Piano-wise I vote for Roland.

I dislike the piano samples of Nords very much. In my mind they sound very artificially, and with good headphones or speakers it is especially clearly heard. Besides the action of Nord Piano keyboard is imo much inferior to that of Roland.

I would say Nord Piano is a toy, most suitable for pop musicians, whereas Roland RD is a serious and universal professional instrument.

RD-700NX and 800 are now the dominating professional instruments among pianists in my region, I guess RD-2000 will soon join them, too.

I don't agree, every device that's not portable like an MP3 player of phone/tablet is good enough for driving 250 Ohm. I have the DT770 myself and I really love them. I use them on my RD-700sx, my LX-7, PC's, Hifi, ... I preferred the coiled cable over the straight one, so that's another bonus of the 250 Ohm model :-)

Got mine for 8.000 € (original price: 8.999 €) including VAT.

Thumbs up for improv!!!

Most electro-mechanical devices will need some adjustment or repair after a few months or years of regular use. That says nothing about their lifetime longevity though. Your Casio likely uses rubber or silicon pad switches onto a graphite contact, same as in a TV remote control, these are susceptible to wear, dirt, dust, grease, or just flex failure. A lot of people treat their DP as a piece of technology, there’s always a better one around the corner in some respect after a few years. However once you have one you really really like it can become part of the home. Look for extended warranty’s with good or easy access to service or support and carry on.

On second thought, you might want to play piano for several more years and get to advanced level (Beethoven Sonatas, Chopin Scherzos, Rachmaninoff Preludes). It is not a requirement to play advanced repertoire as a piano teacher, but that would definitely give you more credibility for understanding the instrument.

For many years, I have been getting transfer students whose previous teachers did not play piano very well. Many didn't even major in piano. The amount of damage done to these students is beyond fixing.

I suggest changing the name of this thread to NEW YORK Performance Anxiety Meet up - or something similar - you'll catch attention from people in your area faster.

And/or --- post in the Just for Fun area -- I know that has a lower visitor rate but anyone using the "Active threads" feature will see it .

I hope you can get a wee group together.
I managed to try a couple of zoom performances, and it's true that it isn't as stressful as live -but it's pretty close. I played with people I know well, so maybe that helped me relax. If I had played for strangers I think the video/live performance would be very similar in terms of stress.

Remember - it doesn't have to be at your home - find a local bar/café and have your first meeting there and then decide .

Good luck!

Thank you all very much for the input.

Re: the LH - I'll continue to tinker with the 4-1-3-2 - fingering (using forearm rotation) since everyone seems to swear by it, but, quite frankly, the 3-1-3-1-3-1 etc. feels much more natural to me, and I'm able to play it smoothly.

Bennevis and Kenny Cheng both recommended starting the RH trills on the upper note. At first this suggestion threw me because in just about every performance I've heard of the sonata, the trills start on the lower (principal) note.

In a quick survey of current youtube recordings, the following artists began the trills on the lower note: Joao Pires, Sokolov, Cziffra, Schnabel, Barenboim, Richter, Gilels, Kraus and Goode. Arrau started the first two trills on the upper note, but played the 3rd trill starting on the lower note. Only Dinu Lipatti (bless his heart) began all three trills on the upper note.

That led me to do a little research into accepted performance practices of the Classical period (which I should have done in the first place). Of course there are always exceptions, but IN GENERAL it appears that trills in Baroque and Classical music should start on the upper (auxiliary) note. Beginning with music AFTER Mozart trills were played starting on the lower (principal) note.

SO - I just tried playing all of the trills starting on the upper note, and added the LH with the 3-1-3-1-3-1 fingering - and everything fell into place. I think this will work...even up to tempo. .

Thanks again for the suggestions !!

The Ossia cadenza in Rachmaninoff's 3rd concerto, first movement uses the lowest note of the piano.

It's a fairly easy note to hit. The notes a few measures before and a few measures after it? Not so much.

Yamaha did a _really_ good job in hiding that information, and it took a while to tease it out. Hence the beer payoff.

There are worse things than swimming in donated beer.<g>

Thanks. I’ll check it out!

This is always a difficult subject for me to weigh in on, because I really do not want to come across like I am a "professional" level pianist - I am certainly not. But this is also a subject I feel very passionately about since I have lived it to some extent. I think my path to my current level of piano is somewhat unique (or at least rare), and I think that it is a pretty fascinating one from an objective standpoint.

