Faber All-in-One Piano Course Book 1

Kaydia Hopefully working on the 40-pc challenge will help with that.

Exactly. That's why I'm taking up the challenge too!

Gooseberry Exactly. That's why I'm taking up the challenge too!

That's great! I'm about to get some more practice in now on another piece for the challenge. Hoping to finish it up tomorrow. Good luck on whatever you're working on.

Gooseberry I wouldn't say that the early lessons are extremely easy: nothing is, for a beginner What really is easy is to forget how difficult everything was at the beginning...

On the monetised forum, there was a long thread by a beginner, called Nothing is too easy.
I know that quite a few people breezed through Alfred's 1 - I was not amongst them. Just learning to do something else with my right hand than I did with my left hand, mamma mia! It took me a long time. I also needed to play many more easy pieces than Alfred's provided. But I did, and in the end, I learned.

Animisha Just learning to do something else with my right hand than I did with my left hand, mamma mia!

"mama mia!" indeed!

Animisha I also needed to play many more easy pieces than Alfred's provided. But I did, and in the end, I learned.

Perseverance for the win!

Another short update. I completed "Shepherd's Song (From the Sixth Symphony)". I was enjoying this one, so I stayed on it
longer. In doing so, I could really feel the difference in my playing as I was able to play more relaxed after repeated play throughs now and again over the past few days. I'm not saying it sounded better; more so that the physical aspect of it felt better.

Sophia I always get a kick out of going back to really early (now easy) pieces and find that I can basically play them flawlessly first run through. Then of course I got back to a piece that I just practiced a few weeks/months ago and can't string two notes together...

I find this depends very much on the piece. With pieces that have a simple melody with chords structure, it is easy, because chords like C F G D, I can basically play in my dreams. But in pieces that I call polyphonic, in which both the right hand and the left hand have a melody, after a while I need to relearn them as if I never learned them before.

Animisha But in pieces that I call polyphonic, in which both the right hand and the left hand have a melody, after a while I need to relearn them as if I never learned them before.

Do you at least find those pieces easier, quicker to relearn? I went back and relearned Jingle Bells, which I really struggled with to get HT and no hesitations. It was definitely easier and quicker to relearn. But that's a simple piece so perhaps not a good example. Maybe it doesn't work the same for more complex pieces.

I'm not THAT far ahead of you, Kaydia, but I'd say it's definitely easier/faster to relearn pieces a second time

Animisha But in pieces that I call polyphonic, in which both the right hand and the left hand have a melody, after a while I need to relearn them as if I never learned them before.

Kaydia Do you at least find those pieces easier, quicker to relearn? I went back and relearned Jingle Bells, which I really struggled with to get HT and no hesitations. It was definitely easier and quicker to relearn. But that's a simple piece so perhaps not a good example. Maybe it doesn't work the same for more complex pieces.

Actually, half a year later I find that I have completely forgotten those pieces, and it will take a lot of time to learn them again. The only way in which they are quicker to learn is that compared to years ago, I have become just a bit better in learning polyphonic pieces.

Jingle bells is a good example because it uses intervals that by now are so, so familiar to me that I hardly need to spend any effort reading and playing them.

Here is an example of an easier polyphonic piece - I find polyphonic pieces never easy, but easier. I learned it five years ago, and I would need more effort in order to learn this again, compared to pieces with a melody-accompaniment pattern. For instance, Oh when the saints go marching in from Alfred's, I can play correctly immediately.

For the benefit of any other beginners wandering through, here are a couple of resources I came across that provide at least a basic overview of polyphonic music.

1) What is Polyphonic Texture in Music? on the Hoffman Academy website.

2) A brief, 43 sec video with 3 examples of piano music textures (Monophonic, Homophonic, Polyphonic)

I'm now in Unit 6 which introduces eighth notes. The first piece in this unit is "French Minuet". I was wondering how people dance to this type of music, so I looked it up on YouTube. I thought maybe I wasn't playing it right, even though I was doing the counting. But after seeing the dance steps, I guess that's how it's supposed to sound.

Also, I just remembered to check the Faber website to see how they show it being played. I was surprised at their tempo which was quite a bit faster than I was playing it. The tempo on the piece is indicated as "Flowing smoothly, rather slowly". Then it suddenly occurred to me that I was basing the tempo on the eighth notes, not the quarter note time signature. Whoops.

Kaydia Then it suddenly occurred to me that I was basing the tempo on the eighth notes, not the quarter note time signature.

Oh yes, happened to me as well!

Four more pieces completed: "Morning" with a focus on the Cresc and Dim symbols and Phrases, "Taps" which introduced the Upbeat, "Happy Birthday" which introduced a Fermata, and "English Folk Song" with blocked and broken C chords. These all felt more like review pieces since I was already familiar with all these concepts from the Alfred's book. The only thing of note here is that Faber included the pronunciation of fermata as fer-MAH-ta, and I realized I'd been hearing it in videos as fer-MAH-da. Also, the accent is on the 2nd syllable. I need to relearn this word!