Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Achievement of the week - what got you excited?

Thanks so much for the glasses answers, everyone! Next time I get new glasses I will have to see what it costs to add a fixed-distance pair.

My AOTW I think is a *proper* practice session yesterday after a couple of weeks where energy, motivation and time were all a little lacking and I allowed myself to mostly do what I felt like at the bench. Actually, "what I felt like" was mostly still quite good practice, but I was cherry picking rather than having discipline and structure.
Yesterday I was able to get enthusiastic about doing what should be done :-)

I had my second lesson with my new teacher, and I am very glad I have found her. She seems just what I need, and I have already received practice advice that has paid off. So, this week we made a big decision - I am going to sit the ABRSM grade 7 exam in the May/June period instead of waiting until this fall. All three pieces are in the polishing stage, and she is excited about helping with all of the components of the test: pieces, sight reading, scales and arpeggios, and aural. I sight read a couple grade 7 tests, and she critiqued them, so we know what needs to be done to improve that. She has already done a lot to improve my technical work and pieces. Just committing myself to go forward with this is my AOTW. There is a lot of work ahead, but I am excited!

So last week's AOTW for me was this:



And I stayed pretty successfully in that zone all week.
This week's AOTW, not coincidentally, is a *really* good lesson, with solid progress on pretty much everything I had earmarked to work on during the week.

SwissMs, great news about your exam decision. Given that you have your pieces at the polishing stage then I think you are absolutely right to go for the May/June session. You still have a lot of time to get the other components up to where you want them.
You know we will all be rooting for you here on ABF!

My AOTW is was taking place today at the end of my practice session.
Got my paint-brush-like one note sequences of 4-3-2-1-end on staccato on 3 up the next chord tone....in the RH fluently and moving the pattern up on chord tones 3 times, and ending on the octave....against a staccato chord pattern in the LH at a decent and vital tempo. Keeping a steady no-coin-dropping-attitude in the RH.

Just the 1st 8 bars so far, and memorized on the 3rd day without even trying. Surprising myself again.

1st day's experience was reading a couple of notes at a time and at a snails pace, and I couldn't synchronize L and R hands. Hands separate was no problem.

Can learn hands separate and later join them together, without the perceived impression of learning the same piece twice. Those days are gone.

Only 24 bars left to do on this piece now

I have been working on my Chopin Nocturne Op 27 no2 for about 18 months now and can play it all through,and am so very nearly there. I wish I have so much more practice time! Because I've so many 'sections' out of context it has been a revelation to work with that beast the 'Metronome' to sew them all together which I started back on Jan 8th. I can manage it with all the frills at 1/3 time and have put that beast away. As long as I just go slowly I should have it up to speed, acurately, soon enough. As they say - Speed is for free! And I'm so glad to have reached this point with this particularly beautiful Nocture.
As far as other progress, well, not much. We went off to the Emanuel Ax concert which was wonderful but cut out some serious practice for a few days though I did play through to maintain MOYD.
Other news earlier in the week drove me to seek out a Brahms Hungarian Dance to expend some pent up energy in a way that Chopin cannot! No 1 in G minor - at least I could do the first 2 pages. and fell in love with it - so that' what I want to work on in 2017!

Maybe an achievement or not: I have a piano duet partner!!! Nothing lights a fire under you like knowing you are going to play duets!!!

That is an awesome achievement! I bet you will find that playing with another musician will not only light a fire under you, but it will also advance your skills like nothing else!

Fairly pleased with my week of practice. Sightreading parts of sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven. Not stopping for mistakes, if I can't pull of the whole chord then I pull off part of it, but don't stop to "find it".

Biggest deal for my week was connecting with an old friend who is insterested in piano duets. I am so stoked about this. I had a duet partner about 15 years ago, until she moved to another state.

And, maybe a dream of mine will soon be realized. My biggest wish is to play the Bach-Busoni Chaconne. Well, I have that music and it might be a pipe dream at best. But, tonight, I found a transcription for 2 pianos, four hands!!! I'm not sure I will be able to sleep tonight!!! So excited!!!

