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Hi. I'm new to the forum and thought I would introduce myself.

I have been lurking for a bit, but the information provided by the posts here regarding the Cliburn Amateur competition and the wonderful advice and support here have inspired me to join.

I started lessons just before high school, but I had to drop them when I got to college. I have played for some weddings (mostly friends and family) and have accompanied some vocal students. I picked up lessons seriously again after I got married. However, after the arrival of my wonderful children, I stopped the lessons to focus on them. Now I try to practice whenever I have spare time, working on pieces that pique my interest.

Music is a large part of my life and I enjoy discovering new composers and works. My current classical listening obsessions include Feinberg, Medtner, Mompou, and Ligeti.

I hope that I can contribute as much to the discussions here as I have learned since finding this site.

Thanks,
Steve

What's up? I'll just stick with the name the gaffer, although I'm not a gaffer, someone just thought it sounded funny and I got the name. Anyways, I haven't played the piano or any instrument since I was about.... 11 or 12 (~10 years) until I heard an awesome piano song from a video game I was playing, and my fingers caught on quick to songs somewhere in the intermediate level. I very easily made significant improvements to sheet music and started improving fairly easily after a couple of months. My fingers started doing all sorts of ludicrous things I never thought possible for someone who never really played any instruments... Except for Guitar Hero, I'm pretty addicted... and I don't tend to brag, and don't mean to brag now by saying I couldn't believe I was doing these miraculous things, I'm being 100% honest. I keep putting challenges in my way that I think will destroy me because of the speed and need of trained hands or lots of experience, but I have been surprisingly successful. It makes me deeply regret giving up my piano lessons when I was a child.... well I'm only 24, so I'm still a child to some degree, but it seems like with those years of experience, I would be pretty decent by now.

I've been playing for about 8 months now, and already have a ton (30 or 40ish) of awesome video game songs, and I know that probably 95% of the people who look at this sight probably don't care whatsoever. However, The first two on my list I would say are about a 6 on a scale from 1-10 (10 being a song like La Campanella by Liszt). Anyways, my favorites are:

Approaching Champion Cynthia - it's pokemon, which I obviously am wwaaayy too mature for, but found it by luck by typing battle theme piano music, or boss battle piano on everyone's favorite video hosting site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Egwloq6Lk

Jenova from Final Fantasy 7

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jenova+piano&aq=f

Theme from Kingdom Hearts - and my version is way better... to me and my buddy anyways
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQzRAaXxjek


Mario 64 Final Bowser theme as fast as possible

I have a tendency to just speed up every song I play until there's no way I can get it to go any faster, so I have also been getting into a lot of the classical musicians as well because they are much more sophisticated, pace controlled, emotional, and genius. My favorites out of the ones I've learned are

DeBussy - Claire De Lune, which is probably my favorite right now

Although I'm too lazy to learn all of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, I could play the first 20 second Riff of the 3rd movement all day and never get tired of hearing or playing it because it's so awesome. And that's one of those things I don't understand about how my hands and fingers are doing it.

Bach
Tocatta & Fugue In D Minor
Solfeggietto

O ya, and I had to learn motzart's Alla Turca or however you spell it for my niece who always makes me play it. no disrespect to wolfgang

I also like Yann Tierson and Ludovico Einaudi alot.

Anyways, I've run across this website so many times, and always been incapable of getting the information I need by not being a member. My piano desire is running out because I need new songs that I have a desire to learn, and I'm hitting barriers with the frustration of reading sheet music because it takes SOOOO long since I just started learning how. I want to be a master now, and I'm hoping this website helps me out. I hope I can help any of you guys out if I can, I don't have much experience or knowledge, but I know a lot of awesome video game songs.

Hello everyone. I have no real reason for joining other than just wanting to find another resource to get any help on songs I would like to learn in the future.

For a little bit of info about me, I'm 18 years old and only know songs that I've memorized by watching videos online. I can not play by ear or read sheet music. I do, however, have about a dozen or so songs committed to memory. That all started several years ago when my dad picked up an old upright at a local auction for $10. Yea, it needed a lot of work but after it was all said and done I had a piano for a little more than $150 and some elbow grease. It sounded alright for me at the time since I hadn't touched a "real" piano in a very long time and I was also very young.

One day, I was bored and looked up a song I had liked. I decided to try and learn it by watching a video of someone playing it and copying what they do exactly. It was slow, tedious process but after a couple weeks of work, I had learned my first real song, Jennifer Haine's The Storm Begins (Not me). I enjoyed playing that so much that I started searching out more videos of song I liked that I could learn.

