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Thanks to both you and your teacher

I wanted to come back and report that I did have my first lesson this weekend. She wanted to go over a lot of music theory I’d kind of half-understood from the book, which is probably good but not what I expected. I only played a couple of songs for her. She said I played correctly, but need to work on phrasing and blending notes more smoothly. My form is good except that I tend to hold my pinkie in the air when I’m not using it. So that part was exactly what I wanted/expected - help making the pieces I can already play sound more musical. She didn’t assign me any more music and was fine with my finishing up the last couple songs in this book and moving forward to book two.

I did want to clarify something on my review system, since a few of you found it interesting. I don’t review *all* the songs. A lot of the earliest stuff isn’t worth playing for me, and some of them I just didn’t like and learned once but won’t review. (Lone Star Waltz, for example.) I try to keep stuff that has some interesting element to it, I still find challenging, and/or I enjoy playing. So I still review Saints Go Marching In even though there’s nothing for me to learn there. And by the time I’m playing something once a month, I couldn’t really call it a waste of time - a minute a month. Anyway, after three months of that I would probably drop it rather than have it on every 2-4 months! And then just make a list of those things to go back to every once in a while on a rainy day. I don’t know how many songs are in the book, but having reached the end I have 33 on my review schedules. 7 of them I’m still playing every 1-2 days. The rest range from twice a week to once a month. But, I also have almost as many pieces at each frequency from the Sacred Music accompanying book. I spend about 25% of my time on my newest piece, maybe 10-15% on pieces I know well enough to play weekly or less, and 60% of my time working on really mastering 10 or so pieces that I have played through properly before. I end up playing each one 2-5 times typically, sometime the difficult section/s more. Probably in a little while some of the songs that were useful a few months ago won’t be useful for review at all anymore. I started the book being able to play a melody with basic chords in C Major and have finished the book in 5 months. I can pretty easily play any song in the book within 1-2 tries. And that includes learning 25+ songs from the Sacred book too, all of which I actually like and want to keep in repertoire, at least for now. I skipped the ones from that book I don’t know and like. So I’m comclusion, I think my review schedule has been effective and not inefficient! I practice 45 minutes every day very consistently.

I’ve almost got Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I think I’ll learn Singing in the Rain and not the other three performance pieces. Maybe I’ll play Amazing Grace for the teacher at my next lesson. I don’t think I’m doing a great job “with feeling,” and I’m not confident in the triplet rhythm. I should get out the CD I got with the book.

Also, for friendliness’ sake, I saw someone call me “he” earlier, but I’m a “she” engineer. I am actually a chemical engineer, but right now I’m home with little kids being a “domestic engineer,” as homemakers have sometimes been called.

“Little Brown Jug” *still* gives me the most trouble of anything! My favorites are Greensleeves, Whole World in his Hands and Entertainer. I also really like Got Those Blues, actually, for something fun I easily memorized. I hope to learn more blues someday.

I can’t play much music at all without reading it! At least not smoothly without trial and error.

Nice update, Domestic Engineer Good that you started formal lessons. I have the same problem with the pinkie shooting up in the air. So if you get any advice on how to fix it, please let me know!

I think playing while reading is what's generally recommended for people at our level. You are doing exactly what's suggested

The pinky stretched out (any finger stretched out) is a sign of tension. I had this with both pointer fingers and almost have it fixed. The advice I got was that when I notice it, just return it to home position. You can do this while playing. Be aware of that problem and keep an eye out for it. When it crops up just return to home position and it will eventually stop misbehaving.

One way that may help fix that problem faster is to incorporate something in your warm up to address this issue. Try to figure out what the trigger is for your finger to point. I noticed my pointer finger would always want to point when I played a I chord after a V7 chord. So I added that chord progression to warm up and focused on keeping the pointer finger at home position.

My teacher pointed out to me yesterday at lesson that when I play an octave stretch (like G2 & G3) my middle fingers want to stretch out (point). I am noticing there are also forms of tension that can come up when moving finger positions also. I think as awareness increases it is easier to fix these things, but at our level thank goodness for the teacher because there is lot's of stuff we don't notice yet.

This was immensely helpful, Progman Thank you! I’ll try to make good use of your suggestions. My pinkie sticks up and curls some of the times. But when I play scales, it's always the case. I don’t play scales enough, so taming the pinkie should be a good motivation to do it everyday.

My scale work is warm-up only. I just started doing parallel scales (2 hands) in C and G, and I run through F and Dminor.....not even 5 minutes. I notice more advanced people doing like 20 minutes on scales every day. I get that it really helps your technique, but I don't really visualize myself doing that....but one never knows I guess.

The important thing is you know what sets off your pinky - so you kill 2 birds with one stone. I like the math

I think I just hit my first frustrating point in the book at blow the man down, I dunno why I am having such a time with it. I will give it another go today maybe try slowing it down a few times

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

There are actually threads on this very song in Alfred's: it is one of the songs that trips up most folks (myself included). You'll get through it!!!

I just started Amazing Grace. Just looking at it makes me anxious!

Congratulations on reaching the infamous Blow The Man Down The worst part for me was the return of that wicked rhythm in the 2nd last measure.. just when you think you are nearly done with it! Have patience with this one.


