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I do hope this is ABSOLUTELY as exciting as it sounds! You naughty girl :-)

@rnaple sounds good!

My AOTW: Best lesson since I started. I didn't flub more then once.

Farmgirl Just reading about your weekend wore me out....have to go take a nap. I Don't know how you do maintain such a pace.

Ron Sounds like you found a good match in your new teacher. Keep us posted as to how the early lessons go.

Yeah, Farmgirl, could you bottle that energy up? You'd get a good price on the open market!

No real AOTW here. I'm settling into my lesson routine--first couple of days with the new pieces to get the fingering and notes under my fingers and then the next few to get *some* semblance of fluidity (which usually goes out the window during the lesson, ahem). I'm not getting these pieces to polish stage in one week, but the ones I enjoy more I continue to work on.

My teacher wants me to speed up my scales and arpeggios, but at this point--I hadn't done scales/arps previously--she's getting one of two things: fast or accurate. For now, I'm aiming for accurate. Fast will come with time.

My AOTW took place in Kansas City. The Southwest Chief was two hours late out of Chicago, so we had time to kill. We decided to kill it across from Union Station in Crowne Center at a bar called A Streetcar Named Desire. After a couple of beers and an appetizer at the bar, I told my fiance to follow me. I took her up to the third floor of the Westin Hotel, where I knew sat a grand piano.

Two years ago it was an old walnut Yamaha baby grand, with keytops missing. Kinda rough condition. Well, they replaced it with another Yamaha, in satin ebony and in fine shape!

I played the C Major prelude from WTC I, and Gymnopedie #1 for my sweetie. Despite, or maybe because of, two beers under my belt, both came out really well, as good as I had ever played them before.

We had a great time!

I hired cleaning lady hehehe. My husband complained about the untidy house so I basically told him "why should I clean the house? Really!" I need time for myself. I work hard every day.

I also created system to feed us. Basically cut up stir fry vegi and brown rice for the week on Sunday. I cook chicken and fish as well. We just hear up vegi, chicken/fish and rice mixture in the microwave everyday. I got inspiration from dog food concept. I wanted something similar for us. It's healthy too. If either one of us wants anything special, the person should go out and get it.

So far it's working well:)

JimF - Congratulations on your "ear" for arranging. That is a skill I would like to develop!

Andy Platt - Liebesträume 3--Wow! That is definitely a "someday" piece. I cannot wait to hear it!

CasinItaly- Happy PW Anniversary! You have added a lot of value and encouragement to this forum in four years!

FarmGirl- Congratulations on your successful recital and your musical week!

Plowboy - Isn't it great fun finding a lonely piano at a hotel? They just beg to be played. Congratulations on you successful performance.

My AOTW is FINALLY getting a halfway decent recording of my Joplin piece, Chrysanthemum, and submitting it. I stress the half-way part. Maybe I just became more tolerant of occasional errors. If 99% of the notes and timing in a 5 1/2 minute piece are right, isn't that a passing grade??

Well done! I would have pointed out that he has two arms too, and that cleaning is hard work so men are better suited for it

I would eat fried rice every day, such a great meal!

FarmGirl - I too am exhausted just reading about your schedule! Agree with you on the cleaner front - if you can afford it it's a huge boost to quality of life. With 3 kids and a dog I still do a lot of housework, but it's a huge benefit to have someone come in each week and take care of all the big jobs. I couldn't do what you are doing on the food front though - I like my food too much, I want variety and interest :-)
Casinitaly - happy PW birthday :-)
Ron - wonderful to hear you have found a teacher who is just right for you. Is it online or in person?
SwissMs - that sounds like more than a passing grade to me! The Joplin must be quite a bit more difficult than your exam pieces, I would have thought. Not quite sure how you are managing to do that and an exam and all the other pieces you are working on!!

