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Hello, I'm new to this thread as I just finished Alfred's All-in-One Adult Level 1 and I have my first assignment in Level 2 this week. At some point I should probably try to read this thread from the beginning (122 pages!?), but for now I just thought I would stop by and say Hi.

Congrats Rosewood17, that's great. I really enjoyed the 2nd book, IMO there's lots of interesting music.

I'm actually just posting to say that I've wrapped up book 2. Near the end we skipped a few songs, but did most of them. I'm moving on to RCM grade 2 books, and the journey continues. The Alfred's AIO books were very good in my opinion.

Force of habit being what it is, I'll still probably read this thread every day.

Birdgolf That Chopin piece is a really tough one so good luck on it! How's Musetta's Waltz coming along? I bombed on my performance of it today. So I have another week to put in and then hopefully I will pass it.

Rosewood Congrats!!!! That's a really great milestone! I think you'll enjoy the second book and I hope to hear about your updates on here!

JasonR nice to see your posts in here and congrats on finishing up the second book. I'm about 2/3 of the way done so hopefully I will be graduating in a few months too.

For my update today I am verrrrrry happy to say I am finally finished with my Kuhlau Sonatina! It took me 13 weeks I had a real mental block on it. I feel so lucky I squeaked out a pass in today's lesson!

I'm still working on Musetta's waltz I think I have one more week of refinement. My teacher also assigned me a little technical piece from my Dozen a Day book and I have some theory to work on so. Overall I feel happy and like a weight is off my shoulder with the passing of my Sonatina this week.

Hope everyone else is well and love to read your posts.

blackjack1777 & JasonR Thanks for the welcome & congrats on being so far along! Right now I am working on Guantanamera. I'm not liking it that much; maybe I will like it better when I have learned to play it better!

Rosewood17 I remember Guantanamera and I also felt the same way in the beginning but by the time I had learned it I really enjoyed it maybe you will like it better too

It's getting quiet in here

Ok I passed Musetta's Waltz today! Took me a while but I got there. the pedal and the hand position changes were not easy for me at all.

I also passed a little Dozen a Day technical piece as well so over all it was a good lesson.

I'm going to be starting on To a Wild Rose which I really like as an outside piece and maybe get back to Alfred's in the next week or two. I think Battle Hymn of the Republic is my next one in Alfred's.

Talk to you all soon!

Finished with Guantanamera and did like it better once I learned it, but there were still a couple of small sections that just never sounded quite right (like it was being forced to be in the key of C and really needed some accidentals to sound completely right, if that makes any sense).

Interesting piece of trivia: there is a performance of a piano arrangement of "Guantanamera" in the film "Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia".

This tourist video of a Cuban street band is what taught me to enjoy Guantanamara. Perhaps a little tipsy, but they're feeling it for sure!

Wow ! he can play the guitar! Thanks for posting video. Makes me want to go back and see if I still can play Guantanamara on the piano.

Wow it's been a while since anyone posted! We need to get our thread moving again.

I've been bogged down with outside pieces which is my reason for not having posted in a while but I finally finished some of them. And I'm going to try and get back in the habit of posting once a week.

I just finished Fur Elise which was really a huge challenge for me it took nearly 5 months to complete it.

I recorded it and I tried posting it to my Sound Cloud account but it was deleted due to copyright violations which is weird because the piece is over 200 years old. Anyway I opened an account on Audiomack and it seems to not violate any terms on their site... this is a link to the recording. I hope you enjoy it.

Link --> Fur Elise


As for Alfred's I'm thinking of starting work on Danny Boy next if my teacher let's me I'd like to play it at Christmas time so I'd need to start now. I'll be skipping way ahead but I can come back to the other pieces later.

Also, I just had my 3 year pianoverary of learning piano!

I hope everyone is well and talk to you all soon!

Working on Hungarian Rhapsody N. 2 and Morning Has Broken. This book is going so slowly, perhaps because my teacher had to cancel a week because of moving and then I had to cancel a week due to an emergency hospitalization in the family. In another week I will have to cancel a week due to a trip. However, I have continued to practice every day (and got a Go Piano for the trip, so I am all set there). I'm still having trouble with 7th chords though. For example, G7 is G-B-D-F, right? So inverted it is B-F-G (leaving out the D). What I do not understand is that there is no F in the key of G (it is an F#), so how can the G7 chord have a note in it that does not exist in that key? (I think I asked this before but no one answered. My teacher says "you'll understand later.")

I'm sorry to hear of those troubles Rosewood17. I do hope things are working out. When you do get some time, I'd invite your input in a thread called 1"indulge my crazy idea" if you like. I'm interested to see if we get a response as well as the result.

Blackjack, welcome back and look at this if you'd be interested. Thanks,mb

I'm quoting another source here (referencing the C scale):
When you see "maj7" in a chord, it means the seventh is taken from the major scale, and you'll use the formula 1-3-5-7. A Cmaj7 chord is the notes C-E-G-B. When you just see "7", the chord is a "dominant 7th" chord. Dominant 7ths have the formula 1-3-5-b7, so C7 is C-E-G-Bb.

To find your dominant 7th chord, take the major chord and add minor 3rd on top of it. What you're adding to it is the minor 7th. So in this case it's F, as opposed to F#.

Another thought on dominant 7th that might help is this. Think of a dominant with respect to the key that it is a dominant of. So for Hungarian Rhapsody, in the key of C. G is the dominant. If you build (1, 3, 5, 7) from it, using the notes from the key of C, you'll have F instead of F♯. Morning has Broken is in the key of F major. The dominant of that is C, so building 1, 3, 5, 7 (a C7) from it using the notes in F major you'll end up using B♭ and not B.

I think it's common when learning scales and arpeggios that it also includes the arpeggios for the dominant of the key, in which case the notes will respect that key.

Now for added fun, flatten the 3, 5 and 7 of the dominant 7th chord. In this case you'll have C, Eâ™­, Gâ™­, and Bâ™­â™­ , the diminished 7th chord.

Blackjack...Fur Elise was so good. Thanks for letting us enjoy it.

Birdgolf thank you! It's probably my favorite piece I learned so far.

I worked really hard and there was a lot of times I never thought I'd finish it. Glad you enjoyed it

Blackjack, nice job. I enjoyed listening to it. I still have yet to learn a Beethoven piece. Did you dispute the claim on SoundCloud? They will reinstate your track, usually pretty quick.

Wow it's so quiet in here!! Ok I figured I'd post a short update since it's been a few weeks since my last one.

I have been steadily working on Danny Boy in Alfred's (I asked my teacher if I could skip to it since it's one of my favorite songs - especially for the piano). And this arrangement in Alfred's is really nice!

I have hands together and I started adding in the pedal and dynamics this past weekend. I really can't wait to record this one and post it here. I think this is probably my favorite piece in the book so far.

I also wrapped up To a Wild Rose which is an outside piece for my exam in the spring. It is a wonderful little romantic-era piece written by American composer Edward Macdowell. I highly recommend this piece to anyone around our level. It is beautiful and I think quite accessible. I made a recoding of this on because I liked it so much.

Link to recording --> To a Wild Rose

I'm also working on a modern piece called Ivan Sings by Aram Khachaturian. This is a simple looking piece which has some strange syncopated rhythms but is really nice sounding, a little dark (written in Cminor) but I'm enjoying it. I'm hoping to have hands together later in the week and then start working on the pedal.

I hope everyone is well and progressing in their studies. I will enjoy reading your updates on your progress.