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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
Hi. I have had to put my lessons on hold because I went back to work and found I have very little playing time (or any free time!) and my original teacher doesn't teach on the weekends. So I am nowhere near ready for the exam though I still want to do it. I found a new teacher that I am hoping to start with on Sunday. I haven't hadlessons since July and I had stopped back in May for personal reasons. I'm looking forward to starting again. I had stopped doing any prep for the exam as it's really hard to undo things ifyou do them wrong. As I want to make sure I still do fun pieces I'm thinking I won't be ready for the exam for at least a year.
Well don't give up. My work is always 60+ hours a week, and I actually took up piano to keep from burn out. Family time, homework with the kids takes up 15 hours, and they have to practice piano before me, so that's another 15 or so hours gone, then there's all the studying for professional certifications, but I will soldier on. It is the only thing that keeps my sanity.
My only problem is I have absolutely no time for fun pieces. Practice time has to be very focused, and often I have to jump right to the measure giving me trouble. Some days, I only get to practice those few measures. Even then, it is still way more fun than not at all. I finally got F# minor harmonic and melodic scales down without any glitches. It took months.
My original plan was to take the basic rudiments exam this year along with grade 4, but just not working out. I think I'll have to push that for next year. I have too many professional certification exams to study for this year.
4evrBeginR...I'm thinking focused time needs to be there but some fun stuff now and then is important too. Preparing for the exam is strenuous work. What professional certifications?
I'm still working daily on the scales and chords to get them smooth and up to tempo. The minor ones are just ones I never worked on through my many years. My teacher introduces scales and chords but doesn't stress them to the adults who mostly want to play for fun. I think she's enjoying this journey with me too...one crazy adult student who WANTS to study at this level of technique. For fun...I'm starting on Christmas music and put my pieces aside for a couple of weeks to let them rest in the brain. Some sight reading and some solo pieces. Have a new intermediate book from Mark Hayes that just arrived for me. Too bad work takes up so much of my day. No professional certifications but I'm working on a book rewrite and a paper to submit...and midterms to grade. :-)
I will continue on as well. It will take me more time but eventually I will get there.
I dont mind doing the work but I learned last year how important it was to do fun pieces. Christmas carols were a fun interlude to the grade 4 materials. Plus all the scales were probably driving my family crazy!!
I am looking forward to my lesson on Sunday. It will be a new start for me with a new teacher.
It is interesting to hear everybody's journey. All so busy with work, kids, certifications, home. And yet still want to chug along with piano. Makes me proud to be one of the gang!
4evrBeginR...I'm thinking focused time needs to be there but some fun stuff now and then is important too. Preparing for the exam is strenuous work. What professional certifications?
Network engineering. Re-certification is requirement by management, a series of 5 exams, all have to be done in the next six or so months. No complaints. Work enables me to have piano lessons, among other things.
For fun, I play Dreamcatcher and Nocturn in my repertoire book. I think I will also keep Diabelli's sonatina as a fun piece. There are a few things I wish I time to learn to play really for fun, but just not possible at the moment:
lots on your plate! I think sometmes people don't realize just how much of a commitment it is for adults to learn to play when there are so many other pressures on time. I hope you are very successful in all your endeavours!
Gave up on exams - playing whatever I feel like Working on: Bach Partita #2- up to the Courante so far Liszt Consolation #2 Piazzolla Milonga del Angel
TOMORROW is the day after a couple of years of contemplating this. I'm taking the RCM level 5 exam. I know my scales and play them correctly the first time (sometimes). The chords move up and down the piano (mostly). The diminished and dominant 7 chords sound like I know what I'm talking about. I'm 80-100% correct on interval identification. The clapback is problematic because I see rhythms better than hear them. All the aural stuff is new in 2013 for me...in all my years of lessons we didn't focus on that. I hear the music but I didn't learn the test side of aural. My repertoire is probably memorized but I'm going to play with my music and take the hit on points. Somedays I play it nearly flawlessly and somedays the Bach is bad and just falls apart (as does the Mozart). Here's hoping for a smooth musical afternoon.
TOMORROW is the day after a couple of years of contemplating this. I'm taking the RCM level 5 exam. I know my scales and play them correctly the first time (sometimes). The chords move up and down the piano (mostly). The diminished and dominant 7 chords sound like I know what I'm talking about. I'm 80-100% correct on interval identification. The clapback is problematic because I see rhythms better than hear them. All the aural stuff is new in 2013 for me...in all my years of lessons we didn't focus on that. I hear the music but I didn't learn the test side of aural. My repertoire is probably memorized but I'm going to play with my music and take the hit on points. Somedays I play it nearly flawlessly and somedays the Bach is bad and just falls apart (as does the Mozart). Here's hoping for a smooth musical afternoon.
You didn't mention the sight reading ...
Break a leg. But not the pedaling leg. And Bach is supposed to fall apart - to do it correctly is just bad taste.
I recently took the Level 1 exam. I started deliberately at that level because I felt very unsure about the aural.