For context, I dabbled in piano a bit when I was younger but didn't take it seriously until age 16. To give an idea:

Age 16: didn't know what a triad was, couldn't read music, level was a scarlatti sonata
Age 29: music degree, am comfortable technically with pretty much anything in the standard rep




Yes, absolutely. And I think we do it with most things in life.

I truly believe that the most important key to my progression (along with time and consistency) was that I didn't realize how difficult it was supposed to be. If you look back at some of my embarrassing posts from when I first joined the forum, you will see me asking absolutely ridiculous questions like "Gonna learn Rach 3! Any recommended cuts?" That should illustrate just how little I knew about classical music and piano in general - clearly I had no business playing any concerti back then, but I had a teacher who was able to reign in that naivety and focus it on less daunting (but still above my level) works.

It was kind of an interesting experiment - my teacher was handed a kid with basically no experience or ability to read music, and was told "Get him ready for auditions in two years." She didn't even really have the option to take the "standard" or "recommended" approach of building a solid foundation, etc. We just had to give it a shot, and she had to come up with a very unorthodox path to get there given the time constraints. I played my audition pieces quite badly, but still - after basically two years of piano I was able to play a WTC P&F, Chopin Etude, and Beethoven Sonata barely good enough to get into a couple of music schools. But what next?




Perhaps not everyone does, but I bet a lot more of us do than we think. That being said, potential is only one piece of the puzzle. The right pieces of the puzzle all have to be in place from an environmental standpoint as well (available time to practice, socioeconomic ability to get a piano, afford to work less and practice more, exposure to music, etc, etc)

I was never happy with my playing in college, and sorely felt that I lacked the technique the truly "gifted" students had. I was always that student that "had potential, BUT......" It was very frustrating for me, but I kept practicing. This was the first time that I became aware of how difficult acquiring the technique to be able to fluently play anything in the standard repertoire was.




And for me, this is the key. After graduating, I took a break for more than a year because I was pretty burnt out and frustrated. I started a business that was not in the music field, and that replaced piano/school as the major source of stress in my life. As my business grew, I was lucky enough to work from home and then later in an office where I have a digital piano right next to my desk.
Every day, with absolutely zero pressure I would work on something just for the heck of it - it was a time that reminded me of when I was first preparing for auditions with no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I approached it with a sense of naivety on purpose, focusing on simplicity and lack of tension both emotionally and physically.

In the last few years doing this, my technique improved more practicing just a couple hours per day than it did during school when I practiced 4-6 hours per day. I am not a professional pianist and never will be, but I can say I have achieved my goal of being able to technically handle the vast majority of works in the standard rep.

At the end of the day, if you look at all the pianists who started young you will find a lot in common between them all:

Benefits of starting young:

1. lots of free, focused time to practice
2. children are naive and don't know how hard things are "supposed" to be
3. no bad habits to "unlearn"
4. often provided exposure to music and culture from an early age
5. If someone starts at age 5, by the time they are 18 they will have 13 years of practice

In my case, I think I simply got lucky that thanks to my circumstances a lot of those same factors carried over:

1. Working for myself for 13 years afforded me lots of free, focused time to practice
2. I had zero experience and had absolutely no clue how hard it was supposed to be
3. I had no bad habits to unlearn since I had no experience
4. I had a crash course in music when I got accepted to music school, and lived in a city where I could regularly attend concerts
5. I started at age 16, but by the time I am 29 - with the advantage of all the above benefits, I would up in roughly the same place that those who started at age 5 did - just at an older age.

So just now at age 29 I finally feel I am technically at where the best students in conservatory were. But the real beauty of it is that once you get to the point technically where you can play pretty much anything, well - you can pretty much play anything! And at age 29, I hopefully have a lot of years left in front of me enjoying that. Sure, I wish I had it ten years ago, but at least I have it now.

So subjectively speaking, and based 100% on my own experience, I would have to say that yes - our preconceptions hugely limit us in what we can achieve, but luck also plays a large part in giving us the circumstances to realize our potential.

All that I know for certain is that I am extremely grateful that I was stupid enough to not have any preconceptions when I first started playing. Because if I "knew" then what everyone else did, I would not be enjoying the music that I am today. Because it was supposed to be "impossible."

It just shows that a great pianist can make any POS sound great. I was surprised that overall the piano sounded ok but the trebles were simply awful.