PianoTell Recital #1 Is Now Live!

navindra · 2024-08-15T13:55:00+00:00

Welcome to PianoTell's 1st ever recital! Click for an index to all the performances: Player1 — Energico rogerch — Improvisation 6 keff — A Nightingale Sang...

WieWaldi

Nightowl Thanks Nav, but I'm confused when you imply that you are working from a level 1 book, because your playing is very advanced and I thought that you've been playing for several years?

Same here. @navindra, I was always assuming you play for 15 years or more... something like that... And you have a lot of good videos uploaded that won't sound like someone playing only 5 years.

navindra And only now have I realized the tactical error I made... instead of focusing completely on a piece for weeks or months at a time, I should have employed interleaved and spaced practice methods.

Same error here. I was thinking from the beginning if I learn just a piece, this will provide me with so many technical challenges during learning that I get the basics from alone. After 7 months in total, I played a beginner version of the Entertainer, and I was very proud of it. But I couldn't play anything else. Everything was baked into my muscle memory and I couldn't read the notes properly. I scribbled a ton of note names into my sheet music.
After finishing the Entertainer, I was so frustrated how big long it would take to learn a new piece because I realized I had no proper technique, and it would take ages again. Then I stopped playing due to frustration and picked it up 1¹/₂ years later with the Beginner's Blues Course from Christian. Still, the Entertainer is my most difficult piece or exercise I ever played.

Btw: I can't play the Entertainer today anymore. Forgot everything and muscle memory got deleted.

navindra

Sam Thank you Sam! I'm very curious about who maintains that piano but it definitely gets played.

BicBic Thank you! 🙂

MarieJ Thanks so much, Marie!

keff Looking forward to it! 🙂

lilypad Thank you so much for that! During normal live recitals I have a ton of trouble not falling apart. I need to find a way to get over that.

WieWaldi Thank you! And I feel like I have a lot of the same experiences as you. I spend a lot of time learning a piece and then forget it. However after almost 5 years with a teacher, I feel like I'm on the right track now. My learning is still self-directed in various ways and I branch off into different things on my own... but it feels right now.

diretonic Thank you! Yes, I do manage to stumble over the thirds... it's the hardest part of the entire piece and needs the most practice. KevinM had warned me about this some time back. 😃

bSharp

navindra I'm thinking I should learn an Einaudi piece... any recommendations for a first piece?

Give Nuvole Bianche a try 🙂

navindra

SalmonJack Wow! Bravo on this multi-talented feat! 👏

Your music almost had me in a trance as I watched you create art with this fascinating blending technique. Not only did you compose this, but you have a massive backstory to it all. The writing, the art, the music... it's all super impressive! Well done! 👍

(And that piano looks pretty cool too...)

Gooseberry

I wanted very much to participate in this first Piano Tell Recital, but due to unforeseen and sad circumstances, it was impossible. But I have listened to all the submissions and… wow! What a great success of a wonderful recital!!! So many excellent renditions of beautiful and very enjoyable music, some charming surprises, and a lot of material for me to learn from and be inspired by. Thank you and congratulations to everybody!

navindra

Calavera Absolutely epic and astounding performance! I enjoyed that very much and I've listened it a few times now. Although I've not listened to the original version yet, I felt like this could have been the original performance. Bravo! Standing ovation for me. 👏

navindra

rsl12 Awesome! From the slick intro to the catchy rhythm and live vocals... wow! On top of that, taking suggestions for lyrics and basically improvising your own song from that... simply next level. 👏

My kids were laughing their heads off the entire time they watched your performance... you're already a true entertainer! I'm not sure where you go from there... 😃

The most amazing and admirable thing from my end is witnessing just how you took this vision for where you want to be as an entertainer and actively making that vision real with such focus and tenacity. Thanks so much for sharing the details of your journey on this and showing all us aspiring learners just how it's done. 👍

rsl12

navindra My kids were laughing their heads off the entire time they watched your performance... you're already a true entertainer!

Really?! Well that's a good sign!

navindra The most amazing and admirable thing from my end is witnessing just how you took this vision for where you want to be as an entertainer and actively making that vision real with such focus and tenacity. Thanks so much for sharing the details of your journey on this and showing all us aspiring learners just how it's done. 👍

If only I could be so organized in all other aspects of my life!

Thank you for the very nice comments Navindra. It really made my day.

navindra

TC3 Great showcasing of this piece and arrangement. Plus, I really like your stylized video, your white piano, and lovely music room. It all came together very nicely.

