Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Recital 54 - Call For Submission

Recital #54 is now open for submissions!

It’s time for the 54th quarterly “Beginners and Beyond” recital hosted by the Piano World Adult Beginners Forum! The recital will be posted sometime on the 15th of May, which means that submissions must be in by 5:00 am Eastern Standard Time, May 15th. Please note this deadline is very firm; I cannot start working on the recital until it is closed, and once it is closed, no new entries can be added. This is also a different deadline than usual - it actually adds a few hours to the submission period.

While any and all styles of music are welcome, we do ask that it be piano related. Only one recording may be submitted per forum member (although that recording may consist of a medley of two or more very short related pieces).

Editing or digital alteration of your performance (other than minor edits such as trimming long silences at the end or beginning of the piece) is counter to the 'live recital' spirit of the AB Forum Recital and is thus strongly discouraged. In any event, any editing should be disclosed in the "additional information" section of the recital submission template.

If you are fairly new to the piano, please do not be intimidated by some of the talent here in the ABF. We all consider ourselves to be beginners even though we may have been playing for some time. And, we LOVE to hear recordings from folks new to the keyboard. So even if you’re on your first Alfred’s method book, we would *really* enjoy hearing from you.

Recital submissions must be in MP3 format. The maximum size of the file is 20 MB. We recommend encoding the recording at 192 kbs with a constant bitrate, as that works best with the online streaming player. At that bitrate, a 20 MB file works out to be about 7-9 minutes in length. The recording will be normalized when placed in the consolidated zip files, but your original link will still be available for those who want it.

If you are new to recording your music, there are several threads in the forum archives that address the ways and means. Audacity is an excellent free recording application that can be used.

If you are new to the forum and the recitals, I encourage you to browse through a few of the past recitals to see what they’re like. An easy way to find past recitals is to use the ABF Recital Index:

http://recitals.pianoworld.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page


Submitting Your Recording:

We will be using again the absolutely marvelous automatic web-based recital program that mahlzeit wrote for us. You will upload your mp3 file to the recital server as part of the recital submission process.

When you have your mp3 file ready, go to:

https://recitals.pianoworld.com/

and follow the instructions there. Please note that the software does not cope well with international characters, so please convert any such characters to standard American characters. Once you have uploaded your info to the automated recital software, you will receive a confirmation e-mail. You will have the opportunity to revise your submission any time up until the deadline. If you have any problems at all using the website, or if you do not receive a confirmation e-mail within a few hours, just PM me (Sam S). If you have not participated in past recitals using this software, I strongly encourage you to submit your recital piece at least a day in advance in case you run into any problems with it.

The recital website uses the following submission template to be filled out along with your attached music file. You may want to have your responses to these fields prepared in advance so all you have to do is cut and paste:

Performer's Name: {forum ID and real name if you’d like}
Where you are located: {optional}
Avatar image link: {optional}
Experience: {Yrs/Mos of piano playing experience}
Link to YouTube or other video: {optional}
Home page link: {optional}
Title of piece/composer:
Source of music: {sheet music, improvised score, play-by-ear, etc}
Instrument used: {Piano make, keyboard model, etc.}
Recording method: {audacity, Zoom, digital to PC, etc.}
Constructive technical feedback wanted: {Yes/No}
Additional Info: {Your thoughts on the piece, what you had for lunch, etc.}


The due date for all submissions is 5:00 am US EASTERN STANDARD TIME on May 15th, 2019.

By submitting a piece to the recital, you are certifying that it is a recording of your own performance.

Again, the recital order will be presented in the order the pieces were received, so the sooner you send in your piece, the higher you will be on the list! You can revise your entries on the template (e.g., thoughts about your piece, adding YouTube links, and the like) any time and not lose your place in the recital queue, but if you resubmit your recording at any time, for any reason, you will be bumped to the end of the list.

Should you have any questions at all on what to do or how to do it, do not hesitate to ask. Remember, there are NO stupid questions, as we have a steady flow of new members in AB Forum for whom this is their first recital, so your questions will probably help to eliminate other members’ problems.

Looking forward to hearing the recital!

Sam

Please note that the deadline is 5:00 am US Eastern Standard time on May 15th. The recital submission page countdown clock has a different time... I will have to look into the code and see why I can't set it the way I want!

Sam

Mendelssohn Songs Without Words Opus 30.3 submitted.

I have a double submission, although I only got one magic code. No idea why! I edited my name with the magic code (put brackets round it and added the missing letter), so I assume that is the correct one

I removed the duplicate.

Sam

Sam - this could be a little difficult to achieve, unless you have one of those popular and useful "way-back machines"...

LOL.

akc looking forward to the Bach / Marcello Adagio!

Corrected - it appears that I do have a way-back machine of a sort...

Sam

Haha, One more piece of brazilian music submitted =)

Mine appeared as a double submission as well. I am sure Sam will take care of it. Thanks in advance, Sam!

There are a couple of long-standing issues with the software I would like to address this summer. The double submissions and an international character set...

Sam

... and the double numeric indices on the new streaming player.

It's wonderful to see so many performers who are so talented and many who are submitting recordings of their playing for the first time.

Good luck everybody...

How do people have an idea of how many submissions have been made. Can we see who so far has made a submission?

I see it now. It is on the add your submission page.

Another thing that can be improved - this question gets asked every recital, so it needs to be made more obvious.

Sam

I'm not going to have a piece ready in time, the pedal on my piano keeps acting up and my tuner just doesn't seem able to figure out what the problem is. The noise is so bad that a recording would be nearly unlistenable, not to mention I'd go mad trying to record with the pedal being louder than the notes played. I'll join again in August.

Well, somehow I managed to do a TRIPLE submission, but I got the two extra ones deleted.

THat would have been a case of Einaudi Inundation!

Did I mention that the deadline is 5AM May 15, US Eastern time? Still plenty of time to panic...

Sam

Actually, that's a feature, not a bug. You can drag and drop the submissions to change their order, so the first number changes, but not the second. The second number is part of the filename. Anyway, I can't change it...

Sam