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Good evening everyone! First post here after a mere day of lurking around on threads.

First a bit about where I am with the piano. I played a little when I was in first grade, simple melodies and chords (though never knew what chords or scales were) with no accompanying theory, perhaps not the best teacher either.
Anyhow, almost one year ago today I decided to pick up a piano, so I got a Casio CDP120 and started right of the bat learning "Lux Aeterna" by clint mansel (albeit the easy version). Throughout the year I've mostly focused on pop music. I can play most songs I know by ear at this point (with chords in left hand so, simple versions). I know quite a bit of theory, having watched a 21 hour lecture series on youtube on the matter. Along with reading and other videos. So I know scales, chords, harmony, appregios, trills, various forms etc.

About a month or two ago I started with classical music, since then I've learned Für Elise, Prelude in C major and Minuet in G.

Now to the point. After Für Elise and Prelude in C I printed out Minuet and started with it. It actually took me a while to learn and that's when I realized that although I think I play well, I have missed out on many things. I can sight read, but I can barely play a tune without having heard it first, just due to note values, which I don't pick up on easily. Another major problem I have is tempo, I wouldn't say it's horrible but I have a tendency of speeding up or down the tempo slightly in various passages (the interuptions in Für Elise for example).

Are there any half-decent ways of focusing on these skills (tempo and note values) without a teacher? Do you know any pieces that are good for this particular focus?

And on an off note, would learning Rondo Alla Turca be a bad idea at this point in general? I might be able to get a recording done of Für Elise if it's any help.

Any and all advice is wholeheartedly welcome. =)

If a teacher is not in the cards, then try these for starters:

1. Record yourself and listen carefully. Listening to your recorded playing reveals a lot you don't hear when you're actually playing. Is it smooth? Choppy? Are you maintaining a steady beat? Learning the notes (whether by ear or from the score) is just part of the job.

2. Use a metronome now and then if you aren't maintaining a steady tempo. You can use the metronome to increase tempo, but a steady tempo (note values and rests played as written) is the first thing to accomplish.

3. An accomplished player will need to be able to play both by ear and from the written score. If your sightreading skills need work, then spend some time practicing sightreading. Get a book of very simple pieces and practice playing from it. The ability to play from a score will speed up the learning of a piece and it will open up a whole world of music to you.

My suggestion would be for you to get Denes Agay's "Easy Classics to Moderns" here and some of the early volumes of the Masterworks Clasics series here and play through those before tackling Rondo Alla Turca (or even Fur Elise).

Finally, welcome to Piano World. You'll find lots of good advice and tips--take some time to browse some of the older posts.

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If you do not "feel" the tempo and stay on time while you are playing then use a metronome to help you.

If that does not do the trick ...

Then you absolutely need to have someone (teacher ?) listening while you play and let you know if you are not staying on time.

Good Luck

More helps for staying in time: count out loud. Count the smallest unit in your music. For example if there are some eighth notes, count everything in eighth notes: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

Try tapping a strong tap with your foot sometimes. That can help you to stay in time.

Both of these use the idea of getting your body involved.

You can also try playing some exercises focused on timing, with simple notes. For example I practice scales: 1 octave in quarter notes, 2 octaves in eighth notes, 3 octaves in triplets, 4 octaves in sixteenths.

If your tempo is fluctuating throughout a piece, you may be playing it too fast: taking the easy parts quickly and the slowing down for the hard parts. Slow the whole thing down to the speed at which you can comfortably play the hardest parts.

Vary your practice: don't practice all the time with the metronome. But using the metronome can reveal things about your playing that you don't realize.

Tape yourself and play the recording back, counting out loud and/or tapping the beat.

Consider getting a method book and working through the pieces, focusing on getting solid with simpler rhythms and then building to more complex rhythms. A lot of recognizing rhythms is practice. First you learn to work out the rhythms slowly in small patterns. Then you start to recognize patterns and be able to string them together into longer patterns.

