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

My biggest accomplishment this week is finding this forum!

Playing....well.....Ugh!

Don't worry, the week isn't over yet!

And I personally find this forum to be very helpful. Aside from having a place to answer any question I might have (Besides my teacher, who I only get to see once a week), it is also very motivating to stick around here and read about the ups and downs other beginners are going through!

Welcome to Piano World, let's hope you'll make yourself proud this week and get to make another post in here!

P.S.
On a completely unrelated note, I just noticed I end pretty much every sentence on my PW posts with an exclamation mark, something which I otherwise don't do.
Says a thing about how enthusiastic I am about finding this forum, let's hope your experience here will be similar!

I played "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (the Alfred 2 version) through without a mistake. :-)

I finally got the first 2 (of 4) pages of Bach's fugue in G# minor (WTC Book 2) going smoothly and up to tempo this week. I also finally ironed out the glitches in the prelude and it's up to 88 bpm. I'm very pleased with myself and I can't wait to get home from my paying job so I can get to work on page 3!

I fired my music teacher. I'm FREE!!!

(Have finally come to the conclusion that being The Lone Pianist suits me and that I've got quite sufficient learnin' for an old hillbilly with a 70 year old Kurtzmann and no prospects)

Frycek, that's the spirit!

OK, the week started off slowly. I've been bogged down with too many pieces, and where many of the pieces are a bit out of my range. Challenging, difficult, and somewhat frustrating at times.

So I had the bright idea of starting a new piece last night (another one! ) . An easier one, and I'm glad I did.

Burgmueller's "Ballade" (Op. 100, No 15). Made awesome progress on it the last two nights, and it's very fun to play (and fun to play around with). Also, I didn't cheat by writing note names on the sheet and forced myself to actually read the staff. (luckily this one's fairly easy to memorize )

What a great ending to the week!

I am enjoying reading about what everyone is playing and noting the strategies people are using to get over little humps!

I've been working at writing out the second piece I'm currently learning (AIR in D minor) - it isn't too long, but for some reason I find it MUCH harder (to write) than the other one I did.

Today I was looking for patterns or repetitions, something to latch on to to help me recall the progressions from measure to measure - and I noticed the patterns of D A F ----- such a simple thing, but it was a conscious "Hello - we're the notes of the Dm chord luv!" I felt delighted and silly all at the same time.

I'm still not playing it very smoothly, but it is starting to settle into the old memory cells.

(I can tell I've been playing it a lot, my husband was singing it in the kitchen last night while we did the dishes! )

Yes, my whole house is humming "The Entertainer" now. Except, it is a VERY VERY VERY slow version (it is the only way I can play it!) Perhaps when the children get home from school today I should play them the real version so they know how it ought to sound

Haha, same here. I constantly hear everyone whistling or humming the theme to Tchaikovsky's 1812 ouverture, or the minuet in G.

I really should practise 1812 more, so that they can hum more than just the first 2 bars. (Yeah, I didn't really get far on that one yet. :D)

Be careful - you never know what they'll do when they hit the cannon parts!!!!

My biggest accomplishment this week was my first voice lesson!!! I'm not a singer (can't carry a tune in a bucket as they say) but I decided that learning to sing may improve my listening skills and help prepare me for the aural part of my piano exam (which I decided to do NEXT spring....rather than this summer)

I was VERY apprehensive and very pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was and how HARD it is to breathe!! My teacher didn't laugh (out loud anyway!!) and I'm looking forward to my next lesson in two weeks.

I haven't had a piano lesson in a couple of weeks as my teacher is away so I'm looking forward also to hopefully showing at least a little progress with my new pieces next week... of course that's when I tend to flub more than usual....sigh, sigh.....

Wonderful!
I've been struggling for a while with voicing, trying to bring the melody out in a piece I'm working on. Well, when I was playing it the other night, my 5-year-old grandson started humming the melody. I think I might be getting close!

Hmm.
I had my first piano lesson in about ten years today, does that count?
I also realised that the keyboard (ugh) I am using at the minute has a sustain option, although it is no-where near as good as a pedal, which has made Moonlight Sonata sound so much better.
Also, I am at least 1/3rd of the way through the aforementioned sonata.
Finally, I have also started learning to properly read music, instead of just playing by ear and memory.

Well, I got that pallet of fieldstone unloaded - a little over two tons worth. Now my wrist hurts, but at least I have some time to practice.

One more thing to add to my achievement of the week: Not really spectacular, but I sat down tonight and prioritized the 7 pieces I've been working on, so at least now I have some direction. Much better than wandering around like a blindfolded howler monkey.

Sounds like everyone has something to be satisfied with indeed!

I love the idea of voice lessons. I notice that I can now sing the music I'm reading fairly accurately rather than just read it in my head, which is very cool. I'd love to take voice lessons, but at the moment it isn't a possibility.

First lessons, prioritizing, tons of physical labour! (did you sing while moving the rocks FF?), mini accomplishments - THREE CHEERS FOR ALL OF US!

My big achievement this week was to learn how to turn a wav file into an MP3 file with "new to me" software. Thanks to a very patient friend!! Since I am not very computer savy this was a big deal to me since this is important for posting my music on this site and doing some other things I want.

AK

My biggest achievement has to be learning to play 'Paul McCartney - Maybe I'm Amazed' at speed with the original track, such good fun with some nice jazzy parts

I had to learn that too!




What fun! "at speed" is a concept I am still struggling with for most of my work!

I'm working on Burgmuller's Opus 100, nr 14 and 15 (Styrian dance and Ballade). Finally getting the left hand reasonably synchronized to the right in Ballade, and I'm starting to get some feel for Styrian Dance.

That Styrian Dance is my biggest achievement: those little jumps start to land correctly, pedaling begins to sound sort of ok, and tempo is not extremely slow anymore. Feels awesome!