I'm definitely feeling a sense of achievement this week:
* the Bach Invention #8, while still full of flaws, is really starting to come together. I've been *reasonably* disciplined at working the sections that need attention rather than playing through. Now I need to work on joining it all up - I make mistakes playing the whole thing that I didn't make doing the sections on their own.

* Mozart Rondo Alla Turca: this week I focused mostly on the final section which I had been really intimidated by, and I made huge progress. I'd been playing it really slowly - jumping chords are a real weakness for me and I was basically stopping to look and feel out each one. My teacher encouraged me to work on playing it faster and it turned out that I could do this straight away. Obviously it meant I no longer had the time to "work out" each chord, I just had to trust that my hands had learned where to go. But most of the time they had. Still a fair bit to do to get the piece up to standard. I am *considering* it for the next ABF quarterly recital, and as I'm going away for 3 weeks in April this really means I'll need a recording by the end of this month.

* Sightreading - this is a real weak area for me, and after reading some of the threads here I have decided to set myself a target of doing some at least 4 days per week (I am doing MOYD and so far I have been successful at playing every day, but some days I can only do a *really* short session so I'm not setting daily sightreading as a target). One of those threads suggested Bartok's Mikrokosmos as a good source of material - lots of short pieces, progressive difficulty, freely available. I've started in the middle of Book 1 which for my terrible sightreading feels right. I force myself to study the piece for a couple of minutes first, then play it through just 2 or 3 times. I've just done 3 days so far, but actually it's proving surprisingly satisfying even though I'm so awful!

That reminded me a conversation with one of my yayas (grandmas). Basically I have an older brother (less than one year older) and we were around 17-18 years old, living with our parents. They were spending the weekend away and we were left to microwave our prepared meals and clean our dishes. I was speaking to my yaya on the phone and she asked to speak to my brother, so I said he was doing the washing up as it was his turn. She couldn't believe that her beloved grandSON would be getting his hands dirty washing dishes!!! I simply told her that luckily he also has 2 hands so he can perfectly do it. She said something like "in my times...." and hung up on me!

Really, nothing worse than a chauvinist female!
But hers were other times, specially in Spain... god thanks I didn't live them! My mum was fired as soon as she married, for instance. Women needed the "permission" of her father or husband to work. And the husband would be socially consider as unable to provide for his family if his wife had to work.

My husband is the cook, btw

Sounds like a great plan FarmGirl..got the idea from dogfood huh? Made me laugh. Women (or men if they do such a thing) who clean for us should be valued highly. They make life happen.

Happy PW day Casinitaly! Can't imagine a PW without you.

barbaram that Mozart is beautiful when the chords become fluid. Isn't it a challenge to stop watching your hands move to the right spot? I just have trouble trusting that they know where to go.

evamar..I loved your story of your parent's and grandparents and their customs about cooking, cleaning and going out to work. Gender roles continue to evolve.

Sometimes people who don't play piano think it's better to just let them gather dust and won't let you play them. Plowboy, finding that Yamaha while you waited is like finding an old friend and catching up on life stories. Sharing a beer in the bar.

My AOTW is that I continue to play for myself although I am seriously contemplating giving up on any attempt to share music with others. I received a scathing review after my last piano performance at my teacher's group and unfortunately the criticism was pretty accurate. I had practiced but started off a titch too fast and that increased the tension which increased the errors which decreased the music. I don't believe I want to be known for that. I love reading about all of your successes and I applaud them.

Sinophilla, I steam the vegi / chicken mixtures and add seasoning (1 tea spoon sesame oil, half tea spoon wine vinegar, pinch of salt, pepper and dill weed) on top after it's steamed. in my experiments, human tongue tastes equal amount of saltiness with half of the amount of salt if I put it on after it's cooked rather than cooking it with it. I have experimented it with my husband as my subject. I would love to create human dog food some day! Like dog food, each nugget should contain the whole nutrients we need. I would even create a variety of human dog food - like something good for teeth. No executives want to go to meeting with lettuce hanging from the corner of their mouth, you know.