Done with The Entertainer then. How awesome for you! I’m stuck at Good People. Nothing is working out for me in this one. It’s horrible. I’m thinking of letting it rest for a few days (or forever).

I honestly don't remember Good People: I'm going to go back to it and see if I can play it! LOL!

Yes, I was quite pleased with getting through The Entertainer *mostly* without fatal errors (though, as my teacher said, he's not looking for perfection).

It's because of continuous broken chords in the left hand at a 'high' speed. A complaint spoken many times is that Alfred's doesn't develop the left hand. This is a pretty big step in developing the left hand. You will find going forward more of this.

A couple things you might try here is to alter your warm-up and practice technique. At this point you have been shown some Hanon exercises so maybe do this (focus on left hand) for warm up. On the practice side, maybe just focus on one phrase at a time. After you get the first phrase up to 60BPM (or whatever rate), move to the 2nd phrase. When you get that one up to speed, then do both phrase 1 and 2 together. Rinse and repeat. Good luck!

Thanks for discussing your review system a bit further, I find it very interesting. I've just started using spaced repetition to keep a collection of review material in rotation, while trying to be efficient about how much material I review on any given day, and so, how much practice time is dedicated. I'm using a spaced repetition app called SuperMemo to handle scheduling of the material to review -- still too early to tell how it will work out, but so far I'm enjoying having so much more time I can dedicate to working on new material.

Also, I'm sorry for incorrectly assuming what your gender was in an earlier post. It's certainly a mistake of me to make such an assumption based on nothing at all.



As others have mentioned, you're definitely not alone with this -- it's come up time and again in this thread. When I got to this piece (not very long ago) it was the first piece that felt genuinely impossible for a while. For me, it was not just the broken left hand chord, but most importantly the difference in rhythm between the hands -- one hand needing to move to the next note on the beat, while the other held a note and came in 'late' off the beat. I eventually got a handle on it by, as you're thinking of doing, slowing down dramatically, and also by counting out each eighth note while paying careful deliberate attention to each finger moving up or down, or staying in place, on each count. Good luck -- once you get the hand of it, I think it will begin to feel quite natural. When I came across this rhythmic pattern again (not in Alfred's, but in Handel's Gavotte in Fundamental Keys) I was well prepared for it and found it to be much easier.

Well I actually think I got it, funny thing it started coming around after I stopped thinking about it, Now i just need to get over the last part of it.

Cool This was the first piece I learnt, which made me appreciate breaks with added dollops of sleep

Good luck with the last part as well. It's similar, so just a matter of time now.

Was away from home (and my piano!!!) for a conference this past week: always enjoy coming back and playing. Only problem: I haven't even touched "Amazing Grace" yet!

I'm the same way, my brain likes to have a break every so often. Of course, the brain is still processing piano stuff during the break....

I took a break too Not a complete break from piano, but from Alfred. Got very little time last week, and could focus on just my lesson piece.

After returning to Alfred, I didn't find Good People as troublesome as before. And it's fun to play too! Little Brown Jug will still take a few more days I guess. I can only play it at a very slow tempo as of now. Will pick Auld Lang Syne in a day or two..

Does anyone know the difference between these 3x 1990s books...

* 1994 - Alfred's Basic Adult All-in-One Piano Course: Lesson, Theory, Technic ISBN: 9780882848181
* 1995 - Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course, All-In-One, Level 2: Lesson, Theory, Solo ISBN: 9780882849942
* 1996 - Alfred's Adult All-in-One Course: Level 3: Lesson, Theory, Solo ISBN: 9780739000687

... and this?

* 2013 - Alfred's Self-Teaching Adult Piano Course ISBN 9780739052051

---

Also, that last one comes as a box set too, with a CD, DVD, etc. What does the DVD contain, and is it of any real benefit over just the 3x 1990s books?

Looks like 3 different Levels. I expect the 1994 one is a Level 1. Those dates are probably the copyright dates of each. So this thread is 'Book #1' (interchangeable with Level #1). The idea is you do level 1 first then level 2, etc. Increasing difficulty as you go along. The 2013 I have not heard of this specific one - probably an updated version similar in form to the earlier ones.

You can check these threads:
http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1851154/which-alfred-book.html

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/2017979/Alfred's_self_Teaching_Adult_P.html

My teacher uses the Basic Level 1. I had ordered the All-In-One book by mistake. It has extra pieces from whatever I’ve seen. So nothing to complain. I’m not sure about the theory part, coz I didn’t really notice any difference in that aspect. (You don't need to get the level 2 or 3 right now, btw. It takes quite a while to finish level 1.)

I just noticed that my book has an enclosed CD too. I had completely forgotten about that, since my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive All these music books are shipping with attached CDs, which are wasted on me. I think I’ll keep collecting these, and when I have enough, I’ll string these together and hang on the wall. Like this: https://imgur.com/a/AGFrfU3

Jokes apart, I haven’t really missed the CDs. I listen to the pieces from this YouTube playlist. There are other similar channels as well. If you are planning on self teaching, the DVD option may be helpful.