PianoTell Recital #1 Is Now Live!

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

Give Nuvole Bianche a try

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

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

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.

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…

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

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!”

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.

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.