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

GlassLove, I find folks like you who start from ground zero simply amazing! My "advantage" of learning during childhood is huge, but yet, lots of you guys are much better and faster than learners than I am. Keep it up!

Wonderful! I listened to your piece in the other thread, -... wow, I would love to be able to play like that! I've got a way to go though.... I'm not even at my 1 year mark
..... but I do have an acoustic piano arriving in about 40 hours

CebuKid, I did a bunch of sight reading too last night out of my favorite "old" book, Easy Classics to Moderns. What a fun break from actually practicing. BTW, enjoyed listening to your playing.

casinitaly, we're counting down with you!

CebuKid - glad to hear our master of rags is back on his horse. There seem to be a lot of technical challenges in the material you take on, so its not surprising if it wears on you from time to time. You sounded great to me.

Cheryl - You must by dying of anticipation right about now. Try not to wear your fingers to the nub playing all day when your new baby finally arrives

Just got back from my lesson and, thankfully, all went well this week. Misty sounded great on teacher's accoustic - I just love those big seventh chords - and she paid me a very nice compliment. Whether it was true or not, I don't know, but I sure will take it.

Will start putting HT on the Chopin prelude this week, so its coming along. It may be the saddest piece of music ever written, but I love it. Every time I hear it I picture him fighting with his girlfriend George Sands while they are wintering in some dreary monastery in Spain or something. I know he wrote a bunch of preludes under circumstances like that, not sure if the E-minor was one of them.

Started in on Embraceable You for my next piece out of the Coates book. What a Difference a Day Made will have to wait a few weeks.

I'm glad to be able to play a few of these old standards and I'm going to try and keep them up and playable for a time, particularly while I'm looking for a piano. Gotta have something other than scales to use while auditioning pianos. Also, we're going on a short cruise at the end of the month, which is going to test my MOYD chops once again. Like I did in Vegas this summer, I'll be looking for a lounge piano aboard so I can sneak in some pre-dawn practice time. Wonder what the going rate is for bribing lounge cleaning crew at sea?

Thanks for sharing my enthusiasm folks, it really makes everything all the more delightful!

Jim, a cruise! Very nice.... you'll have to let us know how the bribes work out.
I'll have to check the Chopin piece, I can't think of what it sounds like, but Eminor sounds sad to start with!

Marybee, isn't it fun to just relax with pieces that USED to be hard but are not easy?

Be back tomorrow this time... with pics

Hi Cheryl,

Here’s the famous Chopin Prelude 28-4 in E minor that Jim is talking about ... everybody takes to this gem in entry to the magic world of Chopin ... it’s a 25 measure Largo with a haunting RH single-note outline over a LH bed of repeating
3-note chords which gently descend ... with a foxy little turn at m16 before returning to the LH chordal motif ... and closing on 3 grand sustained chords ... back to the E minor keynote.

Just faxed Chopin ... telling him about the 21 October delivery of your little piano ... he says that his Prelude in E minor should prove just your cup of tea ... but he added ... after
E minor there are 23 more Preludes waiting in the wings.

Every good wish with your new piano adventure ... kind regards.

I took the gem of prelude 28-7 as my entry. 28-4 is on my to do list. Just waiting for Santa to bring me Chopin: An Introduction to his Piano Works (Book & CD) for Christmas. Yeah, I know I can get it online for free, but it's not like I'm going to have time for a while anyway

I realize I haven't posted any achievements recently. I think small, steady progress is what's happening ... and that's any achievement, just not "of the week"!

@btb - you are such a sweetie! Thank you ! I listened to a youtube video of this piece, while reading the music. What an elegant piece; I can see why it is a good "starter" Chopin! I will certainly be giving it a try.

It really is melancholy, but beautiful. I love those last reverberating chords.

Jim, you'll have to let us hear you when you are comfortable with your performance, I'm serious!

Andy ... small steady progress is what we all aim for!
...and you've now given me yet another book to add to my music wishlist!

Well, I should have taken the E-minor Prelude as my maiden Chopin voyage. What I actually did start with is the A-minor Waltz Op.Pos., which I barely survived as a Chopin starter.

