Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Alfred's Basic and ALL in One Adult Piano Course Book #1

In answer to your question, John, I started in January. I'm pretty slow, so I'm only on "Joy to the World", which I think is about 3/4 of the way through Book 1. But I also work from the Faber all in one and a couple of Bastien books. I will probably be ordering some of the supplemental books soon myself. Let me know which ones you like best.

I spent nine months on book 1.

I'm getting into book 2 (all-in-one) now.

Stick with it John that's for sure. I've been working with a teacher once a week (30m) and it took me just over 2.5mths to finish book 1. I had only the book 1 & theory to book 1. I've got book 2 & theory lined up also but we're taking a 2wk break before hitting that. I know that #2 is harder so I'm guessing this may take 3-5mths to complete (we'll see).

Since I am still myself a noob at this the only advice I can offer is to start slow and work up from there. I would start by practicing the melody (LH) first, then the chords (RH) and when it came time very slowly together. Once I'd gone through that several times it was easier to put them together.

I'd highly recommend bookmarking Pianonoob Alex's site as he has all the videos to the songs in the books done and they were an excellent help since you can see how it's supposed to sound and then work on your own practice.

His videos are here http://www.youtube.com/user/PianoNoobAlexMan

Enjoy and wait till you reach the latter part of the book, Mexican Hat Dance, Entertainer - so much fun and you you can do it

I started in December but am only 3/4 thru at most.
I ended up not doing anything with it for 2 months and then tried again. Got nowhere. I did review a lot of the songs in the book but forgot how to read the bass clef. (not that I did well with it to begin with so I just wrote in the pitches.)
I think that is far as I am gonna get however. I started this stuff way to late for me to actually learn anything other than I can t do it. I have extreme dyslexia and if I had started this when I was real young I may have learned something.
So at this point I have pretty much given up. I may try again in November.

If you managed to get 3/4 way through 1st time around then you can do it I myself have dyslexia although thankfully not extreme so I can sympathize with you to a certain degree.

I'm still saying the rhymes in my head for both staffs
Bass Cleff
[A]ll [C]ows [E]at [G]rass &
[G]ood [B]oys [D]o [F]ine [A]lways

Treble Cleff
[F] [A] [C] [E]
[E]very [G]ood [B]oy [D]oes [F]ine

I know in time I'll train my brain to say the notes to me as I sight read but practice really does make perfect for sure.

Of course I wish I'd have scratched this itch of mine and taken up Piano when I turned 30 or before but I didn't. What I do know is that when I am 40, 45 and onwards I am not going to sit there and say

"I wish I'd have done it sooner and I should start"

by then I'll already be playing ALL my favorites.

Wishing you the best and hoping you don't give it all up..

SC

Here's my advice regarding note reading. Don't just focus on that one note you are trying to read. For instance, say the note you're looking at is the "C" in FACE in the treble clef. That "C" is on a space. The "C" above and below that one will be on lines. I suggest that when you have to read one note, make yourself find where all of that same note are located on both staves (as well as imagine where they would be with ledger lines if you can) since this makes it easier to find those other notes in the future.

Thanks for the tip, I shall give that a go..

Hello all,

I've spent the last few days reading all about your wild rides through Alfred book 1 (yep, all 53 pages) and thought it was time to chime in. I recently started playing again after a 30+ year absence. I have a different version of Alfred's (not AIO, not Basic...it says "Teach Yourself To Play Piano"). It's about 100 pages and has about 70% of the same songs by my estimation, with some theory and an appendix with fingering exercises.

Reading all 53 pages of posts over a few days was interesting - You all were progressing right in front of my eyes, and it's really added to my own enthusiasm. Mark did a great job starting this and moving it along (and got past some initial insecurites to be in book 3!). Key Notes, mom3gram and AWTPP provide lots of inspiration. 1silkyferret's posts were my favorites -- whether talking about her paws, knuckles or huzzzah!, I always got a chuckle. Not knowing what a Carillon was, I puzzled over a lot of her posts. Why didn't she get a rig with headphones? Well I googled it today and understand now. :rolleyes:

Anyways, I'm kind of all over the map on my special Alfred's book 1, also have Faber 1 and several other 'stretch' pieces I'm using for a break. I need to find more focus, as I've gone deep into the book but haven't come close to perfecting many.

