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Good to hear from you Cyborg. I liked both of those pieces your working on, and if memory serves (a rarity), they both lead to even better pieces in the Advanced section.

Undone

I've been skipping around and working on "Trumpet Tune". Now, I have some more free time... no grad school and spring break from work!

Just a quick check in-

Finished the last piece in the 2nd Romatntic Impressions book. Now waiting for book 3 to arrive. Am almost but not quite there with the Vangelis Hymne. A few chord transitions and the tremolo at the end still hanging me up. And we started on Crisofori's Dream, also.

On an outside of lesson note, hubby and I went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra last week. They are touring right now with Beethoven's Last Night. As always with them it was a stellar show. And made me start pulling out the few Beethoven pieces I have attempted to play. Haven't quite mustered the courage to go back into Moomlight Sonataa, tho!

Happy Birthday Mak

Thanks!

Yes, a belated Happy Birthday Mak and I’m jealous of your getting to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra live!

Undone

Progress update: I finished “Jazz Ostinato” this past weekend and have now moved on to “The Tap Dancer” and “Moonlight Sonata”. Jazz Ostinato is nothing I’d care to keep in my repertoire, but it was a lot of fun to play (especially if you try to speed it up a bit). Moonlight Sonata is at the end of the book but at the bottom of Jazz Ostinato it states “you can now try Moonlight Sonata…” so I’ve started working on it. I’m sure I’ll be working on if for some time to come which is why I’m also continuing on in the main section of the book.

Undone

Yea, Moonlight mov 1 seems like only moderately difficult technically, plus it has a slow pace, but it's quite long. Learning the whole thing would take quite a while.

One of my long term fantasies would be learning the 3rd mov of this haunting classic

HI Mak and belated Happy Birthday! Aren't TSO GREAT! I missed them last year and vowed that I wouldn't miss another concert! I am just starting "Moonlight Sonata" (1) and I am only on the seventh measure:-) I agree with Waltz, the piece is slow pace.

Take care!

Thank you! Yes, TSO always put on an awesome show. We missed the Christmas show last year, so whane we got the fan club info about Beethoven's Last Night, we had to go!

Moonlight is slow piece, but there are tricky bits! I can't say I ever "mastered" it, but for where I am now, it was ok. My teacher says we will revisit it at a later date!

Quick question (that makes NO sense whatsoever because im only half way through book ONE!) but, where do you go after you finish book three ? if your teaching yourself from books as I am, what are your choices once you've finished this series ?

SsL - see the link below to a post of mine in this thread from Feb. of last year - this should give you some ideas, at least if you're at least partially interested in Classical piano studies:

What's maybe next?

As far as popular music, etc. the choices are virtually unlimited - check out the many compilations and anthologies avaiable at www.sheetmusicplus.com for example.

JF

JF – You beat me to it, and I was just going to recommend you as a source! Here’s what I was about to post:

This post mentions a few ideas: Life After Alfred Book 3

There was also another series of posts that had a great list of some of the various repertoire books that would make a good place to go after book 3, but I haven’t been able to find that one again. Maybe JF would remember it.

Undone

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I just had a quick look at Alfred's Essential Keyboard Repertoire and thats pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Id never heard of that before but it looks really comprehensive. 8 volumes I think !

I suppose another good way to go for developing technique and sight reading skills after finishing the All In One course would be the study books for the actual piano grades ?

I stopped in Alfred's #3 without doing much there. I just didn't enjoy the music as much. I'm doing the Piano grades that they do here: http://www.nationalmusiccertificate.org/index2.html

I started on level 3; then didn't take the exam (we missed the sign up date. Oops) and now I'm working on level 4 stuff. I enjoy the music and if you do the studies, there's a combination of shorter pieces with the longer pieces in the repertoire book.

I'm currently using EKR 1 - nice selection of early intermediate pieces in their original form, covering a wide time period and variety of composers - easy to read format - recommended

JF

P.S. if you're interested two Baroque minuets recorded by me from EKR 1 can be heard in the April Piano Bar thread.

Nice job on those, John. I enjoyed your playing. I've been taking notes on this thread and the previous ones and compiling a list of books to look forward to when I am at (or almost finished with) Book 3. Since I am currently struggling with the early book 2 pieces, that will be a while, but it's never to early to have a plan. :-)

P.S. I just couldn't get "Light and Blue" in book 2 until I listened to your recording and internalized your LH rhythm. Thanks for posting your pieces. It really helps those coming up behind you.

Thanks mom3 - glad my recording of L&B helped - mine was a modified and slightly expanded version of this, and was one of the few pieces I recorded from any of the 3 books that I was (and still am) completely happy with.

JF

Back after a week away (from pianoworld, not piano), this thread was on page 6 or so, and needed a "bump".

An update: I finished up Invention 8 a couple of weeks ago and actually started on Burgmuller's "25 easy and progressive studies". I also started learning "Zanarkand" (I had learned the intro a while back, but now it's time to learn the entire piece...). Making great progress on both, but contrary to the name, Burgmuller's studies really aren't that easy.

Welcome back (to pianoworld) Waltz. I'm still plugging away at Moonlight (and will be for some time to come) and I'm working on Soldier's Joy (which is taking longer then I initially thought it would).

Undone