Back here

Let me clarify. Karma is a b**ch I’ve reported other people twice on the forum indeed. First was slobajudge who insulted and attacked me and other people. I know for sure I wasn’t the only one who reported him back then. I was the only one who admitted it though. He was banned for some time and I’m not sorry about that.

Then more recently it was Jethro. It’s debatable who attacked who, who started it, who defended his position in a rather religious way but as I said it may have been a language thing and by a coincidence I was anonymously bullied on YouTube by multiple accounts on the same day and I thought it was Jethro. I decided to report him and leave it to moderators to judge wisely. Well, looking in a retrospective now after I’ve been (IMO) unfairly banned, I think it was too much for him to be banned, I may have overreacted and moderators may have just acted unnecessarily harsh against him. I was sorry and I apologized to him later.

Now to my ban after that Nord Grand thread thing. Let me get this straight. I haven’t had the intention to troll or cause troubles! It was about a guy asking whether Nord Grand is suitable for learning piano and I actually was among the first to recommend it. The guy ordered a Nord Grand and since the original question was rather answered and it was suggested that he should download the user manual while waiting, I decided to tell a similar story about my father and his Soviet car. I chose wrong intro though. In the context of some recent humorous discussions where the word “derail” was kind of the regular jargon I started along the lines of “since this thread is already finished, let’s derail it”. I guess it was a very bad choice of words and I’m sorry about that now but it’s ridiculous to think my intention was to troll or denigrate. It wasn’t even a complete offtopic since the moral of the story was that reading the manual while waiting for delivery is beneficial. In a follow up reply I told a story about my grandfather who defected communist Bulgaria for the US.

So, the dude reported me and the moderator edited my posts removing the content and stating that I should consider it a warning. And I thought “oops, I may have crossed the line, I should stop”. And I stopped and went to bed. Well, in the morning I realized the moderator reconsidered and decided to not just warn me but ban me. I mean, why? I rarely post offtopic here. Maybe 1% of my posts are OT but I rarely go into multiple offtopic and even the one I sometimes post is still somehow related to the discussion and is some innocent talk about Bulgaria, my family, traditions, Bulgarian sayings...

I couldn’t even discuss with moderators, apologize, promise not to dii on that again. I was just told that “if you don’t like the rules don’t come back”. Well guess what, I thought that was unfair. I’ve contributed a lot for the past 12 years and I think I have helped many people. I may have my fair share of Pianoteq criticism and heated debates but I consider my participation here rather civilized and helpful to the forum. I couldn’t even reply to PM-s that I received. That all left bitter taste. What I know for sure is I will never report anyone anymore, regardless. I think moderators lack the resource, time and context to judge wisely, so I would rather avoid relying on their judgment. Lessons learned everyday

Apologies to the forum for causing disturbance with my behavior.

Let’s move on. Peace

I think the lesson here is try the darn things out before you buy. Trust our comments and reviews with... well..... hmm....

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Why don't you post a less condescending response?

I would recommend that you need actual music that is planned to develop additional skills needed to play.

I was far from having your musical talent when I was a student, but perhaps some of my experiences might ring a bell with you.

There were several pieces that I tried to learn on my own after some four years into lessons - the fast and/or noisy ones (I was a teenaged kid, and that was what I was attracted to ): Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu, "Heroic" Polonaise (Op.53), 'Revolutionary' Etude, Mendelssohn's Rondo capriccioso, Beethoven's Pathetique. My teacher didn't teach me them - in fact, what she was teaching me then were of similar standard to what you're currently trying to master.

I got stuck at the first technical hurdles I encountered in every one of them (only the slow movement of the Pathetique yielded to my clumsy efforts), and soon put them aside, but I never discarded them, but returned to each of them every few months, and was gratified to see that I was able to do a little more with each piece on each subsequent occasion. All the while, I was continuing to learn more 'reasonable' pieces with my teacher, developing more skills (technical & musical) all the while. My teacher chose all the pieces for me.

It took years before I could actually play them at the right speed with something approaching fluency (five years, in fact, with the Chopin and Mendelssohn) but the satisfaction was all the sweeter for their long gestations (what I called 'delayed gratification' ). I never spent more than a few days at each when I returned to them - a few days was more than long enough to realize that my technique still wasn't up to getting my fingers round them, until they actually could.

These days, all of them are part of my regular performing rep........