Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Alfred's Basic and All in One Adult Piano Course Book #2

Blackjack, yup 1-2. The first couple of pieces are extremely basic, but I'm really taking my time with this book. I don't want to just be passed to competence as I was for Alfred's 1, but have some of the better pieces in my early repertoire.

joename I think your idea is a good one. I worked on the first little piece in the masterworks book and looked ahead and I think this will be a great supplementary book for me to work through.

I'm going to ask my teacher about it this weekend in my lesson and see what she says.

Short update for me today - I had my lesson this morning, and somehow I completely messed up the rhythm to the Bridal Chorus! The only thing I was supposed to fix was a problem in one measure where I wasn't holding a dotted quarter note long enough and clean up the pedal. I fixed that and managed to let the rest of the piece fall apart so I will be on this one for another week. I'm a bit disappointed in myself but it happens. If I didn't have a teacher pointing out my mistakes I'd really be in trouble. I'll be more careful this week and make sure I'm dutifully counting out my rhythm

Guantanamera is actually sounding really nice and my teacher was impressed I had made it sound so rhythmically precise since it is much more challenging than the Bridal Chorus. She also liked how gentle I was with it, instead of being heavy handed like I sometimes am. I will continue working on this piece this week to make the dynamics stand out and add pedal. Overall I'm pretty happy with the progress I'm making on it.

I also finished off a little piece from my Dozen a Day book and I finished the Carefree piece from the Masterworks Level 1-2 Series and working on the second piece, so overall I'm pretty happy especially considering I was still traveling this week for work.

How is everyone else coming along?

Happy Halloween

Alright, hope everyone is doing well in here with their Alfred's pieces.

I finally passed the Bridal Chorus piece today!! I'm so happy to not have to practice that one any more. I told my teacher I was so disappointed at my poor performance on this piece last week. I should have easily completed this in 1 ir 2 weeks.

As for Guantanamera, I have somehow lost my rhythm on this song so I'm going back to work on it with the metronome. My teacher really came down on me for backsliding on my rhythm. So I need to be more focused on my counting going forward.

I was assigned the next piece after Guantanamera, the theme from Overature, and I'm looking forward to working on it quite a lot. It has a nice classic feel to it and should be a bit easier than Guantanamera from a rhythm perspective.

I passed several little technique pieces in my Dozen a Day book so it was nice to have some success there as well.

I'm also going to give myself a pass on "Determination" from my Alfred's Masterworks book. I'm going to continue working on that series without my teacher for now. The pieces are simple enough and I can feel more free to do it at my own pace or skip practicing if I'm too busy with work.

Overall it was an ok piano week. I got a lot accomplished but also didn't do as well on Guantanamera as I should have.

How is everyone else coming along?

Sounds like you're doing great, Blackjack! After Bridal Chorus my teacher joked I could play some weddings now, make some money on the side...

ajames, thanks!

It's funny you say that because I've got a recital coming up and I believe my teacher has rented a church for the location where it's going to take place. It might be pretty funny if I suddenly started playing bridal chorus and then switched to the pieces I was actually supposed to be playing

I am working on Down in the Valley now. It's nice that after the brutal Chattanooga Choo Choo (Ok, not brutal, but the difficulty of the songs in Alfred 1 seemed to jump for the last few songs) I got to start Alfred 2 with a nice easier piece that I can actually read!!!

Blackjack, you're giving me my 1 month preview ... as you are about 1 month ahead of me. Let me know if there's any pitfalls that I need to be aware of!

I am so excited to finally move to Alfred 2. The smaller font gets me right away (I wear glasses and that's my first impression of Alfred 2, the small fonts!).

Looking forward to the journey and to the fellow travelers in this forum!

HappyBee welcome to Alfred's #2! It will be nice to have another person who is near me at the beginning of the book to chat with

Down in the Valley is a nice easy piece to get you started in the second book. Watch out for Bridal Chorus. I didn't take it as seriously as I should have and I ended up getting mired in it for much longer than I would have liked to...

