@ShiroKuro @twocats @Ithaca Thanks for the encouragement. Year two has officially commenced yesterday!
@Sophia I wouldn't say I am without a teacher. Can't imagine me getting this far without the wonderful YT lessons by Gale at Let's Play Piano Methods, or without the many great advices from forum members here. @BartK I do realize this is still quite different from having a teacher in person guiding me. Yours and other threads on finding teachers has given me some food for thoughts. I am gradually forming the idea of what I want in a teacher for me. Will begin looking for what's available round me locally.
@WieWaldi The cameras are just webcams. They are a bit noisy under suboptimal lighting. I made the video black & white to hide the noise and end up liking the result a lot. They are very inexpensive and really convenient to setup.
Funny you notice the seasonal attire change. I also upgrade the piano stand, the speakers, and the bench along the way. And if you look closer, you may notice my seating height raised overtime, then lowered and keeps lowering.
@hebele I think I know the Fantasia-Impromptu video you referred to. In fact, when I first started recording, there was this voice in the back of my mind saying "let me show how a real adult beginner stumbles through the first year!"
@Pallas Although scales and arpeggios did take up significant amount of time in my practice, they don't feel overly burdensome spread out to the beginning of each day. Overtime, my feeling towards them changes, too. At first it's just about training my finger memory. Toward the end of the year, it's more like exploring how fingers interact with the keys, and how wrist and arm move in coordination - and the monotony of scales actually enables the mind to think more about subtlety. I also kept a cap on target tempo and will keep it there for year two, maybe three...
As for recording, I have my setup and workflow worked out so well, it hardly take any extra time. The final compilation you saw took me about a day's of editing .