This one also seems deceptively difficult to pull off. I was tempted to get the book, but I think the difficulty level would be a little beyond my grasp.

Thanks for bringing some fun boogie to this recital! 👏

iternabe Wow! Self-learning for only 7 months and you pulled that off with panache! That piano sounded really good as well. This is some tremendous work on your part! 👍

@Seeker I'm tagging you on this one because Iternabe seems to have pulled off recording a top view with no difficulty using only a webcam. It looks quite professional to me.

ShiroKuro Wow, your piano sounds absolutely incredible! I can appreciate now why you love your C2 so much. Plus, your playing undoubtedly elevates it to a whole other level.

This piece is absolutely beautiful and you brought it to life in the best way possible. I felt transported by your performance and it's a notable highlight for me in the recital so far. Thanks a lot for deciding to share this. Bravo! 👏

TC3

navindra Thanks for the kind comments! FYI, that book has pieces at a variety of levels.

ShiroKuro

@navindra thank you so much for your kinds words!!! It's so motivating to hear!!!
Also you reminded me that I need to finish listening and commenting on the rest of the recital! 😅

diretonic

a few more to add....

Nightowl — Plaisir D'Amour
Such a pretty tune, deservedly well known and perhaps everyone has played this at some time? Around 1 minute you choose (or maybe it’s recommended on the score?) what looks like an awkward fingering moving from 1 to 4 in the RH. It might be worth trying to figure out some alternative fingering yourself but I thought you played it with care and without it being too mechanical. Great progress for just a few months!

bSharp — High Heels
A really expressive performance giving more than I expect from Einaudi (too much jazz/blues has corrupted my ear). I even found myself humming parts of the melody for a while afterwards. Left me wondering if there’s a song or two that plagiarised this?

WieWaldi — Rainbow Connection
A tune which was so right for a light-humour icon like the muppets. Your polished performance lifted my mood…thank you!

SalmonJack — Alia
I like your composition, reflective and calm, it mirrors so well the setting in your charming animation.

Calavera — Chrono Cross - Scars of Time
Great drama in your performance, orchestral enough in its own way. Garritan sounds really good here, such a big sound.

rsl12 — Always Chew Your Food
What a cheeky fun song, carried off with an impressively relaxed style of playing - (I’m thinking of introducing it to my BIL whose table manners are seriously wanting). Your vocals have come on in leaps and bounds since one of your earlier recordings I heard in the PW forum. Bravo for holding your audience’s gaze!

TC3 — St. James Infirmary
A classy arrangement of a great 8-bar blues song and your performance was spot-on. Pushing the tempo up a notch definitely paid off.

iternabe — The Trout
That’s quite some progress for only 7 months playing. Metronomic with lively dynamics. Keep it up!

ShiroKuro — Nuvole Bianche
I don’t naturally warm to Einaudi but there’s no denying the hypnotic quality of his music and in your performance. Your C2 sounds lovely, the presence of an acoustic piano is always hard to beat.

lilypad — Manhattan 1928
With some very recognisable Gershwin colours I guess this must be an homage to his writing. Both your performance and the piece are so evocative - a pleasure to listen to. (Yes, the red-button syndrome; if there were a pill to counter it I would have OD’d and suffered side-effects by now)

TheBoringPianist — Prélude, Fugue et Variation, Op. 18
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to your playing and marvel at memorising so much music. An impressive performance (towards the end I thought you’d introduced a third hand) you surely deserved to get into the final.

...more to follow...

lilypad

diretonic (Yes, the red-button syndrome; if there were a pill to counter it I would have OD’d and suffered side-effects by now)
I take propanolol for essential tremor (hands were shaking when trying to use a computer mouse or typing or using eating utensils). A nice side effect is that my hands don't shake anymore when I play at piano club meetings. Unfortunately it hasn't helped me to not think about having made it to the end of a recording without making a mistake - and then I make one. Sam has cautioned against doing this, but most of the time I can't help myself.

Nightowl

diretonic Thanks for the feedback. You're right, my RH looks awkward around that point, you can see and hear the hesitation as I'm changing the position of my hand and not 100% confident about hitting the correct notes. I think I did follow the suggested fingering throughout the piece, but I will have a closer look when I next play it and see if I can find a smoother way to transition at that point. I was playing the piece very slowly so it annoys me that I was still unable to play it smoothly. I find some of the book 2 pieces quite challenging but I guess that's the norm when moving from beginner to what seems to be "early intermediate" level.

