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

Yes, I agree about Schumann, it sounds lovely but it is trickier to pull off than one might guess just looking at the music. I have not played Chorale, it is a very nice piece though, I like it a lot.
AND.....there is NO WAY anyone could get sick of hearing you talk about your new piano. How do you pull yourself away from it?

Hi haven't really tried any Schumann yet but I'll check out the piece you've mentioned Jim.

And I agree with the others - we are NEVER going to get tired of hearing how happy you are with your piano.

What I'm sure we are all waiting for is a chance to hear what it sounds like!!

Well, my achievement of the week is 2 parts.
1st - I made this odd little diddy up

Which, yeah... isn't that awesome. But I've only been playing 4 months and have no idea what I'm doing. Which brings me to the 2nd and real achievement. I'm meeting with a teacher tomorrow to talk about starting lessons. I'm nervous and excited.


-Z

Hi Zuul,

I thought your composition was great. One minor bit of feedback - have your teacher look at the shape of your left pinky when you play it for her/him. Seemed like you had it sticking out (sign of tension) and even reverse curved at times (possible source of injury).

No reason to be nervous about the teacher, although we all seem to go through it. Mistakes are good, that's why we have teachers to correct them.

This got me excited this week. I know it's not piano but I feel great. I'm finally seeing results of my hard work. I am naturally very skinny and seeing my muscles grow like this is a big deal for me as I no longer look skinny.

Hi JimF
Thanks for the feedback. If you meant the last digit of my pinky finger bending upward, past being straight; it just does that. I think it's from playing guitar. My right pinky doesn't bend that way. It doesn't hurt or anything. Just flexible. I'll have her take a look at it though. Meeting with the teacher went very well. She's a super nice lady. She teaches a little guitar for beginners, I might see if she's up for learning some guitar stuff from me. Maybe I can get a piano discount? ha!

-Z

Teodor,
Congratulations! I know what that feels like. I was heavily into weightlifting for a number of years until a sudden heart attack forced me to shift my focus. I still miss it.
Keep it up! You're doing great.

Cheryl, do you realize this thread is almost a year old? Thanks for starting it!

Three cool things this week:
1) I learned how to play a two-chord slur where the two chords share a note. I was having such a hard time with this all last week, and then at my lesson my teacher showed me how to shift the weight of my hand between the two chords, and it just worked! I love learning new things!
2) I was struggling with trying to play a set of arpeggios where one of the chords was an F-flat major. I just couldn't remember the notes in that chord and kept hesitating while trying to figure them out. So my teacher says, "I'll tell something that's going to make it really easy for you to remember this." I'm thinking he's going to reveal some arcane, super-secret trick, and then he tells me, "Just think of it as an E-major chord." Oh. Duh. And that's all it took!
3) I've been working on a Haydn sonata for a few weeks, and I played through the first movement at my lesson. My teacher told me that I am just where he thought I should be after this amount of time. Now that doesn't sound like an accomplishment, but he is always so optimistic of how much and how fast I can learn, and I feel like I rarely meet those expectations. So either he's lowering his expectations, or I'm getting better at learning. Either way, it felt really good to hear that.

One crummy thing... my husband received a lay-off notice last week, and job prospects do not look good here. However, I am very thankful for three things:
1) The piano is already paid for; I can play it as much as I want, and it doesn't cost a cent.
2) It's impossible to worry when you're concentrating really hard during a practice session.
3) I was able to squeeze my lessons and piano tunings into our revised budget.

I submitted a ABF recital piece yesterday, although it's not up to my own standards yet. Unfortunately I have set my standards a bit too high, so I just submitted it anyway. While preparing the recording, I managed to improve a small aspect of my playing though: I can manage to play some of the parallel thirds reasonably simultaneous most of the time

My pleasure indeed! I had not realized it was so long ago! I do notice how many pages we are up to and that makes me smile.

I think that we have a lot of "regulars" to this thread and it is so nice to feel caught up with what everyone is doing -and then we get new comers who give us another dose of happy energy.

Sounds like you've had a wonderful music week MaryBee!

Oudeis: good for you for getting your piece submitted. I still have to do it. I know the feeling of not being really satisfied with what you post - I feel the same way. But look at it this way --- it makes it so much easier for people to notice our progress for the next recital!

I'm really sorry to hear your husband got a lay-off notice though. Mine is on partial lay-off too, and my work has been dropping off (his coincided with the purchase of my piano too!!! I remember asking if we should put off buying the piano and he said "In the big picture, it isn't that much money"

I'm glad you are able to see the positive aspect of the problem and wish your husband all the best for finding new employment.

Last week I successfully performed and recorded my first recital piece for the ABF quarterly recital. I started playing piano again last summer after a 35+ year hiatus. I never expected to be able to play this piece satisfactorily until possibly 2012. It's a difficult piece I had performed when I was a senior in high school.

That's a lovely accomplishment. You must be very pleased!

I hope to get my recital piece recorded very soon too!

Good job mom3gram!

Last night I sat down and played through the first sample page of "Wonderland" by David Nevue. I actually sight read both hands straight through. I just loved it so I jumped to the computer and bought the whole piece. I've had this piece sitting here since I started playing the piano but it had been over my head.

I'm excited because somewhere over the last 3 months I've really improved. I can see a huge improvement in my left hand. This piece is perfect because it's slow and I can process both hands at once and it sounds wonderful. I'm going to spend all day (off and on) practicing "Wonderland".

Well, this is not really an achievement on my part, but I'm pretty excited about it -- I've just made the deposit for going to piano camp this summer! This is the seven day program in France in August. Can't wait!

Great progress GracieCat!

MegumiNoda - Can you tell us more about your piano camp? Where in France?
This summer is out for me - I've had too little work myself to treat myself to that expense, but (fingers crossed, except when playing piano) I hope things will pick up and next year I might be able to do that...France is just a hop skip and a jump from me!

Ahhh....sounds perfect MegumiNoda!! Like Cheryl, I would love to hear more about the piano camp!!! I have thought about going to a piano camp in the US, however, it doesn't seem to be in the cards for me this year either.

Nothing much to report on the accomplishment side for me, I am afraid. I did manage to work my Hanon exercise up to speed this week, but I also drove my family completely bonkers in the process

Oh, and today I have my first one hour lesson. I am really looking forward to it!!!

This is the camp at Ambialet (near Toulouse) -- http://www.ambialetmusic.com/ I first read about it from one of the discussion threads here on PWF about adult summer piano camps.

I've signed up for the Intermediate course, which seems like it will focus on Mozart sonatas and Debussy preludes, both of which I've been working on :-)

Wow, that's a fairytale land for a week of music for sure! You are going to have a wonderful time GracieCat.


Teodor - sorry I missed the video before - I just saw it today ..... Congrats - you are really getting into great shape!!

I'm very new to both piano and this forum (less than 1 week) but I had a major breakthrough in the last day or so. I am finally able to play "when the saints go marching in" with RH doing melody and LH doing a simply bass line.

At first I didn't see how I was possibly going to be able to coordinate my hands. It just seemed impossible. But after reading a thread on here where someone said not to think about playing 2 different parts, just think about the notes that need to be played and when (is this a good way to go about it??), it suddenly (over a hour or two) started to work. I still stuff it up regularly, but now I know I can do it.

I know this feat may seem quite trivial to most but I'm very excited about it!!! Maybe I will actually be able to learn after all.

Congratulations!!!

The whole point of this thread is for us to revel in the joy of being able to do SOMETHING!

There are weeks where we just feel we can't get the hang of anything and then "bingo" something clicks and we are right to be very enthusiastic about our baby steps!