Well, I'm now playing Laredo - a tune that sounded familiar so I searched on YT and found several videos of different people singing this old folk song, including Johnny Cash. I must have heard this version on the radio when I was very young, because my mother always had the radio on in the kitchen and JC's version was quite popular back then. The pieces in book 2 are certainly more interesting than book 1, and the next song is Pd'A. It felt like I'd never reach this point but now I'm getting nervous about starting that piece, wondering if I'll be able to do it justice.
Meanwhile there is another piece about 50 pages on that is on my wish list to play - a Chopin Etude. It looks really scary but sounds so beautiful when I hear proper pianists playing it on YT.
I feel like things are clicking into place a bit now, and the early pieces in book 2 have helped to improve my sight reading.

"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

Nice! I am still learning the waltz. Right now I'm only practicing about half an hour a day... spring has finally landed and it's hard to stay indoors 😁

So between Alfred and the blues course I'm not really progressing very fast right now, but I know I'll be back at it in full swing soon enough again.

5 days later

I'm now working on Pd'A - a piece that I've been looking forward to for weeks. It's not wildly difficult but there are a few stretched hand positions and jumps involved, so I think it will be a while before I can play the piece competently. It's like I've trodden a long uphill path to reach the point where I'm standing on higher ground and have a much better view on the horizon. 🙂 Sophia is standing on a higher peak, where the views are even better. Others have ascended Everest, but that's not for me. The Chopin Etude towards the end of book 2 is in sight, another distant peak on my journey.

"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

4 days later

I am still finalizing the waltz, but I just had a go at the next piece. Nightowl, you are going to be so happy with both of those. The waltz is very sweet and gentle. The Tchaikovsky symphony theme that comes next is incredibly gorgeous... and neither are super difficult like the Chopin piece earlier (I still can't play that completely flawlessly or smoothly).

I am pretty sure one of those will end up as a recital piece someday!

You know my taste so well, Sophia, sweet and gentle sounds like the kind of piece I like. 🙂 It's fortunate that many of the pieces I like are slow, romantic pieces, which are fairly manageable for me. I really am not keen on anything which has masses of notes played at a fast pace, which would require years of experience to play well, so I won't be tackling The Flight Of The Bumble Bee any time soon [ever]! Pieces like that make me feel quite ill, they are too much of an onslaught for my senses, give me a slow paced lyrical tune any day.

"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

a month later

Quick update - I've got PdA to a reasonable standard, but I still play it most days because I really like it, so I'm happy to keep playing it. I began working on Calypso Carnival a couple of days ago, it's not overly difficult but the LH fingering involves some full octave jumps so my little finger is feeling the strain a bit - it's never been used so much before! 😄 I'm just over a third of the way through the book, and it's taken me 4 months to get to this point, so I sometimes feel like I'm barely making progress but I still practice each day and try to keep faith that my persistence will pay dividends eventually.
It would be great if anyone else who is working through (or has finished) book 2 would jump in to share their thoughts on which pieces they love/hate and/or skipped, so I don't feel abandoned in the wilderness of book 2 limbo!

"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

    Oh I'm still working through Alfred 2 as well. In fact I am about to finalize Fascination which means I'll have no excuses left not to proceed with the pieces I have been dreading... THREE flats... yikes! Honestly I can't wait to leave Alfred behind so that I can work on the pieces I would enjoy... though the Blues course is a nice distraction from the humdrum of Alfred.

    I don't think there are any true shortcuts to where we want to be, but I would definitely suggest you definitely included some material that you thoroughly enjoy - perhaps your Greatest Hits book? Or something else that's not overly challenging but super fun to play to reward yourself with after a boring "lesson"?

      Sophia I like the greatest hits book series ... fun songs to play ....

        Sophia Honestly I can't wait to leave Alfred behind so that I can work on the pieces I would enjoy...

        Hopefully watching this will give you some encouragement:

            Nightowl

            Just keep plugging away.

            Statistically, most self learners drop out of the method books somewhere in the middle of book #3. I think that part of the reason is that we don't really have much more ambition than to "learn to play" and haven't set a goal about how advanced that is going to be. We've also learned enough by then to go off on our own and play easier stuff on occasion to remind ourselves that, yes, we can play.

            It's a struggle I'm going through now. I haven't touched my piano in 10 days.

                Player1 Statistically, most self learners drop out of the method books somewhere in the middle of book #3.

                I am one of them, and one of the reasons was that I simply did not like the pieces in Alfred's.
                Furthermore, I was really - really - struggling with the Unfinished of Schubert, trying to count it as best as I could.
                Not fun at all!!

                *
                ... feeling like the pianist on the Titanic ...

                    Animisha

                    I hear you, the stuff in the method books is terrible. Even the RCM isn't so wonderful but it's better than the method books because it's not arranged into insensibility. It's still pretty bad though - chop, chop, chop, go the fingers on the keys...

