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epf - the piano seems to have stuck with you through all these varied life changes. Great to have you here. I saw a sheepdog herding demonstration while in Wales last year. It was quite fun. (I stayed at a B&B that was also a sheepdog training center.) As for you being a computer geek, I can always get some good advice when my computer misbehaves - like just now. I just posted a new thread on that a moment ago. It's man against machine and machine seems to win more often - baaaah!

IamElise - I am sad to hear that some parents could be so heartless. But I hope you've put all that behind you. The fact that you are starting the piano and have a supportive husband is very good news indeed. Enjoy yourself and glad to have you hang out here with us.

I play classical guitar but get frustrated when I beak a fingernail. I am so dependent on them for good tone that it is like breaking a finger.

So I am starting all over with the piano at age 52. I will still play guitar when my nail grows back but piano is still a must. I hope I will have the patience and perseverence.

I just started today.

Hi Shakuhachi, welcome to the forum! I think there are a number of members who also have guitar playing experience. The thingi is one is supposed to have short finger nails to play the piano, and it sounds like you are trying to grow it longish for guitar plucking. Conflict of interest!! Hope you have fun with the piano.

I'm 54 years old and attended my first piano lesson on January 24th of last year. My prior musical exposure included the Tonette (like a recorder) that was mandatory in the 4th grade and a brief try at the trombone in 5th grade band. I was really bad.

For several months prior to last January I had developed an interest in the piano, read some music history, theory and some self-learning books. I gave myself a Roland (MP-70) digital piano for Christmas, but this learning on my own was just not for me. So I soon began looking for a teacher, and by late January I began my life as a piano player wannabie. My attitude is that it's never too late.

Day-to-day my progress seems to be very slow--hard to discern. However, comparing where I was a year ago to where I am now is a *big* change. I am also finding some things becoming easier, little-by-little.

My study of the piano has also given me a much greater appreciation for music in general, and the classics and jazz in particular.

I am beginning to desire a "real" piano, but I'm waiting until my memorized repertoire is good enough that I can test pianos w/o having to take along the sheet music.

I know that if I devote more time to practice than I have been that my progress will improve. To this end I'm participating in MOYD 2008. For those of you who are also doing this: If you notice I haven't updated my log in a few days *please* get on my case!

Nice to meet everyone here,

Mike

Boy you sound just like me. Except I am 61 years old and retired. I also played the trombone in junior high school but lost interest when I went into high scool. My wife bought me a Yamaha keyboard for Christmas a few years ago which got me started. Last year my neighbor started giving me lessons.

Since then I got a 1906 Clarendon upright piano that I have restored. I am also a woodworker.

I have been mostly working on Alfreds All in one Adult course books. I am just about to finish level one. Then on to level two.

Nice to meet you
WJ3

Well I just joined today after visiting this site for a week or so.

I am 33 live in Colorado and just started playing the piano 2 weeks ago. I am looking forward to being able to play a song that is not in one of the method books.

Besides piano, I do improv at a local comedy theater.

Thanks to everyone that runs these forums, I have a feeling this place is going to be a great asset to me as I attempt to learn the piano.

welcome jimmyjames, look forward to seeing you around, and maybe a few jokes here and there to lighten up the place:) hehehehe

This is an interesting thread! Not sure how I missed it before, but I can really relate to many of the stuff said here.

I am 55 this year, and studied the Sudnow method a number of years ago. I would highly recommend that to anyone who wants to learn to play standards in a locked hands cocktail style. My interests are broader than that, so I decided last year to really dig in and get some of the more traditional foundation instead. In November, I got the Duane Shinn 52 week "adult piano crash course" and am currently on lesson 7. Clearly, I have quite a way to go, but I am enjoying it.

My "piano" is a Yamaha P80 digital, and it seems perfectuly suited to what I am doing. It has a decent keyboard feel and sound, as well as builtin metronome and a two-track recorder so I can readily record myself to hear how I am doing without having to connect anything external to my keyboard.

For me, having a clear direction and well defined lessons with each having a start and end, and good instruction and structure, seems to work well. I tend to drift from one idea to another without really getting anything worthwhile done otherwise. Everybody is different in this regard, so it is really a matter of finding what works for me.

My piano interests include being able to sight read reasonably well to be able to play from numerous books of piano music of a variety of styles I have collected over the years, as well as being able to create interesting arrangements on the fly from a fakebook. Also, the "neo-classical/new age" style interests me.

I have a lot of years playing guitar, with my primary interest being arranging and playing songs people know as complete fingerstyle instrumental solos (i.e. the bass line, harmony, and melody line all together as one arrangement). I am self-taught on guitar, but took the time to learn how music works. This should help once I get some fluency on the piano. I did play professionally full time back in the late 70s on the Holiday Inn circuit for almost two years before deciding that music made a better avocation than vocation for me. It was a lifestyle choice. I am eternally glad that I got that out of my system, rather than just dreaming and wishing about it. Since then, I spent a few years playing lead guitar in some church bands, but stopped doing that about two years ago for a number of rather philosophical reasons.

