Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Guaraldi and others; figure it out yourself?

We all have limited time in life, and I sometimes wonder why I don't work exclusively on the pieces that I've always wanted to learn rather than just anything. Of course the more pieces you know and learn the better, and I enjoy every one of them, but there are a few of my favorites out there that I would like to turn to (assuming I am capable of playing them - and I believe I am) but the problem is...

THERE'S NO MUSIC.

I am able to figure out stuff on my own pretty well, but it is a painstaking process. But I swear I'd rather fight and struggle to figure it out and then have the satisfaction of having learned the great songs I've always enjoyed hearing than to just pick some random piece that I like but haven't always wanted to learn. Life's just too short to not learn your 10 most favorite pieces.

So what are they? How do you do it? Is there any help out there? Or are you just on your own?

One that comes to mind is called Young Man's Fancy by Vince Guaraldi. It's kind of a forgotten one from one of the last Peanut specials (It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown) so it isn't on any Guaraldi book. It was on George Winston's Guaraldi album and in a sense made popular again that way. I'm going to figure this one out if it takes forever.

Another one is Philip Aaberg's Before Barbed Wire. Absolutely a classic. There's a version on his Live album that sparkles but the original is on his Out of the Frame album. I have decided to drop all other efforts and try to learn these two pieces because they are two of my all time favorites and that's what you should learn to play - your favorites. Anyone? Perhaps several folks could collude and make progress together. Go check out these two tunes on iTunes.

My problem is that as time goes on my list of favorites has grown ridiculously... I've come to appreciate such a wide variety of music that it doesn't matter much what I learn next.

You'd probably find a lot of help in the Non-classical pianist corner. Someone there has probably already transcribed this piece.

Any updates? Did you ever find the sheet music for this or have you transcribed it since?

'bout anything Guaraldi did is worth the time.

This is a really old topic, and the original poster has not posted anything in a couple of years.

I thought I would comment (for those of you who are more classically oriented in particular), that people play music that for some reason they may never write down, which makes you wonder how much Beethoven and Mozart piano music was lost to history without any record of it.