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

Yep, read your other post. My congratulations as well.

I cannot believe that this thread is pushed back to 5 pages. I guess everyone is busy. Including myself. Achievement of the week - enjoyed a few Christmas music. It’s so fun. Nice to play something I can sing along.

Have something to submit for the last recital and get some positive reviews on my playing.

Funny I was planning on posting yesterday. It’s been a while since I have posted here.

My AOTW is shifting the emphasis between the hands in a Bach Invention (4), while softening the accompanying hand. This requires constant shifting, and softening, of the hands, alternately, and I found it trickier than I had expected.

Got congratulated by my teacher regarding my crescendo's. It has taken me a long, long time to play forte as forte instead of piano.

I hope to have that achievement someday! I cannot seem to play forte, at least not with any consistency. My brain is performing the dynamics, but my body has trouble cooperating.

Congratulations A thumbs-up from your teacher is always great.

Finished Bach Busoni Chaconne in D Minor BWV 1004, now to polish for several months/weeks up to a performance standard. Starting Liszt/Schumann Widmung.

It's not only playing that improves with practice and experience. Teaching does too!

The noted London percussionist Gary Kettel was once asked by a conductor how more tone could be got from a bass drum. His considered reply, delivered in his best East London accent, was - 'it it 'arder.

I commend the same basic approach to playing the piano forte. Hit it harder! :-)

LOL

Für Elise has progressed to a point where I can play through the whole thing in a slow, but not practice-slow, tempo. My teacher recommended giving it a rest for a few weeks and then revisit to polish.

She gave me a piano version of Largo from the opera Xerxes and I'm having a hard time getting my hands to play so far. Only made it to bar 10 or so.

My teacher and I planned out the next year using the quarterly recitals and the themed recitals of ABF as goals and performance dates. I seem to work best when I have deadlines instead of open ended projects, so I proposed this idea to her and she thought it was a good idea. We chose the pieces and began working of items due in the first half of the year. I am energized by having focus and direction. I love having a plan!

I too have been out of the loop for quite a while.I found MOYD very helpful a few years back when I took up piano again. But our life style now that my other half has retired has changed. He loves to travel which makes consistent practice just about impossible. He has, as I’ve always known, been a ‘ rolling stone’ and his work did involve a lot of world travel back in the day. At first I felt quite upset about it but compromise is part of any relationship and after almost 50 years together we’ve ironed out almost all the wrinkles between us! Unfortunately playing piano takes a certain discipline that only other piano players really understand. So I’ve felt hard done by with the compromise that has been asked of me. At first we did take a keyboard with us, but that’s heavy and more problematic than it was worth for the time I did get to use it. I am a very realistic and down to earth type so set my goals a little lower. And at 70 next birthday do realize that a Brahms 2nd piano concerto is not what I can ever achieve, but as I play more my appreciation of those that can soars! The other part of the compromise is that we take in as many concerts as we can and seek out travel plans to include something special that’s being put on if dates allow.
I did make a submission for last Feb recital and I’d hoped to try and submit though the year. That I haven’t done and here we are in November already......
I read SwissMS resolution just now. It was the first time I’ve signed in for ages. We had had such a good time at St Goar I was sad not to have kept up with my playing since then. I’ve have been in a bit of a funk about it, especially fearing that Piano World was a facing a crisis and perhaps falling apart. But maybe I can make a similar plan and find some shorter pieces that I can be excited to play and reach a shorter term goal of getting to a decent enough play though to submit for the quarterly recitals here. I am home just now before Xmas for a 6 week spell of time away and am trying Brahms op 119/1, just two pages and exquisitely beautiful.I will talk to my piano guru next lesson! We’re off for a month til mid Jan with little chance of much practice but maybe Feb recital is a possibility. I do feel more motivated when I have a plan and a goal to reach, outside of myself, to really polish a piece off. And that in and of itself is so very satisfying, even if no one else hears it!

I'm currently playing with a hand injury. I think it came from memorizing a piece that have had some challenging fingering from Day 1.

After watching a few piano videos that explain hand mechanics at the piano, I decided to re-visit the 2nd Movement of Moonlight Sonata. Taking it slow, I'm marking the music with the fingering that works better for my injured hand and implementing the main concepts behind this approach (Taubman approach).

It's been maybe a year since I took this piece out and I'm excited that I'm making faster progress on this re-visit.

I went piano shopping on Friday. I was honestly dreading playing the pianos in the showroom; I get really nervous playing in front of strangers. But it was fine! I didn't feel very uncomfortable at all...mostly I just worried about annoying the sales people because I was playing the same things on 5 or 6 pianos. I'm sure they must be used to that though.

And then yesterday I performed in a Christmas recital. Just one piece...I had two flubs, one big and one small. It's probably the best I can hope for under pressure. The last recital was in June. I was so nervous I almost felt sick for the entire 3-4 hours leading up to it. I ended up backing out once I got there. Yesterday I felt pretty calm until it was almost my turn, but even then I was nowhere near as nervous as last time. Total win!! Now I just need to work on bowing more gracefully and not running back to my seat, LOL.

That is fantastic JB_PW. Playing in front of people is always hard. Overcoming your fears shows courage. That is the best achievement.

LadyAcadia, I sent you a PM (private message). You can find it at the upper right corner of the webpage immediately to the left of your "LadyAcadia" forum handle. Click on the envelope-shaped icon.

Congratulations, that's awesome I don't think I could ever perform in front of 'people'.

I have been a bit despondent over the fact that I'm slow. I've been practicing a piece forever (well, in total anyway), which is supposed to be played around 130, and I play it around 90. It's a comfortable speed for me, but I'm still at a level of struggling to play the dynamics I want with consistency. I remember it being like this as well 3 years ago. And I was convinced that I can never learn to play 'fast'.
The last few days I tried setting the metronome (don't usually use it ever) to 110, and just playing one bar (over and over), then another, at that speed. It was hard, very hard. But suddenly yesterday, I could play half the piece at 110! I lost any trace of dynamics, but I didn't fall off or hit any wrong notes or anything. It was a major milestone for me. I'm still grinning at the thought. I'm going back to my comfy speed working on dynamics and control for now, but it showed me that with time and practice, I can probably get at some of the faster moving pieces eventually