Haha for sure! He'd be the thread celebrity 
Beginners blues/boogie/rock discussion
Sophia Well, I learned the lesson... now it's a matter of playing it more smoothly and record it - done
I still have lot of stuff to learn...
Yes - I know! It looks uuuuultra advanced! 
Only total beginners are able to read it! If intermediate or advanced classical pianists see it, they get green in the face. 
I know... with that attitude, something tells me: we should be learning guitar, not piano...
Or this:
Well, the lesson is still not going smoothly. I can play the first part without any effort now, and fairly fast at that. The second part is okay, it's a little more of a struggle but still good enough for just a lesson. But the last part is hard, very very hard. I can play it, but error free only at a single digit bpm 
One option is to play everything at a slower speed and pretend it's a ballad. I tried that, but somehow my internal clock doesn't agree with it and speeds it up gradually anyway (we talked about this phenomenon in other threads too). It just wants to be played at a certain speed and that's that.
Another option is cheating and recording in sections, pretending I'm practising my camera angle skills. But I won't do that, I promise 
The best alternative is to keep practising the last part until I can play that just as smoothly - this is my current plan.. Probably another week or so... one of the shortest lessons so far is taking me the longest to learn 
I don't remember that much of that lesson. I even didn't remember I cheated here and there, until you debunked it. 
Only thing I remember, the last part was the hardest one, but it was also the most fun to play - after learning it.
Oh - and applying the Blues shuffle LH from bloody beginner lesson 1 was harder than expected. At least this I wrote in the silent movie text boxes. And I remember this is the truth. If you listen to my recording, In the 1st repeat I could play with the rhythm - and adding a kind of a triplet to beef it up. In the 2nd repeat with the Blues shuffle, I couldn't do this anymore. Maybe, if I had spent another week of practicing or so, but the recital had a deadline date.
Btw - I stuck in my current lesson 8 as well... This is the lesson he tells the secret of improvisation.
It's magic
No - it is plain simple... Make a cheat sheet or write Postit-stickers somewhere with the elements you learned. And you can connect them to have options like going from here to A/B/or C because they connect well.
Same strategy I did as a Salsa dancer... With the difference, Salsa dancers don't have a sheet-music rest to look at.
Sigh - this brings me back to my own topic... today my PACT is missing... again.
Ehrm... PEDYS (Play every day, you scumbag!) 
Yes, if I wanted to submit this for a recital, it would need a few more weeks. But for a lesson, it's getting there... slowly. It's like when you tell your teacher "I could play it well at home!" but it isn't all that great when you play it in front of them. My camera is my teacher and it tells me it needs to be better even for a lesson 
Funny enough I have less trouble with the left hand. I find that it is playing without needing my full concentration when it's just going back and forth... almost as if it has a brain of its own sometimes. BUT... I find those right hand jumps where you suddenly need to move two octaves higher very hard, because you have to be there almost immediately after the previous note.
And then there is the ending... oh boy. I think that is the hardest part of all! But, I'm gradually getting there 
What does the 1 in i1u2play?
Anyway - seems a good strategy. Don't play now, but intend to play later ^^ (Could do this all day long, haha)
Well... I recorded lesson 14. It's not very good, it doesn't hold a candle to your performance WieWaldi In my defense... you probably didn't have the weight of the world Sandy on your shoulders while playing, lol!
But as usual I had enough of the lesson (for now!) so this will have to do. I will continue to polish it I promise
Sophia Well, that was lesson 14, while WW's last video was lesson 7, so maybe your piece was perhaps twice as tricky? Add in the cat on your shoulders and it seems trebly tricky! There were some pauses but there was also some really nice playing. The first section sounded familiar - is it a variation on Summertime?
You've really galloped through this blues course - is it worth replaying some of the earlier lessons then returning to this piece later (as this kind of recap method seems to pay benefits with the method books)?
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
Nightowl Well, that was lesson 14, while WW's last video was lesson 7
Haha noo, WW is a whole course ahead of me... I am in the <bloody> beginner's course and he has already been promoted to the <easy> course (which isn't at all easy, from the looks of it!). I still have a number of lessons to go before I can even begin that one
But you are right, once I finish this course and before I go onwards with the one WW is following, I will probably do an "Alfred" and go through everything once more
The blues is called St Louis Blues. This is the version that WW performed during a previous recital and it has nice information about the piece and blues in general!
