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GracieCat, That's great progress!

Michael T - ha! You fooled me! ...So, is it reallly easier? Canon in D is one of my all time, top 5, heart-stirring favourites. How does it sound in C?

Jim...5 days to go!

Clayts: Busking ? wow.... I get nervous just thinking that the neighbours might be listening! Good for you.
p.s.... must be pretty hard to fit the old Steinway on the sidewalk!

Casinitaly: to my novice ears, it sounds great! I can play 3 of 4 pages so far. I should have the entire piece done by the weekend. Then I will start to perfect it. Is it pathetic that I go to sleep at night thinking about playing the piano?!?

Go to sleep thinking of playing the piano. Wake up think about playing the piano. Go to work thinking about playing the piano. Have thoughts of playing the piano floating through the mind throughout the day........ The only time I don't think about playing the piano is when I'm playing the piano

Is that pathetic? I think not!

That's not pathetic-that's totally awesome!! ;D

JimF, the Sonatina I'm working on is Beethoven. There's been a big difference in my playing since I quite focusing on Alfred's. I couldn't hardly play anything with my left hand until I got into playing pieces that were more than broken chords. You probably know what I mean. I have played other instruments, but none I ever care to pick up again.

casinitaly - I played for an adult day care place. But it was sure nice to play AG well for a change

Looks like there's some ABF recital possibilities being discussed here -

Cathy

Sounds familiar. Actually it even goes a bit further than that, since pretty much every dream I can remember involves pianos in some way. Oh, dear, I'm going nuts!

Well, looks like we're all going nuts in good company.

When I'm next in my home town I'll be visiting a senior's residence....maybe I'll be brave enough to play the piano for them!

I'm working on my ABF recital piece but I'm not saying yet what it is yet

Meh, I have a bad experience with senior's residences, from my experience they often don't bother to properly maintain their pianos. But hopefully the one you're going to visit will.

Looking forward to the next ABF e-cital, I personally don't think I'll specifically prepare something for it, but I will probably record whatever I can play best at that time.


@GracieCat
Will you upload your sonatina when you've finished the piece? It's on my to-do list somewhere, and I'd love to hear other ABF'ers play it.

I go to sleep thinking about piano also, especially the day of my lesson. I'm always inspired afterwards look forward to reflecting on my hour with my teacher and the advice he always has. I also go to 'piano' in my head sometimes during a stressful day. It's like a vacation in my mind.

I do that too!

Wanna talk obsession?

The very first thing I do after waking up, even before coffee, is go to the piano and play this little "good morning" song. My yellow lab Alfie howls along with me - I kid you not. That's my wife's signal to wake up. He only does this for this song, and has never howled for anything else except for when I come to a big series of chords (F#7, Bmin) in the Tosca aria - at which point he always give a low distressed moan, sorta like "are ya ok,dad?".

So, even my dog is obsessed with piano!

Love the vision of the 'good morning song'

Just finished a practise session and finally found my achievement of the week. Have been playing "The Music of the Night" from Phantom of the Opera off and on for a number of months. Got to the finale (well, my version of a finale!), sat back and had one of those moments of 'I think that was the best yet!' Hooray!

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Bach for breakfast!
Or in Dutch: "Elke dag begint met Bach!", which translates as "Every day starts with Bach!"

Well, yeah, it rhymes in Dutch you know...

Getting Bach's Minuet in G mostly correct when playing it is my achievement this week. I was struggling last week but I took my teacher's advice and learned the notes so that I wouldn't have to sight read and try to play it properly at the same time.

Good Morning, good morning, good morning to you.
Good Morning, good morning, and how do you do?

We all need a morning piano song, I think!

Snannonie - I love that music! You must be having a great time with it!

Jim, your dog has indeed caught your obsession...now, is that a good thing or not?

Teodor, glad you have found a way to make progress - will we hear your piece at the recital?

Achievement of the week? I finally played, successfully, all the major and minor chords around the circle of fifths. Now to polish them up and get them all smooth. Some, of course, are better than others, but this has been a major goal for a long time, and it's finally here.

I played all 4 pages of a simple version of Canon! It still needs some work, but I am very happy with my progress. My wife enjoys listening to me play.

Yeah the way for me is to stop whining about hand pain and be more relaxed while playing, also working out 3 times a week to strengthen the entire body. I was hesitant when I restarted in December after stopping in May but things are ok for now. Slight hand pain is bearable. As long as it doesn't get any worse I can keep going. For the recital, I want something grander like the Heller Avalanche etude. I've got it up to performance tempo which is an achievement in its own right but I need to work on the smoothness and dynamics (A LOT). It has to be ready for my may recital at the music academy so hopefully it is and I will possibly record it for this online recital as well. If not I've got plenty of things I can play by now, all of them are good music and are coming along nicely. Lately I try to be more concentrated when practicing but it's not easy to resist the urge to just jump from piece to piece and play through the entire thing over and over instead of repeating those troublesome few bars.





That's great! I love that piece very much.

Memorized the 2 first pages of Rachmaninov's Prelude in G minor. Now I just have to get it up to speed. I tested recording at about half tempo and sped it up to full speed and love how it sounds. Also began working on one of Rach's etudes.