Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Some idiot is trying to play Wanderer Fantasy as 1st piece

I agree, it needs a lot of work. I am a perfectionist and it is far from complete. I just want some initial feedback, and I appreciate yours. I agree with Ten Left Thumbs about the evenness of the arpeggios. It needs work. This does not offend or bother me in the least; I agree. The sound quality is also poor. We'll improve these things.

When I think it's ready I'll say it's finished. Until then, thanks to those that offer praise and constructive feedback. Cheers.

Well, jane schmoe, one should concern oneself with your opinion since it is a relatively sound opinion - one I agree with to a fairly large extent. While, as you say, this is a commendable accomplishment of a sort, not only is it generally not advisable to begin one's piano studies with an advanced piece such as this and to spend so much time on it - but the particular piece selected is perhaps not the most appealing or attractive from the standpoint of an enjoyable musical experience.

In this regard one might want to persue the discussion of a somewhat similar situation in this current thread in the ABF:

Are Einaudi ieces a good place to start?

JF

You don't like the Schubert op. 15?

It's a nice piece actually:

My honest opinion is that it is great, given your experience, but lacking in expression and nuance. The issue that you and so many others like you face is:

What price did you pay for your achievement so far?

By this, I mean had the hours and hours you spent learning this piece been instead applied to learning theory, scales, chords and inversions, arpeggios, sight reading, trills, etc.etc., would you be better served?

Right now you are risk becoming a "one trick pony". And every new piece a grueling task.

If you have the good fortune to find a piano under you Christmas tree, please remember there are a huge number of easier interesting and charming pieces written by the masters that will help you reach you goals.

I agree with the posters here. This is an amazing accomplishment for 10 months of playing. That said, I agree with also learning easier pieces alongside of the more difficult ones. They give you an opportunity to use dynamics/expresssion and phrasing without 'worrying about all the notes.' I always have two challenging pieces (for me that's about a grade 8 level) and a couple of easier pieces and then some even easier short one-page gems - romantic and jazz style that I love to finish in a short period (a couple of weeks) for a real sense of accomplishment and to learn and have fun with.

Thanks again for the suggestions and feedback. I'm not satisfied with the piece, if that is not clear. I just want to evaluate my progress and potential to play it.

One thing that I'm excited about is that the exercises involved in learning this piece, such as:

major and minor chord arpeggios
diminished arpeggios
major, minor, and diminished chords with virtually every root
lots of octaves
broken octaves
broken chords
trills
chromatic scales
presentation of swing/rubato
dynamics / phrasing
(and so on, lots of good mini-drills in the context of a larger, unified work)

[these exercises] are probably similar to what I would learn if I did a building block approach, but at least now I have something to show for it--or at least with a year or two more polishing I will.

Again, I appreciate the feedback, everything except for John Frank's comment, which was...how should I put it?

"perhaps not the most appealing or attractive from the standpoint of an enjoyable *internet* experience"

Ha ha, just kidding John, you are a mean old coot but I don't mind your 'tough love'.

Cheers

"While my plain-looking daughter may not command your desire, she is quite interesting and charming, and will bear many fine children."

I don't disagree with you, Stanza: I may be heading for a messy divorce.

I would hope that you can concede that in a piece like this, one learns a good deal about the fundamentals you mention, but in the 'applied' sense. At least I hope so, we shall see. Each of us has one ticket to this ride, and I can't get off the roller coaster I'm on right now.

Where would I find this daughter of yours?

Hey, I have a reputation to uphold, so mean, yes - but not that old - after all, in terms of dog years I'm only a little over 9

JF

I hope you've also been learning other pieces during this year because otherwise you wasted a long time and learned very little. To me it sounds alright, about as good as I would play it at this point (which is not much of a compliment :P).

You must have heard this a thousand times already but learning to hit the right notes is not what playing piano is about.

A couple of things.....

-- He does a lot more (a lot more) than just hitting the notes. If you don't think so, you're taking much for granted.

-- Many of the posts here seem implicitly to assume there's just one reason or goal for someone to study piano. Particularly, it looks like there's an assumption that the main reason or goal is to learn how to play the piano as well as possible; some of the posts seem also to include an assumption that learning more repertoire is better than less repertoire.

How about if someone is simply interested in playing the piece? How about if they're just not interested in going about it in any of the ways that you think would be good, and that if they weren't doing it their way, they wouldn't be doing it at all?

Obviously I agree that what the OP apparently did is odd. But it looks to me like the criticisms of what he did are based on assumptions about what constitutes a good reason or goal, and I think that's a mistake.

You are absolutely right. My views are one sided sometimes, I guess we have different goals with regards to piano. Just seems like learning to ride a bike only to go ride it around your house every day for a year. A stupid analogy, I know

Would'nt that make you a human age of 1?

(dogs being x9)

No, that's pretty good.

"In terms of dog years", i.e., equivalent to a 9 year old dog - and the usual factor is x7.

JF

You keep confusing me, (btw it depends on the dog size by which you multiply!), but if a dog is 9 years old, then it is 9 years old in human years, so it is (9x7)=63 in dog years! If you are in dogyears=9 then you are (9/7)=1.286
If however you are the equivalent of a 9 year old dog, you are 9.
If what you meant was that you are 9x7=63. That would mean that you are in human year 63, but in dogyears (63x7)=441 (eg long dead, because dogs don't ever become 63 years old, thats why the whole multiplying by 7 exists).

Victor, it was obvious to me. What's your problem?

I don't have to - you're doing a fine job on your own

Here's a simplified way to look at it:

1 "dogyear" = 7 "humanyears", that is, a 1 year old dog is (roughly) equivalent to a 7 year old human.

thus: 9 dogyears = 63 humanyears, that is, a 9 year old dog is (roughly) equivalent to a 63 year old human (9x7).

Not to make this any more difficult but some people (mostly veterinarians) count the dog's 1st year as only 1 "humanyear" (instead of 7) so a 9 year old dog would be (under this method) 1 + (8x7) = 57 years old in human years.

Either way, remember it's a dog's life, and every dog has his day, even if he's a dirty dog and exhauted to the point of being dog tired - doggone it!

JF

Ok now I get it, thanks