Good luck with it and looking forward to your updates!

Blackjack, I played the Bridal Chorus at the end of my practice last night, to get a look of the next piece, and I must admit, I didn't take it seriously either.

Thanks for the note, I will take it seriously.

My update for this week.

I had my lesson today and I didn't pass Guantanamera yet however, I'm still really pleased with my progress because I worked with the metronome all week long and my teacher told me I had corrected my rhythm issue! So I'm very pleased with that. I have a little work I need to do on the pedal and the arpeggiated chord at the end. I think I will be in very good shape to pass it next week.

I made huge progress on theme from Overature. I have to change one of my slurs and make sure to connect it and also a couple measures where I read the notes incorrectly. I'm sure to get this one wrapped up by next week!

I also finished Melody in my Alfred's Masterworks book. I will move on to the next piece in there since my work load should be a bit light with no new pieces assigned in my Alfred's #2 AIO book.

I've been slacking off a bit on my sight reading book and I may try to also get some more sight reading completed this week as well.

How is everyone else progressing?

Happy Bee did you move on to the Bridal Chorus?

Hope everyone is well

I had a great lesson today!

I passed both Guantanamera (which was really a difficult piece in my opinion) and theme from Overature!! I'm super happy and my teacher told me both were much more musical than she was expecting from me. So overall, it was an awesome lesson. She moved me on to begin working on Light and Blue which looks like it will be quite an undertaking.

I also will be passing myself on the piece I was working on from the masterworks series, the Trumpeter and the Echo which was really a nice little study in dynamics between the right and left hands and will start on the next piece in the book.

I hope everyone else is doing well and progressing. Talk to you all again soon.

Anybody working on "Amazing Grace" should listen to this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0076412

Hi Blackjack,

Don't want you to feel like you're just talking to yourself in here, so...

My teacher has caught me playing some wrong notes that I'd read incorrectly, mostly to do with forgetting I was in another key. Looking forward to the day when that becomes automatic, which I'm assured will happen.

I've also been slacking off on my sight reading. In fact, my teacher called me out on it at my last lesson. I was playing a couple pieces for her and in both of them I had some major pauses throughout. I tend to lose my place trying to read and see where my hands are on the keyboard. She said I need learn to read ahead and to learn, for example, what an octave and inversions feel like so I won't need to look at my hands so much. We worked through one piece at a slow tempo where I focused on reading ahead which gave me just enough time to glance down when needed and low and behold I made it through the entire piece without a pause. I realize that's all probably common sense, but it was quite the eye-opener for me. Now I'm really inspired to keep a stack of easy pieces to have handy for each practice session.

You must be putting in a lot of piano time to get through your lesson pieces along with all those side pieces you mentioned. It sounds like you're doing very well indeed with your progress.

I kind of miss Alfred's. I mentioned this in another thread, but I'm considering learning some of the Alfred's book 2 pieces. Winter is our busy season at work, so it might not be doable until spring. Will just have to play it by ear. Haha.

Hi Linda! Glad you dropped by this thread it is super quiet in here. I'm almost just using this thread as an online journal since there's very few people that are apparently working through this particular book right now.

I have a similar problem as you with the sight reading. If I had to grade myself on the various aspects of piano skills I would say sight reading is my weakest ability. My teacher tells me it will come in time and that she thinks I do pretty good but I think she's just being nice.

She doesn't stop me from looking at my hands on the more challenging pieces but she has been more strict on the simpler pieces. I've started to notice that some things that were difficult in the past are starting magically be a lot easier, so I'm hoping that with continued practice at looking at the music, reading will also fall into place as well.

I have been getting a lot of time in at the piano. On days when I haven't been travelling for work, I get 2-3 hours every day. My office is close enough now that I can come home from work for lunch and practice. So I'm very fortunate in that aspect. But don't let me progress fool you. I may be completing a lot of pieces but the Alfred's masterworks pieces are extremely short right now. I've completed 4 of them and they range in length from 8 to 14 measures and there is very limited movement in the left hand so far, which coincidentally, has helped with my sight reading. For these pieces I never look at my hands and I never actually end up memorizing them!