When looking over a piece to figure out its rhythms, see if there are repeated patterns. Then you only have to work those patterns out once and can use them over and over.

Some people find it helpful to write in the counts. Again, subdivide to the smallest note value used. For example if there are some eighth notes, you would label the whole measure as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +.

Some people prefer to use rhythm syllables, sometimes called rhythm solfege. You can probably find videos on YouTube illustrating this.

Thanks everyone for the advice thus far. I'll certainly add a metronome when practicing, oddly I haven't really done so more than once or twice.

The tempo doesn't really fluctuate due to difficulties though, as I don't really have a problem with any parts of the songs I know well. For example in Für Elise, the first interruption there (latter half), I tend to increase the tempo slightly there just because it's a fast(er) than normal part? But I think the metronome can sort that out.

I'll also start recording to fine tune the pieces I'm working with.

Yes, the first interruption in Fur Elise is a bit faster than what precedes it. Good musicality to have picked that up.



I would call that difficulty: the parts you aren't as familiar with are harder for you to play than the parts you are familiar with, so at this point in time they are relatively more difficult. But I see your point that this may not coincide with the parts that objectively one might expect to be more technically demanding.

The suggestion is still the same: slow down and play the whole piece at a steady tempo, determined by the parts that you find yourself slowing down the most to play. If there are musical reasons to speed up or slow down, then do so. But you want to be able to deliberately control the tempo, so that parts aren't slower or faster for unmusical reasons.

Welcome to the forum, I have been learning for piano for 2.5 years so feel free to ignore everything I am about to write. However I have made my fair share of mistakes and done a few things the right way so this is just from experience.

A recurring problem for us beginners (myself included) is not being able to rein in our ambition and self assess. Believe me I know it is hard to accept being a complete beginner and how much nicer it is to say we are intermediate-ish, but we have to accept we are beginners and work on getting to the higher grades in a methodical manner. Minuet in G, Prelude in C, Fur Elise, Moonlight Sonata and Rondo Alla Turca are the most popular pieces and appeal to us because they are all showy pieces but with the exception of Minuet in G they all require quite a few years of experience to play well. With only one year of playing it sounds as though you are rushing through repertoire to get somewhere, so perhaps time to stop and think; where do you want to be and what is the best (not necessarily the quickest) way to get there?

Without proper instruction you have picked up some bad habits and those are the obvious ones you can tell, who know what else is going wrong for there is a lot more to playing piano than just playing the right notes.

The good news is you have determination and some natural ability otherwise you could not tackle the full Fur Elise so early. However my advice would be to use these traits and follow the well trodden path of learning which will ensure you can play advanced pieces to a high standard.

To your immediate problem


Problems with tempo are symptoms of a few things but could be a lack of technique development, not having the piece secure, or relying on your ear too much, but basically it is the inability to control the piece. This is why working from the ground up (early grade pieces) and building a good foundation of knowledge and skill is so important. The only "half decent" method is to work with pieces where you can control the timing, tempo, & dynamics easily and work up from there in a slow methodical manner.

To learn to play rhythms correctly you should learn how to analyze the scores correctly and count. Practice away from the piano by going through the measures of the score and write down how the notes should be counted. Once you "get it" it will become automatic pretty soon.

Then just count in your head while playing new stuff until you are secure with the rhythm. If still uneven, you need to practice your counting and that can be done by simple clapping exercises. You can use the metronome for that, but I wouldn't recommend using it to help you keep time while playing, it may only become a crutch.

And of course you must play slowly enough so that your technical deficiencies are not messing up the tempo.

I sat down, looked through and analysed Minuet, since it's a simple rythm. I can now play that at the correct tempo and rythm with little to no difficulty. I'm going to start playing some other easy pieces in various rythms and get them down, then proceed to "fix" für elise in a week or so.

I must say this is a really nice and helpful forum. Thank you all for the advice once again