Currently, I am really enjoying the daily practice routine and seeing real progress a little each day, a day at a time. It will be a while before I have anything worth recording to post for people to hear because it was a conscious decision to hold off "sounding good" right away in favor of gaining a real solid foundation in piano technique.

Tony

Hi all,

I share a little bit of TonyB's background in that I also made some progress with guitar first. Not to his extent though.

On the musical side, I've always loved listening (and even had a small CD shop for a while, selling classical music and a little jazz and blues) but early experience with schoolboy piano lessons had convinced me that I'd never be a player.

But late in life I decided to take the plunge and try and learn more about music in a practical way. I've been learning guitar in a fairly casual way for about 3 years, and also experimented a bit with clarinet. I'm a recent beginner (or re-starter) with keyboards and now have a Yamaha PSR S500 digital that has various built in capabilities, including a range of different 'voices' (that give my inner kid something to fiddle with...), 8 recordable tracks, and a USB connection that allows me to either export tracks or import midi files to listen to or practice with. My goal is to get better at playing keyboards - perhaps to the extent of making it my main instrument. I also want to learn a little about songwriting and arranging.

Here's a song I wrote a while back about the trials and fears of being a musical beginner. I think that the lyrics also apply to learning piano. As you can tell, I wasn't faking being pretty inept at playing guitar and attempting to sing..

Perfectionist Beginner Blues

I'd like to be able to continue that journey now on keyboards.

On the personal side I'm 61, married 26 years with one son. Matt is disabled so I now look after him full time (and run the household) while my wife keeps her career going and pays the bills. We live on a five acre bush block just outside our State capital city of Perth, in a house I designed and built myself. Lovely place to live, and enough free time to indulge in a passion to learn more about music.... I feel very lucky.

Cheers,

Chris

Late Beginner, I thoroughly enjoyed the your Beginner Blues!

Wow! What a great bunch of new people! Welcome to you all, and I'm looking forward to your contributions.

Cathy

My name is Marian.

I've registered some while ago, but this is the first time I'm posting here. Just want to say "Hi everyone". I'm (still) 38, I'm earn my life by programming computers. I've buy three month ago a digital piano (Höhner DP500) - and started to learn reading notes and play the piano using a computer software (Teach Me Piano). In the past I've played (just by ear) accordion and acoustic guitar - as an amateur - for some years. I also start to play a chromatic harmonica.

This forum is a wonderful resource for any beginner. I've found a lot of useful informations that's putted me on the right direction (I hope). I just want to thank you all for this forum - and who knows - maybe some days I'll be able to bring my contribution on this site.

So thanks again and best wishes
Marian

I’ve been lurking around the forum for the past couple of days after finding out about it in a book I’m reading (“Grand obsession” by Perry Knize).
I thought I ought to introduce myself.
I’m a 32 year old postdoctoral student. My field of research is Evolutionary Biology.
I used to play piano as a child. No one in my family can remember the exact years in which I played but I think it lasted for around four years from the age of 8 to the age of 12. I don’t really remember why I quit since I remember rather enjoying playing.
About a year ago I started having this idea that maybe playing the piano again could be fun. This idea started small but it grew and grew gradually till finally in September I decided to start. There was a Piano sale in my campus and I bought a Yamaha Clavinova Clp-220 piano. The moment it arrived at my home I knew it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I started with a book (I needed to remind myself how to read music, cause I couldn’t remember a thing), but very soon decided that I wanted a teacher. It took me about a month to find a teacher I liked. Now I have a piano (that I can use with headphones, which is good cause I live in an apartment building and like to practice at all hours of the day and night), a teacher that I think is right for me and a full blown obsession with anything piano related. I am constantly surprised at how much faster I’m progressing than I expected. I started playing again right after Rosh Hasahnah (the Jewish New year) and it was kind of a new year’s resolution. I promised myself that eventually I will be able to play Chopin Mazurkas. I thought it would take a few years, but now after less than four months I’m already playing a Chopin Mazurka. Apparently it is a lot like riding a bike. My body seems to remember my childhood studies even though my conscious mind can’t even remember when I learned and why I quit.
My piano teacher has an amazing Baldwin grand piano and sometimes in lessons I get to play it. It is such a lovely piano. Both the sound and the action on it are amazing. I can practice a piece (for example I’m now working on Chopin’s Waltz Op64 #2) and it can have certain notes I can never hit at home, but somehow on the Baldwin it all seems so much easier.
Eventually I want to buy myself the ultimate piano. But this will have to wait. At the moment I live in a very small apartment and will not be staying here for more than a few years. I think my perfect piano will have to wait till I return to Israel. That hasn’t stopped me from checking out piano stores. I’ve visited the Steinway distributors in San Francisco and tried playing both Steinway grand pianos and uprights. I have to say those are some very nice pianos. Of course I will probably have to sell a kidney to buy one, but I do have two so I’m not completely discarding the option (as I’ve said, full blown obsession).
A few days ago I was at Borders and I saw this book (“Grand obsession”, which I mentioned above). It had a piano on the cover so of course I picked it up and was thrilled to find out that it was all about a person who seems to have caught the same bug I have. I bought the book and learned about this forum. I was so pleased to find out that my disease is a common one. I think it is a great illness to catch, and am glad to know I’m not the only crazy late comer out there.

