Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum OT, Tell us about yourself

I'm June from New Hampshire, and I am 55 years old, and I played briefly as a 7 year old, (I think I finished "Little fingers" and that's about it) and although I learned other instruments in high school (clarinet and saxophone), my musical education stopped until about 19 months ago, when I acquired a Yamaha digital keyboard and began lessons again. (After 47 years!) I had the chance to upgrade 8 months ago to a real piano, a beautiful Yamaha upright I scored for $500 from a going out of business music school, which my tuner and piano teacher say was a steal smile

Currently I'm working on Mozart's Fantasy in D Minor for my first recital on Saturday. (Nervous!) Up until now, I have only played for my family and my music teacher.
I've been practicing like crazy this week. I'm sure my family is really tired of this piece, but I don't seem to be yet

Just a quick intro.

I bought an electric piano for a retirement project, that was 2 years ago, & I am only now getting around to having a go at learning to play it.

I did start trying to play harmonicas, but find it physically hard work trying to balance breath inhales & exhales, so they are in a drawer for now.

Whilst on one of the harmonica forums, there was talk about ukuleles, & I went & got hooked.

So, I'm 6 months into learning the uke, & progressing reasonably well.

But, I kept on looking at my poor electric piano just sitting there, so I went looking for a piano forum, & here I am.

Hoping to find inspiration to get my fingers going on this ones keyboard.

Welcome to PianoWorld, June Elizabeth. Nice to know that you've decided to play piano again - you'll feel at home here -. Good luck with your recital next Sunday. Maybe you can do a record for us...?

my-names-are-used LOL, what a nickname Welcome to PianoWorld. You're in the right place to get lots of inspiration. This is the best group you can find! Maybe you can tell us what are your preferred composers / music style.

Do a record?? Oh gosh, I'm trying to keep my friends and family from showing up at the recital! lol I don't think I could bear knowing I'm being recorded!

@CarlosCC
My kinds of music are mainly rock, blues, country, & folk.

Welcome to the forums my names are used and June Elizabeth. I am in awe June. You are already going to participate in a recietal. Good for you--know you will do well.

Thanks for the welcomes.

I need to make a correction to my post above;
I've just filled out the purchase info in the Digital Piano thread, & I actually bought it in June 2012.

This was the period when trying to move house, so that is partly to blame for not getting going sooner.

I joined this forum 3 years ago when decided to buy a piano and actually I already shared some information about me in other topics but only yesterday I found this thread so I'll write my intro here:

I am Michael, 52 years old from Israel (Haifa). Never learned music but always loved it. I bought my first piano this January (Casio PX-760) and started taking weekly lessons with a teacher (who is my wife's sister so despite all rules found in another thread I am hearing what my teacher says about me )
I am really impressed by playing some people here (I followed some recitals links) who started about 10 months ago but I am currently very very far from that level... But dreams still alive ...

Hello All,
I'm a 72 years young female. I retired from teaching Special Education just
1 1/2 years ago. I taught 20 years in 3 different schools. Before that I was a waitress (one of the very best), a factory worker, and a laundry worker. I was born in LA and grew up in CA. I moved to Oklahoma as an adult in 1971, and have been here ever since. I have lots of grandchildren and great grandchildren, some of whom are learning piano. I took a few piano lessons in the mid 1970s. Work and raising a family interfered, so I couldn't continue. Later, I had lessons in college, but again, life was just too busy to afford time to practice. Over the years, I've owned several pianos, but never dedicated myself to playing until my final retirement. Now all I want to do is play the piano. I try to practice at least 1-2 hours daily, but there's days that I might spend 3-4 hours at the piano losing all track of time. I love to read, sew, garden, draw, and paint, but I love piano even more. I consider myself an early intermediate player, but I still sometimes find some "beginner" pieces a little difficult. I play for the pure enjoyment of it. I also love the challenge of learning something new every day, and I believe you're never too old to learn. The Forum is great, and I've picked up some really good information from it. Happy Playing to All!

Very nice to hear your background Theory Girl, welcome

Welcome to the ABF Theory Grl. What kind of music are you currently working on?

Jim

Thanks for the welcome Jim F and Earlofmar,
I'm playing some traditional gospel hymns, scales and arpeggios, and pieces from Piano Literature Vol. 1 complied by Jane Bastien. I chose the Piano Literature book because that's what I worked on in college 30 years ago. I can't afford lessons right now so I'm self taught. I have a good knowledge of theory which helps to some degree. Still have to get the mechanics of it. That's the most difficult part for me. I've made a lot of progress in recent months since I've become devoted to my piano. It rules me and my world revolves around it.

