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

TallGuy- oh darn, you missed the recital You'll have to post to the piano bar!

AnneH how very very sweet of your father-in-law. What a labour of love, and a handsome finished product. I love the delicate pattern on the lid.

Yesterday playing my piano I realized that I really need to get the tuner over. I don't think it will be my ATOW this week though, maybe the next one.....

Last night I dreamed about very slow practice.
I still struggle to stick to doing it, but at least the idea seems to be sinking in!

I did, thanks! This was my 1st over there. Here's the link, if anyone's interested.

Full disclosure: it's a bit of a downer!

Played an entire mozart violin and piano sonata (E minor) at a small recital for my chamber music exam. There was only one major mistake and the rest was great. I got really good feedback from my teacher and from a woman who has a doctor degree in piano performance. She couldn't believe I'm an adult beginner.

A huge achievement considering I hardly took time to play piano the last 6 months. (maybe 2-3 times for an hour per week)

This is the second mozart sonata for violin that I've completed and played in recital.


Sadly my parents and family and friends have never come to any of my 1 million recitals and I've been doing this for 4 years now

Good work Teodor!
Do your family and friends know how much you'd like them to come?

I played at my teacher's recital last night. My Stravinsky was fine, but about halfway through the duet, I saw my hand shaking, then my fingers were clammy and sticky and finally I was completely undone by the last line. We'll make a redemption video.

SwissMS, sounds like you are accomplishing a lot.

AnneH, congrats on the new bench.

Malkin, you got through the recital, though with some effort.

Teodor, I was wondering what had happened to you. Congrats on the chamber music. I remember it being a difficult class for you. As for parents, love them for what they do give you, which may not always be what you may like. Don't become bitter over petty slights. My dad passed away last year, and that always gives perspective. I often think I would wish for parents with different attributes. However, I see some friends with those kinds of parents and they wish for something different as well.

Week 114: A attend a concert featuring Somang Jeagal on piano playing some Bach, Haydn, Liebermann, Rachmaninoff.

I perform at the song circle at Songmakers. I do two on the old Roland keyboard, my new piece Pixie Dust, and I lead a sing along of sections from Tonight from Westside Story. Both go okay. I get a few compliments from the small group.

First....good going Sand Tiger... When people bother to compliment you. It means a lot. Congrats! Second the quote...

I was wondering about Teodor also. Good to see you back. Count your blessings with your parents. Could have ones who pushed piano on you as a child. That destructive driven kind of attitude that causes one to hate piano. I also understand on no support. Sad they haven't come to even one recital. At least as a kid. My parents came to the school band recital. It was obvious patronization though.
On friends, believe me. You'll be lucky if you find one really good friend in life. The rest. They only want to know you if they get something out of it. I've been there. Nobody wants to know you when you're poor and don't have anything for them. Everybody wants to know you when you're rich and have something for them.

Good going Malkin... You made it! Ya know? I've thought about setting up a thread on how to fake an epileptic attack when we need to.

TallGuy.... Congrats on getting it done. I listened in the piano bar. Nice. It's great not to give up.

AnneH.... That's a beautiful bench.

Cas....now I realize! I got confused on the FOYD thread with this one. It's not your teacher. It's your tuner who's coming over! Doh!

I agree w rnaple, teodor keep doing the recitals they are primarily for your own enjoyment and development.

I can empathize w Malkin. I get into a psychological reinforcing situation where I realize I am doing well and I say to myself shouldn't I be doing bad? And then it spirals downward.

Can't wait to receive my complete works book or Debussy from amazon. Only five bucks for a used-good copy. I've had good luck w that so hopefully this copy is great.

TallGuy, neat improve - a bit sombre, but pretty. I'd say more peaceful than depressing I'm curious as to what you did post performance - some reverb maybe ?

Teodor congratulations on your success - and condolences on not having others who are close to you share your passion. It is discouraging when they don't seem to take an interest. Try not to let it get to you or interfer with the happiness your music brings you.

Malkin - great that your Stravinsky went well - and that's really too bad about the duet. I hope you can find a strategy to counteract the shaking hands should it happen again.

SandTiger - Great musical adventures! West side story and pixie dust, sounds like teen gangs meet lost boys! Looking forward to hearing your Pixie Dust piece!

Brian - have fun with Debussy!

Ron-- I was mixed up too, I looked through this thread 3 times trying to find your post so I could reply to it!

Ah, well... the fact that you have to ask is gratifying. Heavy-handed effects sound awful, and it's a real art to shape the sound so that it adds some polish and distinction without sounding clichéd or like it was recorded in a tin can.

There is some light reverb (a very small amount of "wet mix" from a medium sized virtual room) and similar on a short delay effect. The "ahhhh" effect that is 1st heard @ 0:45 is reverb in freeze mode. If it were a real room creating the reverb, it would be as though we grabbed whatever bounced off the walls at the instant the effect was invoked and it then plays continuously (until faded out manually). It's an interesting one. Equalization was used to roll off the low end quite a bit, and to decrease general background noise. Last but not least, the left/right channels are panned quite a bit to the left and right -- which gives a sense of width that isn't there as originally captured by the phone.

I did press the keys though.

My "achievement of the week" is that I feel I've caught up after a lot of travel and am making progress again.

My "anti-achievement" is that I failed to submit to the quarterly recital. So much backwards movement after that travel that nothing was fit to perform.

Now I need to decide what my focus for this week will be! I'm more or less at the point to start working on a new piece, so maybe this week's project will be to select which one. I have a few contenders, and I'm not quite sure whether to pick something challenging or something I can master more quickly.