I had a few questions...

- Even though I'd love to pick up Alfred I AIO for some of the songs I'm missing (Greensleeves, Scarborough Fair, Raisins & Almonds and darn it, Blow the Man Down), is it a waste of money? My book covers all the basic theory and the key of C major & G major plus their 3 primary chords. Does book 1 AIO go beyond that?

- AWTPP or any of the Einaudi fanatics -- is there a book you can recommend with some beginner pieces? I was not familiar with Einaudi but I love "Limbo" and would love to be able to play it. I would love to get an acoustic with the rich sound of AWTPPs as well, maybe someday.

- What's a "swung" eighth note?

Sorry for the long first post

Dave

Welcome! I'll have to say that it is not likely worth it to buy another book for just those few songs.

As far as the Einaudi book goes, take a look for the "Best Of" book at Amazon.com. Just search up "Einaudi Best Of" and you should find it. The book is a steal in my opinion at under $25. Sure, you might only play a few songs worth at first but you'll have a lot to choose from later on.

I'll let some other folks chime in on any other questions since my lunch is ready.

Welcome, Dave. I thought I should have been awarded a gold star for reading the first 18 pages of the Einaudi thread. Your achievement crushes mine.

First, as to swinging the 8th notes... what I meant by that was to play them unevenly. Instead of 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and... (with each number and "and" counted at even intervals), swinging the 8ths would more like "long short long short..." Imagine, then, that instead of regular 8th notes, we're talking a dotted 8th, followed by a 16th, over and over again. Does that make sense?

As to Einaudi, AnthonyB is the one who converted me, along with encouragement from some of the more seasoned players in the Einaudi thread. AFAIK, there is no beginner book. Simply take the book Anthony recommended, and start from page one. The pieces are apparently organized, generally, in order of difficulty. This doesn't hold true, in my opinion for every piece. I would say about 75% of the book is beyond my capability, but the remaining 25% is a lot of fun, and I get some real satisfaction / sense of accomplishment when I am able to complete a piece. Limbo is a great place to start, but we can give you other recommendations, too.

My update... we're in our new house, but our old piano didn't make the move. There's simply no place for it, and the costs of repairing the cracked soundboard aren't justifiable anyway. So we've been without a piano for a month or so. Perhaps a new digital is in our future. If so, I'll get back to it, and maybe I'll even finish Amazing Grace.

Thanks AnthonyB and AWTPP. I'll check out the "Best Of" book.

I think I've got it on the swinging 8ths. I had never heard that before. But I think I swing my 8ths. Or hang them...I'm so happy to get the tempo right on the first one I hold the second one like a whole note.

Welcome, Dave, it's good to know there are new people coming into this thread. I also started the monumental taks of reading through this entire thread a few weeks ago, but you beat me to it. I think I'm on page 46 now. It's a little sad that most of the people who have contributed so much to this thread have now moved on to books 2 and 3. So it does seem a little lonely here at times.

As to your question about swinging 8ths: I guess there might be several ways to "swing", but the one normally used in swing and blues and popular music is to think in triplets, ie think of each quarter beat as consisting of 3 notes of equal length. Try playing 3 notes to a quarter beat, say 1-2-3, 1-2-3. Then leave out the second note of every triplet, playing only the first and last nothe, and you get swinging 8ths as a result. Btw, I learned this stuff from guitar books and videos.

Here's an update on my progress. I've slowed down quite a bit in recent days, not in terms of daily practice which remains consistent, but rather in pages turned. I'm now on (I think) page 95 in my book. I've learned Cafe Vienna and Lullaby. I found Lullaby a little more difficult at first, so I didn't feel like moving on to the next song, but I will do so today, I guess. I've also gone back and reviewed some of the preceding songs, like Blow the Man down and When the Saints. I'm getting pretty good at those songs and beginning to feel more and more like I actually know how to play the piano.

My piano teacher neighbour came over again a few times and I noticed again what a difference it makes when someone with expertise plays a piece as compared to a beginner like me. I mean, a lot of the nuances and technique tricks you just can't figure out by yourself reading a book. You have to see someone demonstrate it right before you. Again, an eye-opening experience. A lot of the songs in Alfred appear simplistic and sometimes even boring. But with the right technique and musical expression (gained from consistent learning), they can really come to life. I'm not sure if others had similar experiences. My piano teacher (she is not actually teaching me on a regular basis, but provides me with ideas and tips & tricks every now and then) also asks me occasionally to go over and watch how her students are doing during her classes. And it's quite motivating seeing those little kids playing pieces that for now are beyond me.