Hey there everyone! Kevin from Dallas. I played all growing up and have continued intermittently as an adult (mostly church hymns at church when I was still a church-goer) but I never practice and play very rarely, so I've been sort of stuck at the same skill level since about the age of 18. Looking to start getting back to it more seriously and improve my skill.

It just so happens that this new-found desire to take piano back up has coincided with some of the keys starting to die on my 20 year old Alesis synth that I've played on for the last 15 years (I miss real pianos!), so I'm actively shopping for a baby/parlor grand at the moment and hoping to settle on a selection very soon. I have my eye on a Bluthner out in California but it's a little more than I wanted to spend. But if I'm going to pick this back up, I might as well pick it back up on a heck of an instrument, right?!

Looking forward to interacting with all you lovely people and starting to participate in the ABF recitals!

Yes! While I was reading you, I thought "This one will enjoy participating in the recitals"...and you said it later. You'll get encouraged to practice with it, and by helping us newbies here haha.

Start a thread in the Piano Forum to talk about the pianos you are finding. There are many people there who know lots about pianos and will help you in your search.

Hey there fellow Piano World friends.

I've been lurking the past month or so on the boards here and decided to finally join in on the fun here. I recently made the decision to take up piano, and I stumbled upon this forum in my research.

Here's a small bit of information about me, and some rambling about my piano journey: I currently reside in sunny California....although, it's not too bright today.

A common tale for some; I used to take a couple years of piano lessons when I was younger, but stopped for some reason....I probably didn't have the focus and discipline required as I do now. Going vaguely off memory, I'm fairly certain I finished the first 3 books of Alfred's children series.

As I've finally settled into my career, I have been wanting to return to piano for quite some time. So, after careful consideration, I went and purchased an adequate digital piano to get me up and going. I currently have a Yamaha P-45B. I don't have a critical ear yet; so sound is something, that hopefully in a few year's time, I will be more adept at noticing the subtle differences in piano sound quality.

I'm currently self-teaching myself through Alfred's Adult Beginner. I just started last week, and it's been tons of fun. I'm also going to be starting a Piano For Fun class on the weekend that teaches basic fundamentals, music theory and other important exercises for beginners. It's a group lesson series; so I'm looking forward to it. That starts in about a week's time. I'd take private lessons, but that's a bit out of my budget at the moment.

In between that, I'm focusing on a book that provides instruction on learning to read music, tempos, chords, and hand exercises. Learning to read music is really my detriment attempting to move forward on piano pieces. Generally, when I'm working out of the Alfred piano book, I'll move forward until I get stuck; work on that troublesome piece for roughly 15 - 20 minutes, trying to figure it out, and then I'll wind down with some hand exercises.

The next time I'll go to practice, I'll start the book over each time and continue through the pages until I get to my challenge piece and hopefully work through it at some point and then continue moving forward, etc...and start the cycle all over again. I find the repetition very helpful for me.

Granted it's only been a week, and I haven't gotten too far into the book, but I hopefully you follow my train of thought.

The goal is to simply enjoy playing and strive to be the best I possibly can be with this instrument.

Anyways, looking forward to chatting with you all!

welcome to the forum Music Mischief

Heya I'm Meria, 37 years old female from Finland. I've been reading this forum for months and I've participated in a few conversations myself too.

I played piano few years when I was a child. I took lessons, but I never really practiced. I didn't know how to practice. I played carols, children's songs and evergreens, RH melody, LH chords, instead of practicing the assignments.

I've wanted to play all my adult life, but - this is sad - I was too scared of making noise that might disturb other people. That's why I hesitated to pick up piano again. Then I was diagnosed with Meniere's disease and that was a wake-up call. It's a syndrome, and symptoms are vertigo, tinnitus and hearing loss. If I wanna learn to play, I must do it before I lose my hearing.

I started to play two years ago. I play every day at least one hour. On working days maybe 1 - 3 hours, weekends 2 - 5 hours a day. Based on the pieces my teachers gives me I'd say my level is probably ABRSM 4, but it takes me lots of time and effort to learn the pieces. Not that it feels like work, not at all, I enjoy every moment with piano! I'm so happy I started to play again.

At the moment I'm working on Kuhlau: Sonatina Op 20 No 1, Grieg: Lyric Pieces Op 38 No 4, Bach: Prelude in C minor BWV 934 and Burgmüller: Etude Op 109 No 13, The Storm. My own projects are Ora by Einaudi and because of the time of the year, carols again My favourites are piano music from romantic era and 20th century and new age.

Welcome Merla, I have Meniere's too. I am just a beginner to piano , although I play classical guitar I always wanted to learn piano and wanted to do so before possibly losing my hearing. I try to drown out my tinnitus with playing piano.

Thanks earlofmar! Appreciate it.

Thanks Smurfette! I'm sorry to hear you suffer from Meniere's too.