15-20 minutes of scales (C,G,and D) the quality, speed, and accuracy for my scales, arpeggios, and cadences have improved drastically. I have to work on my arpeggio fingering though, as the thumb under feels awkward and requires me to contort my hand/bend my arm to reach the notes. Will talk to my teacher about this.

I'm working on Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas from Alfred's Book 1, and it's improved enormously in expressiveness since Saturday. More accurate too, as I'm thinking more about emoting and getting the music out.

I'm also working on the first two pieces from Alfred's Book 2. They seem much easier than the rest of the book, but within a couple of days I've gotten them both up to note perfect.

It's been a good week at the piano. All I can really think about all day is getting home so I can start practicing again.

After 7 weeks I can finally put away Bach's 1st Invention...

It's been 4 weeks since I started n.8 in F major. The 2nd part still freaks me out, it comes and go even when played slowly but this week I felt like I'm finally putting it together.

I want to organise my time better, it's all over the place, I can spend almost an hour just practising scales. I still have to finish that Kuhlau Sonatina I started 6 weeks ago...

At my lesson this week my teacher told me to, in effect, start over with the inventions (she teaches a little more than half of them), but this time with the goal of memorizing some of them along with general improvement. Her instruction was to make the Inventions (or Bach, more generally) part of my practice discipline for, like, forever.

Her charge to do them again wasn't unexpected (she had hinted beforehand) and I am actually looking forward to doing them again, now that I have more experience under my belt and my skills--aided by the Inventions--have improved as well. Memorizing them will be a challenge, although if I play them enough times, it will happen.

My AOTW is that I learned all the notes of my themed recital piece. I was getting a bit worried as many of you know some baroque piece require very strange fingering for both hands, serious hand independence stuff. As I was learning the notes of the second page, I noticed the first page began to come together, regaining some confidence. This week, I finally memorized the second page. Now I just have to focus on playing with consistent fingering from memory and getting it up to tempo.

After putting away the Rosetti Sonata for ABF Recital to focus on this, it took a long 6 weeks to memorize all the notes. It's been quite a long haul. So happy it's all downhill from here. It also means I can start learning and memorizing something else while finish polishing. Yay!

My teacher considers them essential, fundamental. Luckily, I do enjoy learning and playing those. Also, I'm not going to put it away completely (same for the rest of the Inventions). In fact he suggested me to still play it sometimes, so I can see the improvements.

The only things I don't memorise on purpose are exercises and etudes but I play them enough that they just get stuck into my mind and fingers. For example: I started working on Czerny Op.849 two weeks ago, I always look at the score while playing but can easily do without it. I'm sure this is normal.

My achievement of the week is finally being able to hear the melody (start to) come through on Pathetique second movement!

It's been really hard for me to work on voicing the separate parts and I actually gave up a few weeks ago - after all, there's so many people in the world who can play this so beautifully and so much better than me.

But.... I picked it up again this week and I think I'm actually making progress. I know the recording is clunky (done on my phone), lots of hesitations, wrong notes etc but hey, it's a start :-)

Learning to voice Adagio Cantabile https://youtu.be/VHIWas9ZRi0

My AOTW is a small but significant breakthrough on the coda section of the Mozart Rondo Alla Turca. The measures similar to this one are just starting to have that chirping character I hear listening to performances of this piece, rather than the chaotic noise I have mostly been producing.

My achievement of the year is: I survived my recital!!! It's the first time I have played an instrument in public. I was very nervous but played without any mistakes except for not doing the dynamics properly. After the first two bars or so, I just thought "I can't believe I am doing this!" and more or less let my memory take over.

Two people complimented me afterwards. A lady said she liked my piece and an old man asked me to explain what ragtime means.

And, bonus: I wasn't even the oldest person performing! I was the second oldest!

Congratulations! This performance is a HUGE accomplishment

Great job, and to have your first recital go well is great for your confidence.

Thank you, dogperson and earlofmar! I made a lot of mistakes in my lesson this week, so it is back to the grind... My teacher sent me home with Alfred's book 2. I expect to spend a few years on that one!