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

FarmGirl it sounds like you have reached a milestone where your teacher wants to make sure your technique is solidified before going to the next level. I am sure your Rach is improving every week, and your teacher can hear it! When it is perfected, so many new doors will open for you! That will be a monumental achievement.

WiseBuff - I think your teacher is right. I have to play at the singing tempo no matter what. As you mentioned, it's a totally different ballgame. It's wonderful your teacher teaches you how to do it.

SwissMS - I think you are right, she is trying me to bring to the next level. It's just i never knew I had so much technical deficit. The frustrating part is that I seem to find more and more deficit in my playing as I get deeper into piano. OMG! Am I wining again? Ok, I will shut up and continue to work on the details. Thank you for your kind words.

FarmGirl, I have been told about something that happens at an intermediate level, which is that you (general you) start to hear better, and so you hear weaknesses in your playing that you couldn't hear before. Now that you hear them, you can start to correct them. So it sounds to the player as if they are getting worse, when in fact they are starting to get a lot better.

I wonder if there is something similar for a more advanced pianist such as yourself. The basics are all in place, so now you are able to start feeling and paying attention to more subtle technical deficits. Now that you are becoming aware of the deficits, you will be able to correct them and improve, even if it seems like you're going backwards by noticing all these deficits.

PianoStudent88, there are levels. I mentioned in the family thread that my nephew did youth piano competitions. In the early days, the mistakes were obvious to even the most casual observers. There were missed notes, breaks in rhythm, complete halts.

As the students advanced, the mistakes became more subtle. Towards the end, most casual observers could not tell where the faults were. Every performer in the competition sounded pretty good. The judges would report subtle mistakes such as tempo, or pedal technique, or dynamics because they are paying attention at a higher level of detail.

Recording practice and performance sessions is a valuable way to isolate and eventually correct the faults. Because I have a long history on another instrument, my ears already can tell that I need work on dynamics and phrasing. When I listen to my recordings I know that it is a beginner playing. An experienced pianist would sound smoother, with more expression. Some folks have better listening skills than musical skills.

Piano88 was talking about something else, I think. As we advance, we hear MORE mistakes when we are making LESS because our hearing gets refined. We get a false feedback from our own senses that our playing is getting worse since we hear weaknesses for the first time. Those with trained ears will hear massive improvement. To our own ears we are stagnating or going backwards.

keystring has it.

My achievement this week was receiving real praise from my teacher at the end of my lesson today!! Only the second time ever!
Last time it was for one piece I had really polished up well, but this time it was for several things I did during the lesson. Maybe he was just in a good mood but i'll take it.

Dave T.

My teacher said at my lesson that she always looks forward to my lesson because it's always "real music" and there is always something interesting to discuss.

She played me some of the Prokofiev Sonata she is working on (I think number 2 but I'm not 100% certain) - freaking awesome!!

What got me going last week was Chopin's E minor Prelude. If Jean-Yves Thibaudet is 100%, I got it to 90%! I was in the zone for those few minutes, it just flowed out effortlessly. It's a beautiful piece when played musically.

If only somebody had heard it...

Isn't wonderful when you find that musical "zone"? It is like you can step outside yourself and just enjoy the music. If you had that for the whole piece it must have sounded fantastic. I can usually only manage it for a minute or two at a time...

I also received praise from my teacher this week. She was very pleased with my playing of Bach prelude in C minor, and was impressed with how fast I had mastered it and incorporated the new techniques we have been working on. She wants me to still use it as an exercise, but now I get to start another Prelude. It looks like I am going to be Bach centric for a while to learn some new techniques. That is fine with me. I am really enjoying these little preludes. She was also pleased with the Chopin nocturne. Maybe I will make it to the recital with that yet!

So Congrats to everyone with happy teachers!

Hi!

I’m not pretty sure whether this is an achievement or not, but I played a grand for the first time this week. I found out some rooms are rented to practice piano where I bought my DP, they have both uprights and grand pianos. It’s not very expensive; they charge three euros per hour for an upright, and five euros for a grand. Obviously I chose the grand.