So these pieces are helpful not only for my initial reason which was to get exposure to the classics but the side benefit is the first book is a bit below my current level and they're perfect for sight reading practice as well. Now, having said that within the next couple of weeks they get a lot longer and more involved so I will take longer to complete them. Also, Guantanamera was a big undertaking that was an Alfred's piece and I was on it for 5 weeks full weeks before passing it yesterday. So some of the large number of pieces I'm completing is a bit of an illusion.

I've really grown to like Alfred's and supplementing it with some outside pieces that I find and the masterworks series is really motivating me to keep going. It would be nice if you decided to work on some of the Alfred #2 pieces I miss the nice group that we had while we were all working through Alfred's #1 together. If I come across any particularly compelling pieces in the Alfred's #2 book I will let you know and maybe you can work on selected ones as you have time

BTW very funny ending remark in your last post "play it by ear" indeed.

I guess I should start posting here too!

I'm starting book 2 with my new teacher tomorrow, but I got a head start on both Down in the Valley and Tumbulalaika. Both are fairly simple tunes, and I was surprised with how quickly I was able to get them down after the last handful of difficult Alfred's Level 1 pieces.

Only issue I'm having with Tumbulalaika is getting all the notes in G7 chords to sound together. In the C and F major chords, and d minor chord, my fingers are evenly spaced, which allows everything to feel balanced. When I'm playing G7 in this piece it's with my 5 and 4 or 1 and 2 fingers and I can't seem press the keys in perfect unison with any sort of regularity. Practice!

joename glad you started posting in here again it looked like all of the Alfred's #2 people had disappeared!!

I don't seem to have Tumbulalaika in my edition of the book but my advice as always, is to slow down the tempo during practice until it starts feeling more natural. Although I sometimes have a difficult time taking this advice

Are you still planning on doing the Masterworks books? I've gotten through about 4 pieces so far from level 1-2 and I'm very much enjoying the series.

I'm going to bring the Masterworks Classics book with me to my next lesson see what my new teacher thinks about it. I'd love to be able to use it as supplementary material with him.

I haven't progressed beyond the first two pieces because I'd like to stay focused on what he would like to assign me at the very beginning. I'm hoping he works it into my practice repertoire.

Played and worked on Down in the Valley with my new teacher today. I just love how much he focuses on phrasing and expression, even for such a simple piece. I have to make sure phrasing is a much bigger part of my at home practice.

joename congrats on having found a great teacher! I enjoy the same thing about my teacher as well, she is very much into phrasing and "dressing up" a song no matter how simple it is to make it sound special!

My update for this week is that I really progressed quickly on Light and Blue. I have the notes and rhythm 100% correct on the first try and the whole piece is now memorized after one week of practice. Honestly, I haven't done this well on a piece in many, many months. I usually always have a problem with a wrong note or incorrect rhythm. So I'm super happy My assignment is to work on accents and dynamics this week.

I also passed one small technical piece from my Dozen a Day book and I'm passing myself on Melody by Kohler from my Masterworks book. Also, making some slow progress on Dylan's Knocking on Heaven's Door.

I will not move on to any new pieces this week in either Alfred's #2 or the Masterworks book as I want to study for my recital which I'm extremely nervous about. Practice for my recital will be the most important aspect of my practicing from now until next week.

I had a quick question on how to perform a tremolo at the end of Light and Blue in the last measure.

My teacher showed me some methods to try and practice the tremolo but I just can't seem to re-create the sound and feel that she made. She told me to keep my hands relaxed and floating above the keys as I rotate my hands back and forth.

Does anyone have any advice on how to practice this or build up to a level where it sounds correct? Any good youtube clips or tips?

Thanks!