Some things I did: before each scale I thought carefully about which notes were in the scale. At this level, the fingering is all the same but at the next level I will also think about the fingering. On the chords, I need to also think carefully about whether blocked or broken has been asked for, and what the note are.
Before each piece I thought carefully about where to place my hands, and how the piece starts. In preparing, I had practiced starting the piece at various points in order to recover in case I had a memory slip. I did have a bobble in one piece (I think I went on automatic pilot for a moment and wasn't paying attention) but I think I managed to keep playing without missing a beat.
I got lucky on the aural with a relatively simple clap back and playback: those were the parts I was weakest on in my preparation. After they played the initial chird for the playback, I hummed the bottom note of the chord. I'm not quite sure if or how it helps, but my examiner commented on it afterwards and said it was a good thing to do. Like you, these were new for me. Now I've started the level 2 aural preparation, and it seems easier than it used to be when I first started listening to the aural requirements for various levels about a year and a half ago, plus I can think of more strategies for learning how to do it.
In my practicing a piece I would sometimes mess up a piece badly. I still haven't quite figured out why that hapoens, but I continue to learn how to practice slowly and deliberately which hopefully makes the pieces more secure. Everyone at the test site was quite pleased to have an adult testing, and not in a patronizing way.
One other thing: I completely forgot about dynamics throughout the entire test (except for the sight reading, where I remembered to check for dynamics -- but there weren't any). So for my level 2 preparation I am particularly paying attention to dynamics, and even exaggerating them, and will add dynamics to the set of things I think about before I start a piece.
The examiner wrote quite a lot of notes, which pleases me because one reason I'm taking the exams is for the feedback.
TOMORROW is the day after a couple of years of contemplating this. I'm taking the RCM level 5 exam. I know my scales and play them correctly the first time (sometimes). The chords move up and down the piano (mostly). The diminished and dominant 7 chords sound like I know what I'm talking about. I'm 80-100% correct on interval identification. The clapback is problematic because I see rhythms better than hear them. All the aural stuff is new in 2013 for me...in all my years of lessons we didn't focus on that. I hear the music but I didn't learn the test side of aural. My repertoire is probably memorized but I'm going to play with my music and take the hit on points. Somedays I play it nearly flawlessly and somedays the Bach is bad and just falls apart (as does the Mozart). Here's hoping for a smooth musical afternoon.
You didn't mention the sight reading ...
Break a leg. But not the pedaling leg. And Bach is supposed to fall apart - to do it correctly is just bad taste.
Andy, are you doing RCM exams? Do you know of people in VA who administer them?
"Don't let the devil fool you - Here comes a dove; Nothing cures like time and love."
RCM Music Development Program assessment centers in the U.S. Unless Vienna, VA is close to you, you may need to travel to another state. I live in Maine and travel 2 1/2 hours to reach my closest testing centers, in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Andy, are you doing RCM exams? Do you know of people in VA who administer them?
No, I assumed when I started lessons that's what I would do (I took grade 6 flute as a teen in England) but my teacher's studio doesn't send students to exams. And I'm not going to set out to do it myself.
Looks like PianoStudent88 found the center in NoVA; now how do we explain to someone from Maine that it's not the distance that matters in Northern VA
Ha ha . But does anything else matter either, if the universal answer is "the traffic will be terrible"? Is there anywhere in NoVA that isn't horribly congested?
TOMORROW is the day after a couple of years of contemplating this. I'm taking the RCM level 5 exam.
Good luck, WiseBuff. In 48 hours, I am taking my RCM level 4 exam, also.
I am performing the following (memorized):
Repertoire: List A - Bach: Minuet in D Minor, BWV Anh. 132 List B - Diabelli: Sonatina in F Major, op. 168 no. 1 List C - Sheftel: Nocturne
Etudes: Etude no. 3 - Niamath: Masquerade (arpeggios) Etude no. 6 - Heller: The Avalanche, op. 45, no 2 (triplets between hands)
I am almost ready... so close, but not completely. The repertoire still could use some work, but they are what they are even if I had more time. Hopefully, I won't blank out. The etudes are a problem. I am not particularly comfortable with my second etude, so I know it will give me problems. Scales and chords could be better, I suppose, particularly HT F# minor and Eb major broken chords. I keep gracing against some black keys that's not part of the chord at mm=120, the prescribed speed. I could do it perfectly at 96, but that's not the required tempo.
Sight reading and aural test I am still weak on. I have not yet completed the level 4 training book. I will have to accept as many points as I am given, hopefully more than zero for that portion.
I wish there was more time, but curtain time is almost here.
Thank you Andy, PianoStudent, 4evBeginR, and Sinophilia. Best of luck to you as well 4evBeginR...I'm sure you'll be great. It may have been much smarter to start at level 1 but too late now. I'm not sure I'm ready for the feedback...my irrational voice says it will all be awful and tell me what a joke it is that I'm playing this instrument. Fortunately my rational voice kicks in shuts that idiot up. :-)