In the meantime I've purchased two other piano books based on reviews on Amazon.com, one is called "How to play popular piano in 10 easy lessons" and the other is the Piano Handbook by Humphries. So far, both look very promising. The Piano Handbook contains a CD with exercises and pieces played by the author himself and all the tracks sounds just wonderful. That's exactly how I want to sound like one day. However, I can see that it is probably more a reference book rather than a piano course, because it gets to difficult pieces very fast and tries to teach a variety of styles to a high level, it seems. Anyway, my plan is still to get through Alfred's Book 1 as fast as possible and then decide whether to continue with Book 2 (looks quite likely) or just rely on other instruction material and sheet music. I hope everyone else here is also having a great piano journey.

I started in February with a teacher and I'm doing the first Blues melody in Alfred 1 (just after Joy to the World). We've taken a few detours along the way with a piece of sheet music (Minka) that I brought home from SummerKeys. We've also been experimenting a bit with the "Improvising Blues Piano" book.

Overall it's been fun and I feel that I'm progressing nicely. My teacher confirms this as do folks who hear me play (mostly family, some family friends). So I continue the quest and so far do not seem to have lost the motivation. I'm still playing at least an hour daily, 2 to 3 per day on weekends.

Sometimes a new piece will get me down because I just don't like it or because it presents a challenge in technique, e.g., "Blow the man Down." But when I finally get it it's a great feeling.

The most challenging piece so far has been "Minka", a Russian folk song in D minor that Bruce Potterton at SummerKeys challenged me with. My teacher here told me it was beyond my current level but eventually she agreed to spend some time on it because she liked it also and because it provided a segue to learning a new scale and to thinking about "harmonic" minor scales. That fit in nicely with another book I'm going through, the "Everything Music Theory" book by Schonbrun. Now I've got Minka under my belt and we're back in Alfred, mostly.

thanks Dave, Glad my post amused you. Its a dirty job but someone has gotta do it! :p

My teacher never let me play the eighths evenly in "Standing in the Need of Prayer." Right from the start she had me playing "long-short" and I can't imagine them played any other way. Love that song.

It's probably too late, but:

(G)reat (B)ig (D)ogs (F)ight (A)nimals is a better choice for the bass clef lines. The reason is that with the rhyme you chose, the bottom line G (bass clef) and second line G (treble clef) use the same key word. The same problem is true of Boy and Fine. These also refer to different lines.

If these work for you, by all means use them, but there is a reason why different words are chosen.

My teacher never let me play the eighths evenly in "Standing in the Need of Prayer." Right from the start she had me playing "long-short" and I can't imagine them played any other way. Love that song. [/QUOTE]
The problem is "swing". Some students just pick it up very easily, but others have problems with it. One solution is to count even 8ths now, then return to review it later, using long-short. It depends on the student.

Never say never, I like the idea of that Gary, thanks for the tip. I'll program those into my head..

Greetings everyone and a big warm welcome to all of our new Alfred book 1 friends. Glad to hear that eveyone is doing well and are progressing wonderfully.

drm13, Wow, impressive! 53 pages. You certainly would know all about our days in the lives of us Alfred's book 1 club members.

1silkyferret, You can't possibly quit completely, November is right around the corner. I hope that you'll start up again.

AWTPP, Congratulations on your new house. That's fabulous but now that you've started on this wonderful adventure, it wouldn't be a home without a piano. I hope you'll find one soon.

Rodmichael, Congratulations on getting "Minka" and "Blow the Man Down" under your fingers. It certainly is a wonderful feeling of achievement when we finally conquer a challenging piece indeed.

I'm currently working on "Why Am I Blue?" on page 116, and learning Syncopated Notes. Very interesting bluezy sounding song. And as usual, simultaneously working on polishing some of the previous few songs, revisiting some of my favorites as well as practicing my scales and Hanon exercises. Most of all, having a great time learning new skills.

Cheers and Happy playing everyone!

Key Notes