Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Achievement of the week - what got you excited?

Carlos, did you record the piece onto another device and then transfer the file? Or did it go straight onto the computer?

Why? The achievement was getting the piece ready for performace. If you could play it last weekend, you can still play it today! There are other computers, other recorders.

Maybe the hard drive has physically failed. Quite likely data can still be recovered though. Don't believe an "expert" who tells you a complete wipe of your data is the only solution.

But you WILL set up a backup system now, won't you? All computers fail eventually. Your data shouldn't go with them.

You are right, the piece is ready and that's important. The problem is that I will be out next weeks and that's why I recorded the piece yesterday ...
And yes, I know that computers are machines and that it is possible to retrieve data (I am IT professional for over 20 years ). I tried to recover the .WAV files. but they are corrupted. btw: I recorded yesterday directly to the computer and had not performed a backup.

Let's see if I can find a way to make another recording to participate in the recital.
Thanks for your support.

There you are! We were feeling all sorry for you, and really it's hardly a disaster at all!

My accomplishment this week: Playing piano and learning German at the same time! I had my second lesson with my new teacher this week, all in German, and I managed to comprehend everything. I was so busy trying to understand the language that I forgot to be nervous and played with very few errors! At one point she pulled out a simple book for me to sight read and played an accompaniment with me, and I was so focused on staying on rhythm that I managed to do it. (OK it was a VERY simple book to sight read) My lesson was a lot of fun!

That sounds a lot of fun: learning a language and piano at the same time. Das ist sehr gut!

I'm usually by myself when accompanying for church, but this week I practiced with a violinist and a cellist! It's such an awesome experience to play with other instruments... I wish I could form some kind of chamber group one day.

That sounds like it would be a great experience! I just love the sound of the violin, and I've had an idea for a while that I would like to play a violin/piano duet with someone. I was hoping that my niece, who is taking violin lessons, would like to do this someday, but her progress has been somewhat slow. Then I found out that my brother has been teaching himself to play violin. So I asked (begged) him to learn something that we can play together. I had some fantasy about playing something from a Mozart violin sonatas, but that will have to wait. To be match his current level, and to help us work out how to play together, we're going to start with Danny Boy. That Mozart will just have to wait a while.

My daughter started clarinet this year. So far we have only managed a duet of Twinkle, Twinkle and Au Claire de la Lune. I can't push too much for them - she gets very flustered.

But one day, one day .... though I know from my flute days that the piano parts are as hard (if not harder) than the "solo" instrument part! Looking back I am super impressed at my flute teacher's piano abilities!!!

Playing with others is so much fun, but does present its own challenges!

Achievement of the evening so far has been filing all my loose sheet music in plastic wallets in a ring binder. Still wondering about the 'right' order for them though.

Achievement of the afternoon was feeling I'm at last getting a good handle on most of the minor scales.

My husband's research assistant recently shared with me that she plays the cello. We have decided to try a few Hadjidakis' pieces together. Fortunately, she agreed to learn the pieces I already play. I am so excited to play with someone else too!!

Hey Christine that sounds exciting. What a whole new experience that is going to be! Keep us posted as to how this goes!

Isn't it interesting how we seem to go on themes - I think it is really exciting to see how many people are playing or hoping to play with other musicians. I've only really played with other pianists (apart from band time in highschool, which isn't at all the same thing). I'd love to play a duet with a musician on another instrument. I look forward to hearing about the developments on this front with the rest of you for now!

Carlos, I hope you get your new recording done, painlessly!
Eglantine, I hope your healing process is quick. My sister broke some ribs a couple of years ago and I remember how painful that was for her.
- congratualations on the progress with your Invention!
Recaredo, your Hannon exercises seem to really be paying off - good for you!

Scales scales scales... my teacher is "bringing me back" to scales too - seems perhaps we're all too keen to get to the music rather than wanting to spend time on scales. However, I do have to say that it is making a lot of difference with the relaxation in my hands, arms and shoulders, which I did NOT expect! So, I'm encouraged to keep at them for multiple reasons.

No significant AOTW on my side,but I am feeling that I'm going in the right direction, so that's ok.

SwissMs - My lessons are in Italian (mostly, because my teacher is learning English so we mix things up sometimes). It can be very funny.
One day she was trying to prompt me for a note I was stuck on and she said "r". "r". I looked at her and said "r?"..... She was thinking of "re", and instead of saying "d", said "r". We laughed and laughed over that one. The craziest confusion arises when one of us says "Si" because we don't always know if the other person is saying yes, (Si!) or the note "C", or if it is Italian and saying "b", which is "Si" (not Ti) ! Mamma mia! It keeps both of us on our toes!