                    At least I found other sources of music to play which are fun. And in that playing I have realized how much I've learned and that knowledge has opened even more musical doors.

                      iternabe Nice video, thanks iternabe. I have found that sometimes pieces which I didn't like much at first end up growing on me, which is great when it happens. I think Alfreds could easily update their method books to include a few popular modern pieces, but they are keen to avoid paying copyright fees so that's why most pieces in their books are at least 70 years old.

                      @MandM - yes, I have the Broadway Hits book 1 and sometimes I play something from there as a welcome distraction. I have another hits book too, but the pieces in that are too advanced for me (or were when I last looked at it a couple of months back - maybe I'll take another look soon).

                      @Player1 Thanks, I'm trying to be patient. I'm also trying to find the beauty in each piece, like the guy in the video suggests, but when playing such gems as He's a Jolly Good Fellow and the wedding march there doesn't seem to be much beauty to be found!

                      As for goals, there are a few classical pieces that I want to play one day, and there are arrangements of them for intermediate players - so I think if I can attain grade 3 competency then I'll probably be happy to continue at that level. I can't imagine going much beyond that - maybe grade 5 at an absolute stretch if I keep going for another few years, but I'm 63 now and my memory is not what it was 10 years ago, so I'm keeping my goals realistic.

                      PS: @Player1 - you've not played for 10 days?!? This is so unlike you! I hope you get back on the bench soon, we can't have our tame tiger giving up at this stage!

                      "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                          Nightowl I'm keeping my goals realistic.

                          Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing too. Whatever greatness I might have achieved was an opportunity I purposely never pursued and I have no intention of starting now that I'm north of the half a century mark 😆

                          In fact I'm enjoying the relaxed feeling of learning at my own pace, stress-free and no end goal in mind.

                          However I would like to reach a point where I can sit at the piano and crank out improvisations of my own imagination, or open one of my intermediate books and play a pretty piece relatively effortless.

                          My more immediate goals though are finishing all three Alfred books and the blues course. I'm in no hurry with either!

                              Nightowl

                              I'm having some medical issues to go along with the burnout. They're changing my tremor meds again so I'm shaking like an aspen leaf in a hurricane. I had a back procedure last Monday (spinal epidural injection), and I'm seeing (hah!) the Opthomologist on this next Tuesday. You know how it goes when you get old and I'm older than you.

                              I tried to clear some time for today, no luck. Not even now, I'm heading off to fix dinner for tonight.

                              Maybe tomorrow.

                                  Player1 Oh, that's not nice, I'm sorry to hear that Player1. Coping with multiple medical issues is no laughing matter, I hope you get some effective treatment soon.

                                  Sophia I can't imagine trying to create an original piece of music that would be worth listening to, I don't think I could ever do that. In fact I wonder how anyone manages it nowadays, because most people have heard thousands of songs/pieces over the years, so coming up with a completely original piece that does not replicate any existing pieces must be quite tricky - I think the problem is referred to an unconscious plagiarism? Ed Sheeran had to go to great lengths to fight claims of plagiarism made against him, in court he said that certain chord progressions/note riffs are commonly used in modern music and we all use "the same 12 notes" so similarities are bound to occur. (To be honest, that seems to happen a lot with his songs - many of them sound really similar to each other!)

                                  "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                                        @Nightowl

                                        I don't remember if I posted this video before but I'm sure you could play this piece if you had the sheet music. It's really lovely to listen to and the fingering isn't complicated at all.

                                        You can play it a lot slower than the guy in the video does, it's supposed to be a slow waltz. If you pause the video in the beginning you can write down the score when he holds up the page. I also did a search and found a score online but I don't remember where other than it was free.

                                        I haven't tried to play this yet but I probably will at some point just because it's so different.

                                        Here's a slow version

                                          Nightowl can't imagine trying to create an original piece of music that would be worth listening to

                                          Ah, yes, composing music is an awesome skill. But that's not one of my aspirations 😄

                                          What I meant is improvisation - for example what you see in a jazz combo where each player gets to play a solo that they make up on the spot while the others keep the chords and rhythm going.

                                              Sophia Ah, yes, composing music is an awesome skill. But that's not one of my aspirations

                                              Hey Sophia, if improv is your goal, it's definitely a good idea to try your hand at composing. One way to look at it: Bill Evans said that improvisation is creating a minute's worth of music in one minute. That's very fast composing! Pianists are used to learning to do things quickly. And how? By practicing slowly and building up speed. Well, the same approach can be used for improvisation. First, you create one minute's worth of music in 30 minutes. You keep practicing, you will get faster and faster.

                                              In reality, this is just one direction from which to attack the problem of improvisation. If the goal is the spontaneous creation of music, first in the heart and brain, and then faithfully transferred to the fingers, the problem needs to be attacked in multiple ways. But my point is that composition practice definitely helps improvisation.