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

It's times like those that I start looking around for Rod Serling.
Seriously....congrats....

SwissMS, congratulations for successful party. Good preparation for the European Piano party. I wish I could be there.

Tallguy - congrats for the new piano.

Others - My apologies, I cannot comment to all your posts. I wish I could see all your posts but I am writing this on a phone, so it's a little difficult.

My AOTW - i finally got back into my daily piano practice routines at home. It's hard to mix piano and business trips. My teacher assigned me a new Bach piece and Rach piece to do them on the side since Mozart is getting in shape (not good enough to start Chopin piece that is on hold). I've been struggling to play Mozart piece - its really fast and have to keep the precise time since i have to play this with another piano (piano 2). Never knew it was going to be so difficult. it was misleading since it was easy to read. I now have to practice with a CD that my teacher recorded Piano II part. After I play I feel like I run 5K. I will never pick a busy piece like this. It is for SummerKey. I just have to get it done.

I read through the newly assigned Prelude in the English Suite today. Fun to do something else beside this crazy Mozart piece! My teacher told me that I should be able to play at least the truncated version (jump to the similar section of the last page after the first 2 pages) in the studio class in 2 weeks. The reason why I'm making shorter version available is I am asked to play in my church during the summer (choir takes summer off) during communion. In Arizona we typically have smaller congregation during the summer - I guess it's too hot here. So I need to have a bunch of church appropriate 2 pagers. Ok, nuff for my rumbling. Wish everyone a wonderful piano week.

I seem to have missed a couple of important posts!

Welcome back Edwardian Piano, and condolences on your loss. I'm not surprised you took some time away. I hope that getting back into your musical groove doesn't take as long as you think, and that it brings you some comfort.


TallGuy - congrats on the piano. I had to think about what period we were talking about and as Cecil B. Demille had quite a life span... I chose 1900 as a research point. The top names for men seem to be those common to the Royal Family --- William, George, Edward, Albert.... but there were others..

Elmer, Floyd, Lester, Edwin, Arthur, Edgar

And for the women, likewise, the first most popular are quite traditional: Mary, Margaret, Elizabeth....

But we also have gems like Beula, Lula, Cora, Norma, Mabel, Addie, Wilma, Stella, Estella, and Leola

We are (im)patiently waiting for pics

I don't have an achievement every week, so this is probably more of an AotM. As I was poring over my books looking for a new piece to learn, I came across this little jewel from the Final Fantasy piano collections. The sheet music didn't look too dense, so I figured it might be playable. Eh... until I got to the third page with 2:3 and even some 3:4 rhythms. Comments on that YouTube video all seem to agree that it's such a difficult piece, especially "the triplets section".

So I started right in the middle. First step complete: I can clap the 2:3 rhythm at a reasonable speed, and after half an hour of practise managed a slow 2:3 scale. Watching my own hands move in two different rhythms is fascinating; almost like magic.

Maybe when we see your Piano's photos we will see what name suits- and is yours a he or a she?
What age is the new piano aTallGuy? 1910s?

Yes, 1914 or 1915... I was thinking the same re: the pics providing inspiration. I have to run to work though, so maybe later this evening.

Re: he or she, I'm OK with either.

Cheryl -- thanks for the research there! Lots of good ones to consider.

aTallGuyNH congrats on your new piano. Can't wait to see pics and perhaps recording in a near future? As for names.... Clarence, Ernest, Theodore, Wallace?

Haha, I feel the same way whenever I manage to play 2 separate rythms at the same time... they always seem to want to play at the same pace or mimic each other.

"Almost like magic" --- I love it!!! This is a wonderful AOTW !

I've been struggling on this for the last days: Evening Song .
I started with just the left hand. Then I added the first note of each bar for the right hand. And then finally I got the whole piece down.
Party!
NEXT !!!

I just got the results of my abrsm grade 1 exam...131 distinction! I can't believe it! The examiner was really really generous but still I am quite proud of myself thumb specially considering I started from nothing 6 months ago and haven't taken any piano lessons (will fix that soon). Now for grade 2 in christmas!!

I really love playing the piano. Just upgraded to a nice digital ydp-s51 and I am loving it even more. When I started I thought I was going to play only a little and had no expectations of getting any grade. I was told you needed to practice 1 hour a day for the grades so that sounded like a lot of time! But I am loving it so much that I managed 1 hour easily and will often play for 2

King Norre - Good job. Sometimes it is hard for a beginner to know how important a simple little piece of music like your Evening Song can be... If you were counting out those dotted quarters properly that skill will be used a thousand times in the future. And those eighths on the upbeat are the beginning foundations for later sycopated passages.

Black Forrest - Welcome to the AOTW thread and congrats on passing with distinction! If you are enthused about piano playing you've landed in the right thread.

My AOTW is managing to have a decent lesson despite a back injury that has me cringing just to sit....the wonders of modern pharmacology got me through. I played the Scriabin Canon well enough that it got a pass...her comment was I will never have trouble with 3 on 2 after this. The MacDowell is coming along nicely and she complimented my voicings. Plus as I was leaving the mother of the young student coming in after me said "that was lovely". Wooohoooo, an audience I didn't know about. Finally, I have a new assignment, the 2nd movement of Mozart's k545 Sonata (I hope we do the whole thing eventually, but I'll take the easier movement first). All in all a good day if I don't move too quickly.

Black forrest, welcome, with two hours a day, you will speed through the first year. Nice you have upgraded your piano too.

JimF, 3 on 2 might be very tricky sometimes, so congrats on that achievement.

My practise on a working day, will be in the morning as I think I'll be too exhausted to concentrate well after working 10 hours. So I need some relaxing quality time before work.

As being cook, I start a bit later than regular jobs do. I found out I have the winner of the best coffee of the country 2012 at a distance less than an half mile away from my house. And my favorite bakery will have his bread ready before I need to go work.

So I will have a quality breakfast then. With an hour piano, fresh bread, a very good coffee, a nice shower. I'm looking forward to make that a habit.

Here she is... we settled on "Mabel", after a family vote:



As you can see, she's a gray old lady, who has seen some hardship in her life. She'll need some rehab.

More pics to come as time allows.

Nice! Congratulations with your new piano

Had a very good lesson yesterday. I recently changed my schedule to twice (or thrice depending) a month for 90 minutes lessons and I think I'm going to like this lesson plan. I finally managed my Bm scale at a whopping 200 bpm YAY! I was stuck at 170 for a week+ Now she assigned the F#m which has some very odd fingering but not to difficult to accomplish, just have to increase the speed yet (currently 100) and of course the usual arps and so forth.

Teacher was pleased with my progress on both the Gershwin piece and CBTSorrento. Says I have "turned a corner" in my playing and reading both which made me feel pretty good. We played a bit with some duet pieces. That's about it but it's all I got.

aTallGuyNH, by left-floating your image you have made the page unmanageably wide. The better choice is "non-floating image". Can you fix it by removing ":left" from the image tag in your post (that is, [img] instead of [img:left]) in your post? Thanks.

Done.

Better I hope? It all looks the same on my phone.

After my lesson last week- it was extra, a month after the recital - when my teacher assigned holiday homework, I've been focused again and the Bach's Gavotte is finally improving.

Tomorrow I'm leaving with family for a 10-15 days holiday, it's a long break without a keyboard in sight; I'm already worried for the loss of my (already very modest) ability to play.