SwissMS, amazing to read about your supervised practice.

My achievement this week was that much coveted statement from my teacher "That was really nice!" for my trickiest exam piece, "La Peruanita". This piece is fast, has really tricky rhythms. and a mix of legato/staccato. It is a mere 53 seconds long without the repeat, but it was far more work than the other two pieces which are each 2 minutes long. So with that, I am feeling pretty confident about performing the three of them. I posted La Peruanita and The Sun is Setting to the piano bar.

She also sent me a link to a very interesting article on perfectionism, and I thought I would share it. Hmmm, I wonder who she thought was a perfectionist? Back to practicing...

http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/...ght-and-wrong-way-to-be-a-perfectionist/

TallGuy - it all sounds very complicated ! But it sounded very nice

Barbaram - why not choose 2 pieces? One easier that you can sink your teeth into faster, and one for a longer-term plan?

SwissMS, congrats on the highly-coveted praise from your teacher- I know she's been pushing you harder than ever recently and this has to be a great satisfaction!

The article on perfectionism was interesting. What I thought was missing was how those who strive for perfection work to achieve it versus those who have "too-high" achievement concerns and stresses- that would be VERY interesting!


My ATOW stems from the fact that I've been super busy and have not has as much time to pracice as I would have liked this week. Today was a total zoo of non-stop rushing around and I arrived at my lesson stressed because I was almost late, had been rushing like a mad-woman for hours, and felt unprepared.....
So it was very interesting to sit down and play my pieces (s.l.o.w.l.y.) and very reasonably accurately. It wasn't the total hash that I had pretty much resigned myself to presenting. So it seems that this slow practise is paying off in a way that I had not expected - helping me settle down and stay focused under less that optimal conditions.

Now how cool is that?

Today I learned the last of the twenty four major and minor harmonic scales (two octaves) and am pretty pleased with myself. I started fourteen months ago with enthusiasm, stopped, started, stopped and finally eight weeks ago restarted with a purpose. Scales are hard there is no doubt, at least during the initial learning stage, but some are already well ingrained and fluent. I also had the tricky decision of whether scales are worthwhile or not. There seems to be some debate on this and partly was a reason for stopping for a spell. In the end I decided to confront a fear I had about scales and just do them. I don't want any skeletons in the cupboard.

PS although I never learned piano as a kid we did own one when I was around thirteen and I learned the C major scale at the time. So it's only taken forty three years to learn the complete set.

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum and I'm excited to have other piano lovers to talk to. I always wanted to learn to play the piano, but never had the chance until last year so I started at 26 and am trying to make up for lost time. One thing that got me really excited this week was when my teacher assigned the piece Fur Elise to me, its my first "famous" classical piece so I'm hoping to learn to play it well! I was pretty pleased with my sight read of the first section, so hoping to learn the second section next week.

welcome to the forum musicalinfinity, it is a great feeling to be learning something as famous as Fur Elise. It is not an easy piece and I have had to put it on the shelf for now but hopefully one day I will return to it.

I got the greatest achievement this week! Although it isn't directly on piano. It directly effects the heart to achieve real music. I just gotta tell...

I saved a doggie yesterday! I ran across this poor Great Dane wondering around while I was working. I could tell he was lost. To make a long story short. Ended up through 911, contacting the owner. The owner met me and the dog. He was so happy. Was looking for the dog all morning long. Looked like he had been up all night long.

I needed this badly. As I found out on Tue. that my favorite customer had died. She was a wonderful, very smart, hunting bred, Black Lab.

Good job Ron!

My AOTW: having fun playing the piano yesterday ALL DAY LONG (yes I am screaming of excitement).
The tuner came along and though it was not very much out of tune, the slight change has a wonderful effect. The treble seems to float and the bass has lost a metallic overtone that was there since a couple of months.

I have just officially joined Pianoworld.

Being a very new adult beginner, I acquired a teacher referred from the music store I bought my Alfred's Book 1 from.
We have had a few lessons and I have learned very quickly that I have a lot to learn.

She owns an upright which she normally teaches on in a separate room on the side of her house, but to get there you have to pass by the grand piano in her living room.

Yesterday I casually mentioned when I walked passed that I would love to play it one day when I felt worthy. She immediately said "Well let's play it now".

I was very excited, needless to say I was a bit intimidated.
I started off badly and promptly made a lot of errors in my first piece, which I feel I know quite well. I felt disappointed that I had tarnished this first opportunity.
I then continued to make numerous mistakes on other pieces that I normally play better at home on my digital piano. Obviously the touch and feel of the Grand was way beyond me. She made special mention that I was playing too "percussive" and I needed to play more "Cantabile".

And then on the final song of the lesson, I redeemed myself and played "Greensleeves", which I do not know too well, beautifully by sight-reading(with a few errors obviously).
She was impressed with my sight-reading on that song and that I played it more expressively.

So it ended off very well.
I am not sure if I will ask her if I can play the grand again next time.
I am still a bit intimidated.

Welcome Jeremy SA and musicalinfinity!

Wimpiano, the same happened to me last week: the technician came and said that my piano was "still playable", but after the tuning it's much better and a real pleasure to play!

Today I had a sort of last rehearsal for the live recital, that will take place this Saturday. Three teachers and some children were there, so my hands were a bit shaking.
During the duet with my son I could not focus so I lost my way a couple of times but I always did catch up well; my solo piece was quite fine.
But now I'm really nervous and Saturday will be terrible. Please wish me luck!

Oh, and since yesterday my son agreed to record the duet, I posted it on piano bar (first time there).