TC3

@"diretonic"#p1618 Thank you! "Spot-on" is a bit generous, but I'll take it! 😃

Sophia

lilypad Unfortunately it hasn't helped me to not think about having made it to the end of a recording without making a mistake

Oh my goodness YES. Whenever a recording is going exceptionally well, I get so nervous to bring it to a good finish, that I can basically GUARANTEE mistakes towards the end. I have given up on making that "perfect" recording... as long as I can manage to keep on playing smoothly with no pauses etc, it will have to do 🙂 At least I know I can do it when no one (with a red eye) is watching 😅

Rubens

Sophia
Ironically, maybe it's best to never see your playing as perfect! And to never seek perfection in the first place actually. I think that is what most very advanced performers do, even if it sounds perfect to us.

rogerch

Why do our brains do this? It is so annoying!!!

I have had some success with redirecting my brain back to the music: “Stop thinking and just play!” But it doesn’t always work…

WieWaldi

rogerch Why do our brains do this?

Lol, in a distant past I read a book about it. It was a book about riding a motorcycle (translate to eng: "Upper Half of the Motorcycle"). The author was a professor in physiology and psychopathology at the university of Heidelberg, Germany. And riding a bike was his hobby. So he wrote a book about it. The first half of the book itself was just about learning theory, how the brain(s) work and all the stuff. And the second half was about riding a bike itself. (Not interesting here)

He divides the brain into the unconscious and conscious parts. The conscious one can do everythig. But is is faulty and slow and very limited capacity. It is used for learning. And after you learned something, the task is handed over to the unconscious brain, and the conscious one has then capaticy for new stuff to learn (slowly). The unconscious brain works way better, way faster, way more reliable. But it needs to be programmed (or trained) by the conscious brain before.

Unfortunately, if you are in danger, the conscious brain gets active and tries to help the unconscious one. (Making things worse.) He wrote a nice experiment about it:
Draw a line on the gound, 30 cm (12 inches) wide. And then you must walk on that white line. Is this a problem? No.
Then build a plank, 30 cm wide, raise it 10 cm over ground. Difficult? Not at all.
Raise the plank 1 meter above ground. Difficult? Not really, but it starts here.
Raise the plank 5 meter above ground. Difficult? Yes, now it is.
And now pout this plank inbetween the Petronas Twin Towers, 400 meter over gound. Most of us would go down to the knees and use all four legs!

Here the conscious brain senses danger and takes over the contol. Of something that is basically a very simple motoric task. Up in the air, the conscious brain proofs again, it is way inferior to the unconscious brain doing the ground walk.

Okay, this is comparing apples and bananas and the red light of a video camera isn't killing you, if something goes wrong. But it is about the same concept.

Bottom line: nothing is more true than:

rogerch “Stop thinking and just play!”

😃

Sophia

Too true @Rubens - and of course I also fully realize the irony of even mentioning "perfect" at all, considering the level where I am currently 😃

Pallas

WieWaldi I would love to read this. What's the author's name?

rogerch

WieWaldi Thanks for sharing. That makes sense!

The solution, then, is to somehow train our brains that recording or performing isn’t dangerous. The only way I can think of to do this is to record and perform so often that it feels normal. This actually worked for me with public speaking, but so far not with piano. I have read that some pro musicians still get stage fright so maybe playing music seems somehow more dangerous than speaking!

I think the danger of performing is fear of embarrassment or humiliation. The danger of the red dot is fear of messing up the recording. Hmm.

iternabe

WieWaldi I do and teach amateur motorsport. What that author said is very true. Building driving skills is a constant process of constructing muscle memories in consciousness, saving it to subconscious with repetition, and often bring established muscle memory back into consciousness to revise and refine. Not that much different from piano playing, right? In fact, one well-known young coach’s weekday career path is professional pianist.

One small aspect I may add is it’s not danger that bring brain back into making conscious (but sometimes incorrect) decisions. Rather, it’s the surprise or unknown that prompts brain try to figure out how to respond on the fly instead of relying on preprogrammed reaction. The problem is on the fly decision is usually based on instinct. However most really tricky situation are tricky exactly because the correct response is against common instinct.

Having a mistake affect a drivers driving rhythm is very common. They keep thinking about what happens before. And the resulting distraction will cause more mistakes in the corners that’s coming up. Instructors need to drill into students head nothing can be done for what already happened, so you always has to keep eyes up, look and think forward.

WieWaldi

Pallas ~~Bernd~~ Bernt Spiegel

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