What's really neat about reaching a point where we can start studying pieces like the Chopin is that you can envision playing them for many, many years. Getting the right notes at the right time is just the beginning. These pieces offer all kinds of little nuances of technique and opportunities for individual expression. Also, there's this feeling of connection - with all of the students that have studied and will study the same pieces, as well as with the composer him/herself.

Ahh! The e minor prelude! It never ceases to amaze me how Chopin managed to write such a beautiful heartwrenching peace of music with such a simplistic melody on top of chromatically descending chords.

I've got the sheet music to that somewhere in my collection, and I could probably play the notes, but I have it on hold.
I want to wait until my technique is better, I don't want to botch the piece with half decent playing. :P



That's the sort of thing I meant!

Can’t fault your working list Jim.

Working on:
Embraceable You - G.Gershwin
Prelude in E Minor - Chopin Op.28-4
Misty - Erroll Garner
As Time Goes By - H.Hupfield

Am reminded that "As Time Goes By" is from the movie Casablanca
with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman ... and Sam at the piano singing

"You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh;
The fundamental things apply, As Time Goes By.
And when two lovers woo, they still say “I love you”, On that you can rely;
No matter what the future brings, As Time Goes By.”

Have you seen the movie "Play Misty For Me"
(Clint Eastwood)
in which Erroll Garner’s classic "Misty" is featured?

It's here!

Yamaha P112N-S, 7 years old, with silent option! (You can see a smidge of my digital in this one too..in the bottom corner!



The first thing I played was Danny Boy
Then a couple of pieces I know by heart - my Vinciguerra pieces, then Doll's Complaint and Candore... now... a bit of Moonlight seranade and then perhaps I'll take a shot at some Chopin?

I'm supposed to also do some grocery shopping and ironing. What are the odds that some things just won't get done today

Its absolutely beautiful!!! Congratulations, Cheryl.

My watchword (post-shopping) is ...
and that’s provided there’s no chance of running out of tea, milk and sugar ...

"to heck with the chores ... when the piano needs playing"

The cuppa is needed to fully savour my recordings after a spell at the piano.

Congratulations Cheryl on delivery of your piano ... and Danny Boy starters ... take my fond advice ... "to heck with the chores" ... there are much bigger fish to fry.

PS You might need to buy a carpet to soak up the hard floor and wall surfaces seen in the photo ... just a thought.

Gorgeous!!! Enjoy!!! & let us know how the silencer works.

Yes, I think I'll be using the silencer on and off til I get used to it
and yes, I might need something on the floor..... we shall see.

I'm a little disappointed in that it seems a bit out of tune - it actually sounded better in the shop before it had been (supposedly) fine-tuned.
I'm not worried, but I do think it needs another going over by a technician.

The hard thing is to stay away from it, as I'm supposed to be resting my hands for about another week. arghh.....
We have guests coming for the weekend and we'll be quite busy, so that will help!

Thats just great, Cheryl. Looks terrific. How do like the Coates arrangements so far?

Thanks Jim!
I really like the Coates arrangements - they sound right, even with my skill level!

My big achievement (today!) was to get one of the etudes I'm practicing his week to actually sound like music. It's in 3/4 time, with a left hand that consists entirely of long strings of either B-G or C-G half notes (so each measure is either B-G-B-G-B-G or C-G-C-G-C-G.) I was finding the left hand part super hard to play legato with any degree of control. It sounded SO mechanical, & I was really starting to HATE this etude. But I stuck to the rules, & practiced measure by measure, first hands separately ad nauseum, then hands together each measure 3 or 4 times each, starting with the most difficult. Luckily, it repeats a lot, so there are only about 8 different measures in the whole thing. & after I did that for about half an hour, I put it all together, & it's beginning to sound like music. I even got some dynamics working!! So, by my lesson next Thursday I should have it down.

I have 3 etudes & 2 complicated scale runs to practice for this 2-week period, & so far, the scale runs are the ones I'm enjoying most. But I seem to have learned something from the one I liked the least.

Well, I am officially taking a little break from playing stuff over my head, and will now concentrate on Grade 4-6 (ish) stuff for awhile.

I just played through, HT, page 1 of Waltz in A-minor (posthumous)! Granted it wasn't quite at tempo, but I covered lots of ground in about an hour (for me).

Starting this piece and finishing up a page capped off a good week for me.

PS-I am not versed in Chopin terminology yet...was this published after he died?