Cheryl, your feeling is probably the biggest AOTW that one can read over here. Very good!

BTW, I love the confusions among languages. They are so funny!

Cheryl, i can relate to your experience.

In Japan, they use two different systems for reading notes and naming scales. For reading notes, I grew up with the Japanese version of the fixed do system. For naming major/minor, they use the first line of Iroha, an ancient poem used as an "ABC" of traditional kana. In Iroha system, the syllables representing the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G are i, ro, ha, ni, ho, he, to respectively. So the note C is called as "do" while C major / c miner is called as "ha-chocho / ha-tancho" respectively. So you can imagine the confustion that I and my first American piano teacher encountered. She asked me "what is this note?" pointing at a score. My response.. "Ahhhh...Mmmmmmm.....". Noticing the surprised look in her face as though saying "she can't even read notes after 7 or 8 years lessons?", I immediately put my finger on the correct note on the piano in front of me. So she understands I can at least read the music. She asks "What is the key signature of this piece?" I again go "Ahhh...." then press the key of D saying "this one in major". Basically I looked like a six year old. But in my brain, I was busily translating. Example - "Ok, it's 'ra' in Doremi, do re mi fa so ra si... so the sixth from C - c d e f g a, aha it's gotta be 'a'". Likewise "if it's i-tancho, it's a minor scale with the note "ra" on its root. I notice the note 'so' is raised to confirm it. so it's gotta be "a minor" .... etc. You see how compelx it is.

FarmGirl, that is so funny. I can relate to that experience - working in 2 languages, knowing what you need to say to respond but not quite being able to get the words out quickly enough ..... but I have to say your experience with the confusion of notes has mine beat by a long shot!

So often a language issue can leave us feeling like babies,....hmmmm that's also my experience with starting on the piano... I must be in my second childhood! lol.

Playing with others sure does sound like fun. In fact, its one of the reasons I took up piano.

You see, for twenty years I've been part of a group of couples that gets together once a year at Christmas for dinner. Theres about 8 couples and we always have a very lively time. Just about everyone there, except me and mrsF, plays an instrument. Usually we will see two or three guitars, a banjo, a mandolin, maybe steel drums, harmonica. We're all around the same ages and none of us has kids, so this isn't a traditional christmas carol group.
The usual fare is 60's and 70's rock/pop, with a lot of Jimmy Buffet thrown in for local flavor.

This year I was going to prep with some appropriate rock/pop sheets i've acquired. I planned to drag out an old 61 key unweighted piece of junk I started out on and take it to the dinner with us. So this year would be my debut! Even better, after reading this thread and thinking about it, I'm going to see if one of my buddies who attends and plays guitar wants to come over once a week or so to practice up a few tunes. Oh I really like this plan! So that is my AOTW.

Lesson was a bit of a disaster. Had the flu almost all week, which cut practice to a minimum. Managed to play Dolls Complaint by Frank well enough to get the heave-ho into the done pile, but there was plenty left to work on. Some progress on Sarabande, but now realize the second variation is going to be a LOT harder than the first exposition. New assignment is a one pager from Scarlatti, my first experience with him. Stay tuned on that one. Flu is now gone but I coughed my back out - arrrrrh.

Since we're on the playing with others kick ... here's what happened at my lesson today. It will certainly do for my AotW, even if a minor one!

As I was waiting for my lesson to begin, the head of the studio said I was going to do a guest turn in his (group) lesson today. He said, with a half smile, "You're a good sight reader, right?". Utto ...

... anyway, it was all good fun. The kids had been learning a couple of "Halloween" songs and he brought me in to play one one song a bass part and on the other a harpsichord part (both on the digital piano). Pretty easy sight reading luckily because almost all was just in one hand or the other.

But my achievement was that I had spotted the only hard measure, got it sorted out in my head and played it very well. At least I played as well as the kids!

Andy, that sounds great. It's not easy to do anything like that on the spot especially with kids.

GlassLove, nice. It's my dream... someday me too.

JimF, I am so envius of you having so many good musical friends. I have none around here. I used to have one but she moved away. I hope you can get your guitar friend to play with you. It will be sooo cool. You gotta record it.