Fast forward to today and I'm playing fairly difficult pieces for someone who can't even read sheets. I only recently started taking piano lessons again to learn to read. It's a slow process but I'm sure I'll get there soon enough!

Hey, welcome! You might enjoy the "Pianist Corner - Non Classical" are a bit better. The title of this forum "Pianist Corner" is not the most specific one, in that this area is geared more toward classical. But that does not mean you can't be here! Just if you want help with some of the tunes you're learning on piano, I think you'd get better feedback in the Non Classical forum.



That's GOOD. Knowing how to read music is (I believe) a very, very good skill.

Hello to everyone!! I'm a pianist, I'm 13 years old, I play fairly advanced repertoire. I started learning piano at the age of six and a half. It's fun, and I enjoy it (as I should, otherwise I shouldn't, wouldn't be playing today). I don't play any other instruments, I used to sing in a choir, I can't really think of much else. That's my intro!

Hello all!
I started playing piano and violin when I was 12 and now I am teaching the others...I live in Europe,Italy,it's a beautiful country!!,but would like also to know what is going on at the international stage as well :-)Hope I can learn it from you.
Nice to meet you all,a presto!

Hey there everybody. I'm one of those "returning" piano students; I only took lessons for maybe 4 months when I was about 10 years old, and now at 23 I've decided to start learning to play again. I'm a hack guitar player and played the saxophone for 1 year in the middle school band, but my knowledge of music is pretty rudimentary.

I've always loved music and have attempted to teach myself various instruments (guitar that I never got very far, and piano where I progressed... well, I really didn't) but for some reason I've never been able to have any success without someone there to help me along.

I've only been taking lessons for 3+ weeks, but I can already feel the desire kicking in; I've progressed through a lot of material in the short period of time. I play on one of those really cheap Casio keyboards with 61 keys for now, but hopefully will have reason to upgrade a few months down the line. I really have an appreciation for certain video game music, but also enjoy popular and classical pieces; I'm interested in learning all sorts of music.

I was drawn to sign up here because I don't really have anyone in my family/close friends who seems to "get" why I'm drawn to learn the piano. It's something that I'm constantly thinking about, but don't really have anyone to talk to about it; thus, here I am on the internets. Hope to become an active member and see you guys around!

Hey everyone,

Just discovered these forums via a web search about an hour ago. How exciting! Many years ago I got my bachelor's in piano and not quite so many years ago I had to quit playing due to a chronic repetitive stress injury. I'll never play seriously again, but I recently inherited my mother's piano and have been playing a bit now and then. So here's my question…

Been looking at the Bach two-part inventions – specifically the D minor – and I'm interested in hearing your comments about why the left-hand trill in bar 29 is notated with an upper auxiliary of F natural. It creates a lot of tension and excitement because it's so dissonant with the f sharps in the right-hand. I love the sound, but I'm curious what's going on there from a theory and analysis standpoint. Hoping somebody whose last theory class was less than 25 years ago can enlighten me!

Hi you all. I discovered the forum a while ago when I decided to restart playing piano. I'm "mid 30s" I started playing piano as soon as I started reading or earlier... than I slowed down later in high school and at the end a bad car accident put a stop to that about 10 years ago... after "some" rehab for my left arm/hand I felt that I was able to restart and than.... I got a yamaha ydp 161 to practice waiting to buy a real grand....

my target is be back close to where I "mentally" left in 3 to 5 years....

:-)

Pianos Are People Too....at least in the sense that they become good friends to those who appreciate, care and play them for life's enjoyment

I just realize I never really introduced myself... I came across these forums a couple of months back while searching around for piano stuff. Coming to this site was bound to happen. As for my background, I'm currently a third-year undergrad student studying Instrumental Music Education and Piano Performance at the Bob Cole Conservatory on the campus of Cal State Long Beach in Southern California. I'm split with my career path; I've always wanted to teach instrumental music at a high school level, but since this past year, I've also been wanting to pursue concert pianism and performance.

I've been playing since I was 5; I'm 19, so that makes for approximately 14 years of playing piano (though I didn't take lessons through high school). In addition to playing classical piano, I also occasionally jam with jazz groups on piano; I mainly play in a Latin jazz combo setting, though I've played in big band settings, and I'm also a trombonist/euphonist, percussionist, and a singer-songwriter.

I guess as a summary, my goal is to just to be the best musician that I can be and to just create and share.

I agree!

Hello Everybody!

I´m Playing Piano for over 10 years! Maybe I should mention that I´m 19 and from Germany. I´ve learned no other instruments. Presumeably I´m a Piano nerd but I´m proud of that.

