Alfred Adult All-in-One Course Level 2 and 3

Sophia · 2024-05-28T02:50:57+00:00

Well, it seems that this forum is a nice refuge from another place that has too many ads and too much drama lately! I see we already have a nice Alfred 1 thr...

Nightowl

Sophia If I were to make a suggestion, I would say go back to book 1. Eh, I did it too just a week ago, it's fun! 😃 You will get those early pieces back in your muscle memory in minutes... and then add the pedal which will be minimal effort.... Start with a baby piece - Harp Song!

I already did that, a few months back I worked through the whole of book 1 again, including pedalling where indicated. But with book 2 I soon got out of the habit as the pieces became harder with each turn of the page. Maybe I'll return to book 1 for another brief visit though, it can't do any harm, but nothing will make me play BTMD again - ever!

Sophia

Nightowl nothing will make me play BTMD again - ever!

Luckily there is no pedal with either BTMD or LBJ. Your sanity is safe 😸
Yeah keep adding the pedal now with every piece... it will soon be second nature 🙂

Nightowl

Sophia Well, maybe with you it's second nature... because of those MUSICAL GENES that I haven't mentioned for a while! Still, I'm lucky to have you as my piano pal/distance learning tutor (who could make a fortune if she began charging me for her advice).

rsl12

@Nightowl, it's a great recording! You've shown a lot of improvement.

I think you should try to apply pedal to this piece. The fact that you have tried hard to sustain notes using only your fingers is a very good thing! Many pianists will purposely practice a piece without pedal in order to get extra smoothness, and to ensure they aren't relying on the pedal to cover up finger laziness. And you've already done that work!

My suggestion:

Try playing the piece just holding the pedal down, and never picking your foot up. You'll get a sense of what the pedal adds.
Then try lifting your foot briefly when the notes sound too muddy. It will almost always be at the chord changes (which means at the beginnings of measures).
Then try lifting your foot briefly at the beginning of every measure.

Nightowl

rsl12 Thanks! I love those tips about using the pedal - they make a lot of sense.

I've heard that sometimes teachers don't allow any use of the pedal for beginners during their first 2 years, for similar reasons to the one you mentioned - so they don't use it to mask errors. I really like it that my reluctance to use the pedal seems to have an up side. 🙂

gp_

Hi everyone! Is this thread still active? I just started Book 2 of the Alfred Series

Sophia

Welcome to the forum, @gp_ 🙂 This thread can be as active as you want it to be... I know a few of us (me included) worked our way through the Alfred book(s). Do share a little something about yourself, would love to hear more!

gp_

I started the second book a couple weeks ago and am polishing up Light and Blue now which I really enjoyed being a fan of blues/jazz.

I started learning the piano when I was 15/16 though I never took it super seriously and unfortunately (like many beginners self-teaching) relied on synthesia/falling notes to learn pieces way above my skill level. I stopped all practicing for a few years until I bought a Yamaha NP-12 which for what it is/the price really wasn't terrible to learn on. Skip ahead to covid when I had a lot of time on my hands and learned Bach's Prelude in C by slowly deciphering the sheet music and committing it to memory. I learned it in full which was satisfying and rewarding but I quickly realized spending a few weeks learning a piece like that did very little to improve my playing. That's when I decided I wanted to do it the "right way" and purchased the first Alfred book but I didn't get down to using it for a few years. The keyboard unfortunately got put away for awhile after moving until I finally decided to pull it out and begin the Alfred book, this was Fall 2024. By Winter '24 I had progressed pretty far into the book and as a Christmas gift to myself purchased a yamaha p-45 which was a pretty huge jump up from the non-weighted, 61-key NP-12. Took a few month break over the summer with practicing and got back into it early Fall '25. Finished the first book and started the second which leads us to now.

That's my long but still truncated history with the piano. I'm glad to join a community of fellow adult learners!

ShiroKuro

gp_ welcome to PT! 😊

Nightowl

gp_ Hello gp, welcome to the forum. 🙂 I learned using the Alfred's All In One method books and I found them to be well structured, they do a good job in covering all the basics. I finished book 2 last year but did not buy book 3 as it had very few pieces that appealed to me, so I've been choosing my own pieces since then. I'm at the stage where I'd probably benefit from getting a teacher but I'm not ready for that step yet.

Some of the music in the Alfred books is pretty dire, but I'd recommend that you work through the majority of the pieces as each piece is included to build certain skills. Good luck. 🙂

Sophia

Oooh Light and Blue is one of my favourite pieces! In fact, believe it or not, I played it today only to find out how rusty I am with it ^_^

Alfred's pieces can be dull at times, but I find that each one is so beneficial in learning to play. Do you follow a (Youtube) teacher? I learned a lot from the Let's Play Piano Methods guy, he covers just about every book under the sun 🙂

Also, you are quite welcome to participate in the recitals in this forum! It's not only a great way to share, but I found it's also a so rewarding to see the progress of both myself and others.

Anyway, welcome once again and good luck with your studies - would love to hear your version of Light and Blue. Did I mention it's one of my favourite pieces? Yeah, that 😆

gp_

Sophia I'm a sucker for anything 12 bar blues so I totally get it! My grandfather is a pretty accomplished boogie woogie pianist so I'm sure hearing him play all the time growing up made me develop an ingrained fondness for all things blues.

I've watched quite a few of Let's Play Piano Methods videos, they're quite helpful. I also like Jazer Lee for more general piano tips and I've watched a fair bit of Charles Cornell for music theory/jazzier stuff.

I'll definitely post my version of Light and Blue sometime soon! Thanks for the warm welcome!

Sophia

Heh, lucky you @gp_ ! I'm sure you found the blues/boogie thread by now then. It happens to be one of my passions as well... and I/we are following the courses of Christian Fuchs to get there 🙂

I combined the Alfred books with that course to get the best of both worlds. Alfred mostly for the boring, dry stuff, a necessary evil. With notable exceptions such as Light and Blue, and some upcoming (for you) Joplin pieces. Solace is very pretty, and it doesn't sound overly simplified at all. But overall, I was so happy to alternate with the blues lessons, especially now that I'm finally getting to dabble a little more into improvisation.

Fully agree with you that it's best to follow a method book - it is by far the most efficient way to get all the basics learned. Synthesia is probably a lot of fun, but I'm a little too old skool to believe it has merits beyond getting better at Tetris 😋

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