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finally some breakthroughs with left hand independence. Some promising 2nd finger right with 5th finger left exercises and runs.

I had to chuckle at that. Been there.

My AOTW: as I write this, the piano tuner is tuning my piano. I've had my piano a couple of years now, and it still thrills me to play it!

Lots of activity this week! Wisebuff - I congratulate you on your improved public performance skills - it's so exciting to feel you can do things that were hard to manage in the past.

SwissMs - your group sounds pretty intimidating! I think the important thing here is that you recognize what the problem is so you can tackle it next time!

Saranoya - playing from lead sheets is fun! You said "he " for your teacher -you've got a new one now?

Carolinakeys - it's fun to work on things you've been hearing about for ages. Personally I've never tackled Hanon--- maybe someday - or maybe not! We'll see!

Ralphiano and Medved1 - great breakthroughs! congratulations!

JimF --- What wonderful satisfaction to finally get to the "I've been dreaming of it" piece! Woohoo - good for you! I find I'm taking a much more focused approach to my practice sessions this past year too - and it's paying off.

The AOTW for me is a double - one is that I played again with my Performance Anxiety Group - and just had fun playing various pieces, even those not quite at performance level! The pieces I wanted to "perform" went well, and I managed to get through Traumerei, even though I still had a major pause part way through - I managed to find my place, focus and move on. On the weekend I played it for a friend and just had a tiny pause, it's really getting better. I've also been working on memorizing it . I don't really plan to play it without the music, but I'm working on memorizing hand positions and patterns and I find that is helping too. It's such a complicated piece.
The other really neat thing - which to be fair, I can hardly call an accomplishment as I was asleep --- I had a dream that I was playing the piano!!! I was playing Tannenbaum! So cool!

Wishing all my PW friends very happy holidays - filled with music of course!

I'm taking lessons from two people now, casinitaly. I still have my "she" teacher for learning classical repertoire. The other one's teaching me accompaniment (I've done Beatles songs, four-hands playing, and also improvisation on a given bass line).

I’m currently hacking my way thru Alfred. Sorry to find out it’s just a funny waste of my time and effort.

I suspect, carolinakeys, he just meant "what was I thinking" in reference to trying Clair De Lune in his first year. Keep hacking!

Yes, that is how I read it as well. Many of us have tried pieces that were huge stretch pieces only shortly after starting to learn--and as learning to play the piano goes, one year is on the short side. I suspect it's one of those 'you don't know what you don't know' things. I spent two years with AAIO books 1-3 and then got a teacher. In retrospect, getting a teacher first thing would have been better, but I don't think I was psychologically ready for one in the very early days.

Yes, that was my meaning as well. What was I thinking referred to tackling a grade 7 or 8 piece 4 months after "conquering" Blow the Man Down. LOL

I’ve seen Alfred trashed so much that’s just the way I took it. I understand the context. No harm, no foul, Back to practice. Mb

Check out the Faber Graduates thread. After four years of work I just completed the last pieces of Faber Piano Adventures Level 5. That's six levels in all, over 500+ pieces.

Now what the heck do I do?

I haven't posted in here for quite some time...not that I haven't achieved anything mind you

I started a piece about 2 weeks ago that had 16th notes in it. 16th notes would scare me and I would go screaming into the night. Now they're not so scary 32nd and 64th on the other hand...

I also finally understand chord progressions. It always baffled me as to what the *bleep* I, VI, V, I (or whatever combination) what they were talking about and my screaming question is "How do you know that's the next chord? Where is this coming from?". I just keep thinking about all those frustrations I had before it clicked and sit there and now scream "Why didn't they just put it that way to begin with without all the over complication?" Next time I go and write my own piece I'm going to try that and it now makes me wonder if the first piece I wrote has some sort of chord progression and I didn't know it.

Today I decided to also start making myself scales and chords sheet music. All of the information I have on that is written in just text in my binder and would like to have it all on sheet music. This is going to be a long term project and I'm not sure how many pages it's going to end up being but I know I'll print it out and have it bound.

Yes...I ramble a lot thanks for noticing :p

Now comes the fun part, Brian! YOU get to choose what to play next! ;-). Don't tell me there isn't some piece that you've been wanting to play forever. Maybe it's even what got you started on this journey in the first place?

There are a few I will admit!

My teacher is rather adamant about me learning pieces that are too much of a stretch, so I think most Chopin Nocturnes will have to wait a bit!

There are a few grade 4 pieces from Chopin that I'm looking at, as well more modern stuff from composers such as Gillock and the like.

Have just passed through the most distant part in the bend of the elliptical path around the sun.
From now on, it's getting better every day. Longer days and moving towards spring!

And my apologies to anybody I may have offended with the original post. I guess I’m overly defensive at times. I should have been more attentive instead of jumping to conclusions.

I just had my last lesson of the year, and it went very well! After my less than stellar performance in the workshop last week, I was determined to do a good job. I played my Bach and Beethoven pretty much note perfect at a moderate tempo, and my teacher was very pleased with my modern piece as well. I received a lot of "Bravos!" which is a good way to end the year! Before beginning each piece, I set the metronome at my target speed to ingrain the tempo that I wanted to play, and the turned it off. Starting off at the correct tempo made the piece much more confident. Eventually I should be able to simply count in at the correct tempo without the aid of the metronome. The AOTW for me was reminding myself that counting in two bars before beginning the piece is essential!

Congratulations everyone for great progresses. I'm trying to find practice time again. Will post more in the new year.

I had a good lesson on Saturday. We spent forty-five minutes on about two measures, working on a "bad habit" I still (still!) haven't completely shaken. The other fifteen minutes were spent on a couple of measures in another piece. She described something I was doing using an analogy that really clicked with me and allowed me to hear what I was doing incorrectly.

It was also my last lesson of the year, and the completion of my third year of lessons. I thanked my teacher for her patience (see above, "bad habits"), her hard work, and her inspiration. She was pleased--very pleased, I think.

Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all good health, fortune, and pianoplaying in 2018.

Happy New Year JimF - Giacomo - and to all my AOTW-PW buddies!

My new year is off to a nice start, pianowise . We had our first Performance Anxiety Group meeting - and we had a new participant. We've decided to meet once a month.

Our new participant was one of the women who had been in our Masterclass group this past summer. Her teacher is the teacher who ran the masterclass. Apparently the woman had a rough time at their Christmas recital and the teacher told her to go participate in "il gruppo di Cas" --- which surprised me, but in a nice way

With regards to my own performance tonight - I confess to having slacked off over my holidays - I've played every day but have done significantly less than during regular weeks, (strangely enough) - I just haven't had the mental energy.
I felt that it showed a bit tonight.... I didn't play as well as other nights, but I still felt it was overall, a positive experience and less stressful than playing even for good friends at this time last year. So, overall: progress towards getting used to playing for others.

Tonight there was a table of 5 who took up beside us (before we started playing) - and they didn't leave. lol. They didn't actually pay too much attention, and that suited us just fine.