Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Introduction

Hey hey,

I'm Julia, 21 y/o from the Netherlands. I started playing piano around December 2018 / Januari 2019 so little over 1,5 years.
During that time I quit my lab technician job to focus more on the instrument and in turn passed auditions for bachelor classical piano which I started last week.
I can play a number of other instruments to some extend, mainly the guitar which for I took lessons in my pre pubescent years.

I love me some romantic era music with over half my repertoire being of said era. That said I am looking to expand my horizon and try out more things from modern and older era's such as baroque and classical.

Hope to meet some like minded people around here

Hallo Julia nice to see you here

Hello Julia, that's a really amazing achievement in 1.5 years. I hope you are enjoying your new course.

Funny to see you both here

Hello Julia, welkom to ABF! It seems that a little group of you have decided to join. I hope you'll enjoy your studies!

Hi Julia! I'm 22 from Ireland so we're in a similar age group here.

Congrats on getting accepted into a music degree! Is it in a conservertoire or a performance degree in a university? I'll be finishing up my Bachelor of Music in a years time.

My main instrument is violin but I'm practising piano every day for the moment. Classical guitar is so Where are you with learning/playing at the moment?

Hey Pianorla ^^

It'll be music education major with main instrument piano and a performance minor. I'm not sure what you mean by "conservertoire or university" as they are the same here. As in here a conservatorium is a university for music focussed majors.

I just finished off Chopin op 69 no 2, the b minor waltz. I'm close to finishing op 28 no 15, the raindrop prelude. And I've picked up Rach op 3 no 2, the C# minor prelude, and Chopin Etude op 10 no 6 and 9. I'll probably keep one of the etudes on the downlow for a little bit until I'm working on the expression and interpretation of the other etude so I don't overwhelm myself with a lot of new progression pieces.
I'm still looking for like 1 or 2 pieces that are a little easier, but I'm sure my new piano teacher at uni will have a few pieces to recommend for that if I can't find anything.

What about you? You say your main instrument is violin, love that instrument, what are you working on there? And what are you currently doing with piano?

You're playing Chopin?!?!? I'm not at that level at all!

I've played violin since I was six years old and I have achieved up to Grade 8 level in exams. I decided to take a break from violin for my final year at university. I usually prefer Baroque repertoire for violin, though for piano I adore the Impressionist era.

I actually started playing piano through attending group piano lessons as part of my second year performance module. I'm taking it at my own pace. I'm still very much a beginner, but I'm making good progress on my method book and practising Hanon and scales alongside it. I'm teaching myself at the moment and I don't expect to become a master at it, but I would like to be able to play Clair de Lune (even a simplified version will do!) or the Gymnopedies some day. I love Chopin for piano but it's very hard. I wouldn't attempt it just yet

Working with a teacher at university level will be beneficial for sure. You'll probably be working on the equivalent of ABRSM for performance exams. My performance exams were based on Grade 7 and 8 standard pieces with the associated scales for those grades.

My music degree is a mixture of performance, composition and musicology. I attended violin lessons as part of my degree in first and second year but we specialise in one of the three strands or do a major/minor route in third year. I ADORE musicology and learning about music (history nerd here) and I hope to go on to do a musicology masters at some point. I'm repeating some modules from my final year as it got messed up by Covid (online learning sucked). I'm also concentrating on writing my dissertation about punk in the mainstream (I did a subculture module in second year and I loved it!).

Your music degree sounds great! Are you hoping to become a teacher or work in education after you finish?

I see you're using Piano Adventures, I like that book, it's really helpful.
Chopin has some easier pieces for sure! I'm sure that you can start one of those soon! I would recommend not playing a simplified version of a piece you like, for me it kind of ruins it. It might take a while until you're at the level to play pieces like Clair de Lune but if you keep at it then I'm sure you'll be able to play them soon enough! We're still young after all and have all this time still to practice ^^ You'll be glad you played the real thing at the end I think. (Just something to concider <3 )

I'm not entirely sure what grading system we use in the Netherlands, I hope I can keep up with the grades. Can already play some pieces around those difficulty levels but still a little behind on technical skills. (Who doesn't neglect those, even a little)

Do you have any composed pieces you're proud of? I'd love to listen or read one! Musicology is also very cool. The stories behind pieces is usually what fuels my motivation to play them. I hope you manage to close off those modules this year despite the pandemic still being around.

