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@Daniel Olivaw: I am pretty sure that there is no other keyboard music in Book 2 in its original form apart from that one piece. But there are plenty of nice arrangements!

@MeganR: I am looking forward to hearing your version of Solace. Although I did it in my class, it's one of the pieces which I can't play when I go back through the book.

Utkonos, I decided not to post my Solace to Soundcloud. I did get a clean recording - without the repeat - and as it turned out, my teacher agreed to pass me on the piece without me having to play it again for her last night, yay.

So now I can go back to La Bamba. My teacher had me give it a try last night and my attempt wasn't as awful as it could have been, although it's kind of back to the drawing board with the rhythm. But I'm OK with that.

She was happy with progress on the March. On the Sonatina, she wanted me to narrow my focus on a certain section of the 2nd movement, I think I was trying to "skip ahead" too fast. So, more divide and conquer!

MeganR congrats on passing Solace!


My teacher wasn't able to make my lesson this week due to a personal issue so I was on my own this week.

I think that Rock a My Soul and also Calypso Carnival are at a passable level so once I see my teacher I'm hoping to be able to pass these. Calypso Carnival came together all of the sudden. I really struggled with it the first few days but it feels good now.

I decided to start working on You're in my Heart which is much more of my style - it is a folk song with a nice melody and a moderate tempo

I'm continuing to work on my Bach Menuet in G Minor but I think that it may also be at a passable level so I'm looking forward to getting my teacher's feedback on it too.

I hope everyone is having a good piano week and I look forward to hearing about everyone's updates.

Alright my teacher had a make up lesson for me today. Apparently her car was burglarized.

She passed me on Rock a My Soul and Calypso Carnival. It was some kind of a small miracle that I was able to pass both of these, because I was really not very consistent in my playing the last couple of days and Calypso Carnival was very difficult to get to feeling comfortable. However, both of them sounded good today.

She assigned You're in my Heart which I was already "secretly" working on and will continuing to work on my Bach. She gave me a whole lot of corrections and musicality to add.

Excellent progress blackjack! I'm currently working on the batch of pieces I was left by my teacher for this month and I'm happy to have some improvement over "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2", "La Raspa" and "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". As of today I should be able to pass these with some luck.

Remains both "La Bamba" and "Mexican Hat Dance" which are slowly getting there. I have to more weeks to practice so hopefully I should have them in decent quality by the time I have my lesson.

Daneel Olivaw sounds like you're making strong progress as well. Good luck with all of the pieces you're working on, it's hard to keep all of them fresh with so many. Hopefully your teacher will get back soon and she/he can start checking some of them off for you.

I haven't provided an update here in this thread, but that's really because I haven't been doing anything out of Alfred's anymore. It doesn't come up at the lesson. I've been working on the Clementi Sonatina and will probably move on to Part 3 this weekend. Part 2 went well last week during practice. There is one part that I need to play more legato.

For technique, I'm working through the minor scales, Natural, Harmonic and Melodic. Just one octave for now.

The composition part is coming along nicely. I put something together in Noteflight, exported the midi and played in Pianoteq. I'll share that after presenting it to my teacher. I myself can't play it on the piano yet

I recently revisited I Giorni and I think I'm going to perform that in the Winter recital, so hopefully I'll have some time to polish it. I guess it sounds OK. My teacher has ideas on where I can improve.

bSharp nice to see your updates. You've got a full load of really difficult pieces so it's obvious you're making some great progress! I enjoyed your I giorni piece that you performed for the recital. Very nicely performed especially considering it seemed like you didn't have a lot of time before the deadline.

I had my regularly scheduled lesson today.

Which means that I only really had a couple of days between it and my make up lesson.

I worked really hard and I got all of the little odds and ends on my Bach piece completed and my teacher passed me!

So if you feel in the mood for one of Bach slower, sadder menuets feel free to give it a listen on my soundcloud account.
The link directly to it is here--> Bach Menuet Gminor

I also passed You're in My Heart from Alfred's which is a relatively easier piece. My teacher assigned me to work on Divertimento in D Major which is written in the style of Mozart. I'm looking forward to it.

My teacher also assigned a Bach Menuet in D Minor which looks pretty challenging. I'm very much into these Bach pieces suddenly. The book I'm working from for the Bach pieces is called First Lessons in Bach. It's a challenging, but not impossible, set of bach pieces. I like it a lot.

I have a bunch of travel coming up for work over the next 3 weeks so my time at the piano will be limited and progress will be slow....however I'm thankful that the last month has been very productive and I got a lot accomplished.

Hi blackJack,

Nice job on the Menuet in G minor. Sounds great! This piece is on my bucket list

You should have no problem with Divertimento in D Major. It's one of the easier pieces in Vol 2.