At first I found the keys extremely hard, and I thought: “This is going to be a disaster”, since I could hardly play some passages. But little by little I got confidence, and finally I really enjoyed playing the grand.

I’ll repeat this experience again, for sure.

Cheers!

I am very proud of myself because I just learned my first song outside of piano lessons. Actually, I recently had to stop taking piano lessons so now I can focus on pieces that I like. The pieces in my course book were kind of boring. I found an intermediate level version of Danny Boy and I love the song. The piece is 1 1/2 pages. It took me a week to learn it. I'm not much of a sight reader, I learned it measure by measure. It took some time to get used to not having the fingering suggested for you. And then having to transition to different places on the keyboard at speed. It's amazing how something can seem impossible in the beginning but with repetition can turn into muscle memory.

Congratulations! It always feels wonderful to get a new piece under your fingers, and the first is like magic. I can still remember the exact moment 23 years ago when I learned my first piece, and the first time I played it for my parents (who, until that point, had no idea I was even trying to learn to play the piano).

Keep it up! The rewards are greater the farther you go.

The highpoint of my week was at my lesson today. I started working of my first Chopin piece with my new teacher. Chopin's Waltz in A minor. It was quite unexpected, he saw tucked into my Moonlight Sonata sheet music, and asked me to play the melody. I am so excited to finally have one his pieces assigned as I had only tried them on my own with various degrees of sucess.

Recaredo - Isn't it wonderful when you hear those tones coming out of the Grand...so big and so rich sounding... and you made them. Sometimes I can just sit there and luxuriate in one chord for what seems like minutes at a time.

leturn - Great choice for a first song. Hope you don't have to be away from lessons for too long... I know I would miss it.

Irene - Congrats on being assigned your first Chopin. The A-minor waltz is such a beautiful piece. Whether it comes to you easy or hard doesn't really matter....it is an important milemarker that your teacher thinks you are ready for this step. Enjoy!

My achievement: I finally pulled out the manual for my DP and figured out how to record a piece and save it to a thumb drive.

It is a mixed blessing.

It's good to take advantage of useful technology. On the other hand, I sound awful.

to be able to remember all the various articulations while playing my abf recital submission

Little achievement - have been having a hard time speeding up my left hand.. I seemed to have gotten to one speed and wasn't getting any faster. Turns out my 4 finger was flexing out at the top knuckle and not curving in. I am making progress fixing it, and it shows in my pieces.

My little acheivement:

I've managed to get in some practice time for at least a couple of minutes every day this week.

It feels great to be playing again after months away from the keys.

Stubbie-- Yes! Recording seems like a mixed blessing! It is very humbling. However it can really help you improve because you can sit back and critically listen. Then you know what needs to be fixed!

Bobpickle- You have your recital piece ready? I am jealous. I have yet to get a recording without a major blooper.

AimeeO - Dont' you just love that fourth finger? It will do anything to get out of working very hard, including collapse at the joint. I have had a similar problem. Congrats on recognizing it and working to change it!

Haunted Keys- Congrats for getting to the piano everyday! Once you get the momentum going again, you will be off and running, er , playing!

My achievement this week was realizing that I can recognize when tension is starting to build in my hands and consciously relax everything. I have worked so much on relaxation in my lessons, that I am now acutely aware when I am holding tension in the fingers that are not playing, or in my wrist. Just that awareness is starting to impact how easily I can play.

The other major thing we have worked on in my lessons is performance anxiety. I am always anxious in a lesson, even though I am well prepared. Hence I do not play as well as at home. I have the same problem with the dreaded RED DOT. My teacher gave me two techniques that have really helped, so I thought I would share them. The first is breathing. When a difficult section comes up, she has me take a deep breath and blow it out slowly through the whole phrase. It works! I assume it keeps me from holding my breath. The second thing she has me do is visualize an elevator that goes from my head down to my pelvis. I focus on keeping that elevator at the lowest point throughout my playing. By keeping my elevator, my center low, I am more relaxed. When I can keep the focus, I play more relaxed. She says she can see when the anxiety builds, because I stop breathing, my shoulders rise, then my wrists rise, and then the hands start making mistakes. So, I am starting to play more confidently!