Hi Shugo,
Welcome to this little community and glad you found us!

I enjoyed reading your story very much. How about submitting your Mazurkas and other pieces for the piano bar and/or the upcoming recital? I am sure we'll all enjoy hearing you play.

Meanwhile, keep working on that evolutionary biology. May be you'll figure out how to generate a third kidney to help you buy that dream piano!

Thanks for the welcome Rosanna.
I'm not sure I'll be on time to join the nearest recital. I need to buy a cable to connect my piano to my computer and figure out how to record and convert files. I also suffer from a bit of stage fright (which I am really resolved to get over, but haven’t gotten over yet), but this is not really live, so it may be OK. I will try, however. If not I'll try for the next recital.
By the way, is there a thread about stage fright?

Shugo,

It's easy enough to get a cable online or in store. (Buy.com is one I use sometimes.) And here is a very useful article on how to record by our very own Mahlzeit computer wiz.

http://www.originalsolopiano.com/how-to-record-piano.html

As for stage fright, if you do a search on "stage fright" (subject only) (using the link on the top of the page), you'll yield several results. It seems to me in this forum, for anything one can think of about piano and piano playing, you can find a thread on it. If not, you can start one!

I can relate to stage fright when recording - aka the "red dot syndrome". It does get easier with time, and I only started recording this last September due to the encouragement in this forum.

I'm with Tony B on not knowing how I missed this thread. Anyway, here goes.

My name is Jim Mullins but everyone calls me MULLY. Been like that since I was a teenager. Don't remember who thought it up but I don't think it took them much effort. hehe!!

I'm 39 years old, 40 on February 12th, and originally from Cincinnati, Ohio. My mother was a ballet dancer and when she retired she opened her own dance school. Living in and around the studio I've been exposed to all kinds of music my entire life. When I was a in Jr. high school I played clarinet for about 3 years. Of course being a boy from the midwest I wanted a "tougher" instrument so I got into playing guitar when I was about 15 or so and still play to this day. I've been in a few bands and one of them actually had a pretty good following.

In 1991, after graduating college, the urge to get out and see the world was just too strong for me. I had always had an interest in Asia so I thought Japan would be a good place to start. I set my sights on one year in Japan and then back to America. One year turned to two, two to three and here I am 17 years later still in Japan and I know I will never return to America. I have no desire to ever go back there for more than a visit.

In May of 2005 I married the most perfect woman that God could have ever graced this planet with. Although we've only been married just under 3 years we've been together for......I think this year will be our 15th year. She's my best friend and we do everything together.

As I said before I've always been around music. We had a piano at home when I was growing up and I honestly don't know why I never took the time to learn it. Lately the itch has been there so I decided to quit screwing around and to move forward with it. I bought a Privia PX-800 and think it's one of the best purchases I've ever made.

I didn't mention that I'm a school teacher but that's what I do. I teach English as a second language in a Catholic school. Not too many things will make you smile more than seeing a Japanese nun. hehe!! Anyway, my school has from k-1 all the way through high school on one campus. I teach elementary first, third, and fifth grades. Jr. high first and second grade and high school first second and third grades. Anyway, as I've said in other posts on the board, since I work in a school that is so big I've got access to 3 grand pianos, 2 uprights and a plethora of keyboards. So far I've found that I really like the Yamaha grand that we have in our performance hall. I think they keep that one in tip top shape all the time. It's really old and it sounds fantastic....much better than my Privia, hahaha!!

Anyway, that' about it for me. I really enjoy reading a lot of the posts here but my level is so low at this point that I really can't contribute much more than conversation. Hopefully someday that will change.

See ya around the forum!
MULLY

Well Mully, even though you've been "around" for a while, I'm glad you took the time for an introduction on this thread. I've been to Japan a number of times and can certainly see the attraction in living there. You didn't mention what kind of piano you have at home. I know even a "big" house in Japan is 1000 square feet so I'm guessing you've either got an upright or a digital - correct?

At any rate, welcome (again) and thanks for the intro.

Sorry about that, I thought I put it in there. I've got a Privia PX-800. You're 100% right about space limitations. I'm living in an apartment now but if we ever decide to build a house I'll make sure there's ample space.
MULLY

mullyman -

Thank you for giving info. on your background. Let me guess...You were a participant in the JET Program?

Your wife sounds like a wonderful person. I wish you two a lifetime of happiness together.