Ah, so he's ahead of you then, no wonder I got confused - I'm not used to any "bloody" beginners being ahead of you. 
Yes, go and do an "Alfred" - you know you want to! If you spend long enough reworking the blues maybe I'll have a chance to get to the end of book 2 before you finish book 3 and disappear from the Alfred's thread completely. Then I'll be talking to myself over there... which gets dull.
"Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)
- Edited
Did you add some more notes here and there to make it sound more vivid? I could sense a feel of swing in the Tango intro. Not sure about your trill invention. Sounded too classical for a low down blues. Still, this is only my opinion and I want to encourage you to keep inventing!
For the rest of the piece, you played it at an amazing tempo, made my head nod. And my foot tap. Also loved your left hand playing a perfect staccato. I could literally hear, you had a lot of fun playing the Blues part with Boogie tempo. You have a very good feel for the music. I must admit, your version has a lot more verve than mine. (Verve, pfafffzzzz, whatever this is called - you know what I mean). Compared to yours, mine sounded like a funeral march.
And it is good you did your video for color-tv, made Sandy shine more 
- Edited
Nightowl Ah, so he's ahead of you then, no wonder I got confused - I'm not used to any "bloody" beginners being ahead of you.
Nah, the rulz are easy... You start as a bloody beginnerTM (har har har 
). After each main achievement, you progress to the next level. In my case, the main achievement was finishing the "Beginners Blues course", and now I am a total beginnerTM (*proud*). Next will be absolute beginnerTM.
Sophia already finished the Thomson method, Alfred 1, and Alfred 2. This are three main achievements, making her a bloody, no a total, no an absolute, no an early beginnerTM. Two more lessons and she has finished the Beginners Blues Course, too. Then she advances to the true beginnerTM level. (This is quite advanced, if you ask me)
WieWaldi Did you add some more notes here and there to make it sound more vivid?
Not intentionally... it was probably more a case of "make a mistake and just continue, pretend it was always intended" like in that guitar vs piano video posted above 
Of course I'm playing the piece very obviously above my current abilities, and you can see that especially towards the end, I'm losing control. But it was just so much fun to play it faster, and I also didn't want to end up spending too much time with it because I tend to start disliking pieces after too long... so this is the flawed version I ended up with Nightowl said I am galloping through the blues course, but it was more like I was galloping through the piece and the horse got away in the end... but I think I finally managed to reign it in just before the last "pling!" sound so I kept the recording after all.
The trill... yeah... that was just invented on the spot - because after all the talk of Christian about the need to fill up anything except the Grand Canyon, I felt the gap between the parts was too long and boring. Once I reach the eternal beginner stage, I'm sure there will be a beautiful progression there somewhere like in TC's demo video about endings
The next one is called "slow blues" so I guess I can calm down now and start the lesson with a serene mood... and go sloooooooooooooooowwwww....
Sophia That was very good. Love your cats; wish our cats joined me when I play.
In spite of a few minor moments, I would say, overall, your "feel" has gotten better. And that's what's really important when playing blues. Remember, you can hit any note that fits with the chord/scale. Left hand holds the form, right hand can go where ever you want.
Sophia The next one is called "slow blues" so I guess I can calm down now and start the lesson with a serene mood... and go sloooooooooooooooowwwww....
I already told about lightening up the Easy Blues Piano Course with actual pieces. You know, playing only exercises can get a bit frustrating over time. In the Beginners Course, there was the Saint Louis Blues, in the follow-up course, the Quick Five Blues, and that's it.
This one is my second one out the 
collection.
It was a tremendous easy piece, way, way easier than the Saint Louis Blues. It uses the brass style LH from the Beginners Course 8 over the good old trusty 12-bar form in the key of plain simple C. The melody is very repetitive and uses three times a turnaround based on our beloved MOAT. (Mother of all Turnarounds) No jumps, nothing. It is so easy, it can be played on a keyboard with only 49-keys. On top of it, the sheet music says "slowly", making an easy piece even easier. It was so easy, even I could learn this in about one week. Okay - I must admit a few days more practicing would have been nice - the recording isn't... nah... not that great. It sounds very clumsy afterwards. Needed probably more polishing.