Evamar, Barbaram, My husband is wining. My mistake was that I turned a completely fine american guy into a Japanese husband. Basically I spoiled him by doing everything for him. He is like, "Everyone in my office says how nice you married to a Japanese girl. She must cook and clean! no one understands what I have to live with!". You know, for some reasons there is that stereo type of japanese or asian girls. I have 4 Japanese girl friends and swear none of them like cleaning.

Yes, Wisebuff I am with you. I love my cleaning ladies. They create very tangible benefit.

And thus was born PIANO-CHOW

Karen
Please don't give up on public performance completely. It's normal to play faster when we are not experienced in public performance. I don't think either me or you are experienced performer. It's just like anything else we get better as we do more. I play weekly up on the stage on Steinway B in front of others for my studio class. My conservatory bound young classmates are doing it twice in a week. I cannot go during the week, so I only join them on Saturdays. I saw everyone of them get nervous at first. Hands shaking, speed up at the beginning, gets worse and result in death march, etc. Without any exception everyone overcomes it after a few episodes of this. My teacher is good too. She tells the performer that she is glad he tried it out and tell him to just do the ending again etc and encourages him somehow. If you can walk you have rhythm, she says.

Karen, you played for me very beautifully. We have to do this again either in Co or Az.

I am aghast! How much had the skanks paid to listen?

It's a pity you aren't an amateur, you could have responded with foul invective at their inappropriate rudeness and at the teacher's inability to turn you into a beacon of the concert platform. Such is the price of being a professional.

I do hope your teacher was distraught by the approbation and is remorseful at the financial penury charged for this "teaching"!
_______________________

I've just listened again to your Mendelssohn 53/4. It would be a shame not to have you share music with others - but maybe you could pick the others more carefully!

Finally, my achievement. I ducked out of the e-cital in PC for suites. I had given serious thoughts but I came to a conclusion that i cannot do so much. I got invited to play in my company's asian festival and talked about it with my teacher. She thinks I could do Haru no Umi (Spring Sea) by Michio Miyagi. She got me a flute player to perform with. This person just won district competition. I have to do my best to make the event successful. My teacher is very excited about this and my partner wants to perform this in her Flute recital as well. This means that I have to dedicate my summer month for this. This is going to be my first chamber music public performance so i had to pull out even though i hate to be a quitter… strange achievement but it is for me.

For anyone who is interested in. This is the piece I am going to perform. The lady performing is not me, obviously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrIF_6h16w0

We had that problem years ago. Actually, The Wise And Wonderful One has trouble doing the housework these days though she actually enjoys it. So a lot fell to me.

We downsized.

Please keep playing for others. There may be a couple of things going on. Were you able to play it clean for the teacher? If so, it is more about relaxing at the venue, and there are any number of relatively simple things a person can do to help with that.

If the piece was sometimes shaky with just the teacher, it probably wasn't near ready for performance. Better to play a piece you know better, possibly an easier piece. I know a lot of adults want to do their most difficult pieces, especially if there are skilled kids on the program. However, if a person has issues with public performance, difficulty tends to create more tension and a worse performance.

It is a shame that the teacher wasn't more tactful in his/her criticism. I would talk to the teacher about the situation. I might take an "I need help" approach, asking about what you can do to prepare better and relax better. A little of both go a long way.

There are a few people that suffer extreme nerves when performing. They can't sleep for weeks leading up to the performance, hands are shaking, sweat pouring down almost as if a vicious wild animal is chasing them. It does not sound like you are in that group. For those few, I might agree with giving up on performing. For most other folks, I suggest a combination of better preparation, relaxation techniques, and easier pieces.

As readers can tell from my recent report about my subpar performance, nerves have an impact, as does preparation. I was both nervous being a last minute fill in, and my preparation was poor. In my case, it wasn't a surprise that the train came off the rails.

Lol, my mind was just a week late