Hi everyone! My name is Rob. I'm from Bloomington, Indiana. I've been playing since my great-aunt Marie first sat me down to her organ when I was four years old. I'm now 33. Aunt Marie also bought me a Kimball baby grand that I took lessons on until I was about 9 or 10. I had decided that I didn't want to continue with them, deciding instead to take what I'd learned and to do what I want with it. For the next 10 or so years, I played mostly out of songbooks and by ear. In my early 20s, my dad got me a keyboard for Christmas and I began to write my own music. Then, in April 2010, a restaurant manager-friend of mine asked me to play cocktail piano at his restaurant. I started out filling in for other pianists who couldn't make it in and began to take a few days here and there until finally I became the main pianist, playing 5 days a week. I loved it. It really afforded me the opportunity to practice. However, I was quite shocked to learn how much I DIDN'T know. It's not that I was egotistical, thinking I knew everything. It's more that I had been so wrapped up in what I "wanted" to play that I never took the time to learn songs that I "thought" I didn't want to play. Requests were made of me for songs that any cocktail pianist should really know (or at least is expected to know by many patrons). In short, I was really embarrassed that I didn't know many songs that were requested of me, even though I had what I considered a pretty big repertoire. It was then and there that I began to delve fully into learning songs that, for some reason or another, had just not crossed my piano path. In doing so, I've fallen in love with the piano in a way I never knew was possible before. I began learning and memorizing songs at a pretty quick rate (sometimes up to 20 new songs a week!). I'd go the library and check out every song book I could. I didn't have a lot of money, so I even went to Borders and would write songs down in what I termed "notation shorthand" in my notebooks - a quick jot of what I considered to be the most important aspects of the song (notes of the melody, chord changes, etc.). I should note that I can read music fairly well but I prefer to improvise the left hand while keeping the main melody in the right. I can't believe Borders let me do it. It's no wonder they're going out of business! At any rate, I learned so much and have really improved my ability, even though I can't say I was much of a slouch before. I love this instrument on a whole new level now.

Last spring, I made an audition video for an agent representing cruise ships musicians. It took a month for them to contact me, so I thought I'd not impressed them. But, they finally did and I begin my six-month contract on Carnival Cruise Lines in about in a little over three weeks. I'll be porting out of Los Angeles, heading to the Mexican Riviera each week. I'm excited. I've heard a few horror stories about working on cruise ships, but if it affords me the opportunity to keep playing what I want... I'll take it. Plus, it's money in the bank. It has been awhile since I played, though. I moved to South Carolina to help my mom move (she's a teacher and has little time to devote to it) and the hiring process at Carnival has taken a lot longer than I had hoped (medical approval and the like). I just can't wait to get back to playing! I'm so happy to have found this forum. Thanks to anyone who reads this! -Rob

Welcome to PW Rob.
Enjoyed reading your story.
Best wishes with your piano adventures playing on cruise ships. Have you seen the film, The legend of 1900 ?

Bloomington, Indiana? I go to University of Louisville, which is less than two hours away, and I have friends in Bloomington, so I visit every once in a while. And that sounds exciting, playing as a cocktail pianist and in cruise ships! I hope all that goes well and continues to go well for you!

Dara: No, I've not seen that movie but I notice that it's on Netflix. I'll have to check it out. Looks very interesting. Thanks for the welcome and well-wishes!

Soda: I love Louisville! I've been there many, many times. I'll be back in Bloomington by March. Maybe we can grab a drink. Thanks for the well-wishes!

Hey Kriesler,

Thanks for putting up this post. I'm new here, and was wanting to find a good way to start off. Well, my name is Joy, I've been playing for four and a half years,and love piano. I'm 15 and excited to join this forum. I hope to get to know some piano-lovers like myself and look forwards to getting tips and ideas from piano teachers since I plan to be one myself.

Thanks,
Joy

Hello all!

My name is John and music is MY LIFE. I have played piano since I was 3, and started taking lessons from a serious teacher when I was 9. I am 14 and currently attend Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. When I was 12, I started playing violin and viola and cello when I was 13. Composition has been a hobby of mine for about a year now, and I am lucky enough to have a violin/viola teacher who also has a doctoral degree in Theory Composition. Recently I have also started working on my vocal skills, and hopefully I'll be able to perform something in the future. Piano and violin are my main instruments. I play viola in most chamber groups/orchestras and cello on the side. My favorite composers are Rachmaninoff, Brahms, and Liszt. I listen to classical music most of the time, but I'm not close-minded when it comes to other genres. My dream is to be a concert pianist, but if that doesn't work out I want to be a neurosurgeon or neurologist.

Hope I didn't bore you,
John

My wife is currently in training to be a neurologist. It's a great specialty!