I had my lesson today. I started out by going in 75 minutes early to practice on a non digital piano. This time I used an acoustic upright. It feels soo different - the bass is sooo loud?!?

I worked through the 3 minor scales assigned last week, D, G and C minor. This week it will F# and C# minor.

We then next moved onto a run through of I Gironi. She had me play it completely through and provided some good ideas on how to make it sound better, so I'll be working on those items. The plan is to play this at two upcoming recitals (October and January). After that it's the big one in NYC in February I think coming in early to practice has helped, since you are surrounded by teachers, students and parents coming and going. I'm not so freaked out about playing in front of others.

We didn't get a chance to play the Sonatina, but she said she could hear me while I was practicing it. I'll probably start on Part 3 myself this week.

Finally, we ended with the composition. She saw the piece of staff paper we had started with and so picked it up and sighed. I think she was expecting more, but I surprised and told her to look at this other piece of paper I put something together on NoteFlight.com, created a midi and then exported that out of Pianoteq as a wav file. It's up on SoundCloud - my first composition.

<Untitled>

It sounds ok. I can't play it yet, but my teacher could play it almost immediately and yet having never seen it before. She amazes me

So now, I think I officially move on to level 10. Another treat is coming, a recording from back in February of Hungarian Rhapsody from the Alfred's 2 book - teacher had recorded this. I'll post that in the 40 pieces a year thread

bsharp your composition is fantastic!! Really impressive!

It's funny you posted about this because last night I was working on another Bach minuet and I was thinking about how beautiful the first few measures of it are and how it's certainly a feat to be able to learn to play something like Bach but composing something is on a whole other level!!

So congrats, great work!

Also you were right about Divertimento it looked hard to me but I have basically put the hands together on it and will start working on dynamics now.

Thanks, blackjack. I figured with all the Bach pieces you'be been doing that Divertimento would be easy for you

Hi All!

Been a while since I've last been in here and after catching up on all the post it's good to see all the progress everyone made! Shame ya'll are so far away as I'd love to have you over to give the neighbors a free recital whether they like it or not..

As for me, I'm currently polishing off House of the Rising Sun, Sakura & Waves of the Danube. In a week or two I'll be meeting up with my piano coach (I'm her only adult student) and optimistic I'll move on to the D Maj section. As a matter of interest, does anyone else find you progress faster when you really like a particular Alfred's piece?

Outside material I completed What a Wonderful World.



I just recently bought Martha Mier's "Jazz, Rags & Blues" book 1 broaden things up a bit. When I bought it my wife rolled her eyes laughing that I have enough sheet music to keep me busy for the next 10 years.. Well at least she knows where I am staying out of trouble.

Hey Alux welcome back!! Glad you are posting again!

I watched your video of What a Wonderful World and it's fantastic! Great work on it!!

Where did you get that arrangement from?

I just finished that section of Alfred's that you're in right now and I really enjoyed it. House of the Rising Sun and Sakura are two of my favorites in the Alfred's book so far. There's also a lot of other nice pieces coming up that you'll enjoy too.

Great to have you back and posting in here! Hope to see some more updates from you soon!

Blackjack: I enjoyed your recording. It sounds very professional. I've almost finished reading "Goedel, Escher, Bach" so I should probably listen to more Bach!

bSharpCyclist: That was amazing! It has a very authentic sound.

Alux: Very nice. I am also curious as to where the arrangement came from!

Today I had the last lesson with my teacher as I am off to Canada and Europe for a few weeks. It's my first holiday in 2 years and I hope I will not have forgotten everything by the time I get back, as I will have very few opportunities to touch a piano while I am away.

We completed "He's got the whole world in his hands" although I have to say that my performance was still pretty shaky. The first few bars are fun to play but I have had to do an enormous amount of work on playing the 8-to-the-bar pattern with the left hand, as I find it very hard indeed. Also, this B-flat business is very difficult.

Hi Alux, good to meet you so to speak! Love your video!

bSharp, great job with your composition, I'm totally impressed.

blackjack, the Minuet is great. I just LOVE the Bach pieces, I have at least one more from the Anna Magdalena Notebook I want to do, maybe two. If I ever finish the March that is, ha ha

Utkonos, enjoy your vacation, I'm sure you'll find you'll be able to pick up pretty much where you left off once you get back.

I was pretty pleased with my lesson today - I managed to pull off La Bamba (I'll probably still play it a bit over the next couple of weeks for fun since I do rather enjoy it) and now I'm on to La Raspa.

For the March, I'm to go back to working slow and hands separate on the second section so I can gain better confidence on the tricky parts. I'm OK with this as I really want to get this piece right no matter how long it takes. I just have to get that self critic to stop thinking that I'm going too slow.