How did my desire to play the Chaconne come to be? Many years ago we hosted a competitor for a piano competition. She was a doll from Canada of Polish descent. One of the pieces on her program was the Chaconne. I heard her practice it many times and thought, this is what the music must sound like when you enter heaven. I had to have it. Maybe now. Thanks for reading my crazed raving tonight.

I received another nice compliment while practicing on the grand piano at our church yesterday morning. One of our youth group leaders came out from the adjacent kitchen and said that my playing had "centered" her. Apparently she had come in that morning stressed out from working on a project...

Due to my traveling at the end of December and early January, I never logged in to remark on the passing of my third piano anniversary. Progress is slow, but it is there!

My thanks to all the regular posters here, I really enjoy reading about your accomplishments.

Jeff

Congratulations on the kind words on your practice and congratulations on your (belated) Third Piano Anniversary!

Happy birthday SwissMs! Hope you're enjoying it to the fullest!


My ATOW is just fixing a problem of legato in my In Church. Yes, I know I played it in the e-cital, but I'm still working on it and it is actually sounding much better, so , well worth the effort! I had abandoned it for a few weeks while I focused on Traumerei, and now I'm refining it.

Traumerei is working its way into my brain and fingers, parts of it are memorized simply because I've played them so much. This week my focus will be smoothing out legato interval chords and trying not have better volume balance.

I was supposed to have started on a "just for fun" piece, but I didn't because I wasn't really in the mood to start something new as I'm having so much fun with these two. My teacher didn't seem to mind that at all.

Happy Birthday SwissMs!!!!

Hello to all my AOTW friends. I haven't been around much lately, so it is nice to see what everyone is up to here.

For the first time in quite a while I have some sort of AOTW..... progress has been extra slow for me recently as I've been spending a lot of time on another hobby and work, trying to adjust to a new schedule for piano. So I was particularly pleased at today's lesson when I was able to demonstrate some very visible progress on Ravel. Even more so because, based on a recommendation of my teacher, I had read an article on "interleaved practice" that just clicked with what I was working on. When I applied it during the past week, I could literally feel the change in practice routine making a difference No doubt in my mind it was a huge contributor to my making some headway, even with fewer total hours of practice than recent weeks.

I'm pretty sure that article or something like it was posted on PW somewhere at one time, but I'll dig it out and post it if anyone is interested.

Jim

Please do. Thanks, and, congratulations on the improved progress in your practice sessions.

Thanks for the Happy Birthday Casinitaly and JimF! I had a warm sunny day, with lunch on the beach!

I am really happy with my new teacher. Between now and the exam I am taking two lessons a week via Skype. One lesson is repertoire and technical work, and the other is sight reading and aural. Yesterday I had my second lesson of aural and sight reading, and it was very challenging. I cannot say that I have an achievement as such, but I do have a good handle on what needs to be done and a road map of how to get there.

She also managed to fix my scales and arpeggios. She suggested visualizing a straight, red line on the keys in front of the black keys. Then I play the scale or arpeggio, aligning my fingers up to that line. Prior to that, I was playing my thumbs flat and too far out and my other fingers too far into the black keys. That simple visualization of lining up my fingers resulted in better synchonicity and a better sound, especially in the third apart scales. Arpeggios also became much more secure. So that is a huge AOTW for me!

SwissMs, glad you had a good birthday! It's great to hear how well things are going with your teacher too. The red line for arpeggios sounds like a useful tip indeed.

JimF - nice to year your ATOW too - you've been less than excited about things for a while. I have heard about the interleaved practice but I don't remember much about it - I'd like that link too please!

SwissMs, that sounds interesting, I must give it a try. And delighted you had a good birthday!
JimF, I remember reading about interleaved practice here before, glad to hear it is going well for you.

Here's a link to the article I referred to upstream:

interleaved practice article


In my case I broke what I wanted to work on into half a dozen very small segments of as little as 2 beats or as long as a full phrase, depending on difficulty. Then, instead of practicing each segment with multiple repetitions before moving to the next section (as I normally would), I practiced each segment only once. Then went back and repeated the whole cycle multiple times....in different orders and always with a pause to think first about the next section. Then I did variations of that each day.

Thanks for that Giacomo! I started reading it, but realized I'm too tired and should read it when my brain is fresh. From what you said and the little I read, I can already imagine which bars of Traumerei I'm going to apply the method to!