I'm not entirely sure how exactly I want my future work week to look like but I imagine it will be something of a mixture of 1 on 1 teaching / high school teaching with performances where ever possible and recording pieces in my spare time.

Welcome, Julia! Will you be possibly joining us for some of the recitals too?

Hey Moro, thank you for the welcome and of course!

I'm really enjoying learning with Piano Adventures. I did use Alfred's when I was learning at university but I needed to develop my skills with playing hands together first. I just found it very chordy, great for pop, but I knew I wanted to play classical. I'm doing a lot of exercises (because I like etudes :D) to build up technique. I finally got a proper scale book today so thats another area to work on while practising. Hopefully I'll get to a point to do exams at some stage though if I can play pieces that I like, I'll be happy enough!

I understand what you're saying about arrangements vs easier source material, but it's good to be able to play an excerpt or a snippet of a harder piece. It gives me a big confidence boost when I'm able to play it!

What books have you used to learn? Or are you more focused on learning syllabus pieces and famous pieces?


I did do a few composing modules: in first year we did pastiche composing using plainchant, Bach chorales and 18th century chamber music and in second year we had 20th century composition which was mainly analysis with three composing assignments and an electronic composition module. A lot of atonal and experimental music but it was great to learn about it. Composing was not my strong suit, some of my friends were geniuses compared to me and are now pursuing careers as composers.

For the future I would love to be able to write about music or become a lecturer. Last semester when I studied a popular music module I wanted to be able to modify the module to make the concepts easier for the rest of my class to understand (my lecturer's powerpoints were all over the place)

Welcome, Julia. That's some advanced repertoire to study at 1.5 years in. Some of those are grade 10 or graduate level pieces, I believe (particularly the Chopin Etudes). Reach pieces for me, for certain. The Rach is on my list; I hope to tackle it soon. Kudos to you; you must be very dedicated. Looking forward to hearing your piano pieces!

Hi

I played from Alfreds for a month or so prior to getting my first teacher. After that I played based on syllabus pieces and grading until my second teacher which assigned pieces himself alongside personal requests of mine.

That sounds like a nice future goal. Writing about music seems great fun. Are you concidering taking a language minor on the side to accomplish this maybe?


Thank you CMB, like I mentioned I quit my job and played piano for 5 to 8 hours a day for a year long. I suppose that work paid off.
If you wanna hear something, this is a piece I played for my auditions: Grieg - Op. 73 No. 7 - Mountaineer's song. (I'm not sure what the policy is on self promotion, I hoped this is allowed? If not I'll edit and delete it!)


Hey

Members of PW frequently post recordings of their works or works in progress. It is not frowned up, indeed, it is encouraged. We like to hear what others are doing and the progress they are making.

This was a nice performance of the Grieg. Thank you.

Regards,

I was thinking the same. Me at 1.5 years I can play some scales and on a good day maybe without looking too. hahah

It's great to know about someone taking music so seriously as to quit the job and focus totally into studying piano. And your Grieg piece sounds very good. You are very talented. I hope you keep around here as times goes, so we can see your further progress. As you ask for pieces, you may enjoy Bach inventions and little preludes, wich have a lot of musical and pedagogical value, im sure your teacher will asign them to you at music school.

Hi Julia
Very nice recording 😊. You might be interested in the forum member recitals we have in the ABF—- with contributions by all levels of pianists

There are four quarterly recitals without a theme—- you can play whatever genre and style of music you wish
http://recitals.pianoworld.com/recitalindex.php

And then there are themed recitals ...

The next is rare gems
http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/forums/51/1/themed-recital-sub-forum.html

That Grieg piece was so very beautiful! Thank you for the 4 minutes, 19 seconds of loveliness. What a gift you have for piano. Why are you here in the beginner's forum, lol!