And for the Sonatina, I'm to go a little faster, ha ha. The second movement of this piece is in 6/8 time and she had me change my metronome setting to one where it's two beats per measure. This caused me to be almost unable to play it for a while till I got the hang of counting it differently. There are a couple of other musicality tweaks I'm to work on with this piece.

Wow! It's so nice that we're getting so many posts lately!

Utkonos Nice to see your update, I hope you enjoy your 2 weeks holiday. I had some business travel where I was away from the piano for a week or so and it didn't affect me almost at all other than the constant anxiety of wanting to get back to my regular practice routine! Enjoy your break. Great info about He's got the Whole World...it wasn't one of my favorites in the first book so hopefully this version is much better.

MeganR Thank you for your kind words about my Minuet. Honestly, I never thought I would enjoy playing Bach pieces and now they are absolutely my favorite thing to work on. I feel like I'm being transported to another time and place as I play them. I'm working on Minuet in D Minor which is gorgeous. It is also in A.M. Notebook. If you have time check it out, I highly recommend it.

I'm looking forward to hearing your March. I had a similar problem on the Minuet and I went back to hands separate to correct and improve some things so I think it's a good strategy. I may tackle a March next too.

It's interesting that your teacher sets the metronome to 2 beats per measure for 6/8 time because my teacher does the exact same thing! I found it to be a really helpful way to get through the 6/8 section of Alfred's so your teacher may have you continue doing that through that section when you get to it.

Also, congrats on passing La Bamba! Honestly, I still believe that is the most difficult piece I've come across in the second book so far. I'm sure there is more to come

I haven't been on Piano World for a few weeks. I've had two grandchildren at a time staying with me the past two weeks, and haven't practiced more than a token few minutes a day, just to keep MOYD going.

Blackjack, your Bach piece sounds great. I hope to get those eventually, but as a self teacher, I don't feel I'm ready yet. I did complete two pieces from the Greatest Hits book, though, and "Introduction and Dance" and "Plasir D'Amour are coming along really well. I also have something called "On a Green Mountain" from one of the Denes Agay books almost done.

Megan, congrats on getting through "La Bamba". I skipped that one, but will go back to it some day, just to say I did it. Who knows, maybe if I learn to play it well I will like it. I know I liked it when I listened to it on my 45's when I was a teenager.

bsharpCyclist - an original composition! Awesome!!! I'm not ready for that yet either.

Well, grandkids have all gone home now to get ready for school. I've lost my playmates and can now get down to practicing piano, and working on my watercolors. I will miss them though.

mom3gram thank you for the nice comments about my Bach piece. I'm glad you're going to get some time back on the piano. Plasir d'Amour and Introduction and Dance were both really enjoyable pieces to learn. Good luck with them!

My update for this week is good. I've been traveling a lot for work last week so I didn't get my usual amount of practice time in. I did make some good progress on Divertimento in D but at my lesson my teacher noticed that some of my rhythm was a little off and also that there wasn't enough dynamic contrast so I'm still working on getting it completed. I should have it completed by my next lesson on Friday.

I have a little travel keyboard that I bring with me where I can work on pieces that don't span more than 3 octaves, or if I want to practice one hand at a time. It's pretty good because I can manage to fit it in carry on.

I also was able to pass a couple of Dozen a Day exercises which is nice because we haven't completed a lot in that book for the last few weeks.

Also still working on Bach Minuet in D Minor. I've got it about half way memorized the rest of the piece will take another couple of weeks to learn and then a week or two for polishing it up.

Overall it was a good week for piano and I will look forward to finishing my work travels up later this week!

Hi All,

Thanks for the comment, not often I get people's take on my butchering techniques other than those brave enough to pop in for a listen. When I'm really in the groove the neighbors get to hear good piano playing whether they like it or not.

For those who asked, here's where you can find that score for Wonderful World:
http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0019007

I buy a lot of material from there (usually when they hand out 20% off coupons) and not only can you print off a sample page, but you can also hear & see the entire piece as well as transpose to different keys. While you're there check out the freebie section.

Blackjack loved your Bach, thoroughly enjoyed it. Now you got me looking over "Air on the G-String"..

MeganR- Nice, VERY nice... more material for my "to do" list.

Mom3gram- I really enjoyed "Festive Dance", so much so it's part of my warm-up exercises. While you're in Greatest Hit's 1, consider "Nadia's Theme". I found it good as an exercise for dynamics. (here's what I did with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5VHdFa-vvI )

Bsw - How's the new teacher going? It took me a few lessons when I started with my current teacher to settle in.

As for me, my teacher is currently on a long overdue holiday sailing the Rhine so will have to wait to see if I pass "House of the rising Sun", "Sakura" & "Waves of the Danube". Outside material I can thank Blackjack for the next one.. lol




Cheers,
Alux