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 🙂

    WieWaldi PEDYS (Play every day, you scumbag!)

    If PACT is not working for you, how about i1u2play instead? (I Want You To Practise Later Again, Yippee!)

      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)

        WieWaldi What does the 1 in i1u2play?

        It stands for Want. So if I asked, "Do you wanna play piano?" Then you would reply, "Nine, not yet, but i one two play four u leightr" 😂

          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)

                    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 😍

                      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.

                                Wow, I love the sound of that! You said it was easy??? It is so wonderful that we can learn EASY pieces that sound AWESOME. It's good you got to practice the MOAT again... three times 🙂

                                I said it to PianoMonk in his thread: this type of smooth music is quickly becoming my favourite. Your piece would actually sound a lot more polished if you had this band in a box behind you too 😃 But as it is, it still sounded great! I think I found my next book to purchase 😂

                                  Sophia I would encourage you to do. At least when you start the Easy Course. I would rate the difficulty level way below the St. Louis Blues and also way easier than all the lessons of the Beginners Course. Basically, you could start right now. But the Easy Course has 13 Blues lessons, so you must somehow get along with only 8 easy pieces, so it is maybe clever to wait until Easy lesson 3 or 4.

                                    You all seem to be having so much fun on this thread, so I decided maybe it's time to embrace the blues. 🙂

                                    Here is a link to Why Am I Blue, from Alfred's book 1:

                                    This is a piece I didn't spend much time on the first time around, but over the last few days I have been replaying my way through book 1 and decided to work on this piece as a change. I tried to play it with some swing and used the pedal a bit (in fact I think I overused it at one point). My bench is a bit creaky and my playing is a bit tense due to the usual red button syndrome but I think it's OK for a bloody beginner. 🙂

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

                                    Welcome to Candyland, @Nightowl 🎉
                                    Oh yes - this sounds blue, all the blue chords, and the blue notes (Eb is the "blue note", but don't ask me, why. Maybe because Eb to E bending on saxophones is used so often - we pianists slide) - this makes the soul and the spirit of a Blues. It is strange, Blues sounds so different to everything classical or contemporary - even if we press the same 12 black and white keys over and over again. Yours sounded like such a Blues.
                                    I would say, this is a successful premiere for you in this hatred genre. Well played! Even with quite much of confidence - despite the red-button syndrome. (My last recording took me an entire day, probably I did most of my practicing work during my recording attempts.... But officially, I blame the red button syndrome.)

                                    You said, you didn't spend too much time at this Blues, which is even more impressive. Told you, Blues is the easiest genre - except of Nursery songs, maybe.

                                    This piece doesn't sound very difficult to my ears, especially the LH has little chord changes, freeing your attention to be focused on RH melody. If you want, you can try out Christians very first lesson of his Blues Piano for Beginners playlist. (No sheet music required for the first lessons) Compared to your piece, his RH is stupid easy, but his LH is beefed up because you have to change the chord every 2nd note. Sophia called the LH pattern as Humptee-dumptee, and I kinda agree because this is repeated so often until you dream of it. But it is a very good exercise for hand independence. I remember when I did the lesson - I was so proud after I mastered it. I felt like being John Lee Hooker.

                                      WOW Nightowl!!!!!!! That is ADORABLE... yes you are a bloody beginner at blues, but in no time you will be promoted to lovely beginner, which is where I am right now. Christian himself promoted me in one of his videos. Which makes the course worth it just for that moment, haha!! 🤡

                                      That is such a fun piece and you played it with confidence and happiness, well done! <now I must sneak off and whisper into WieWaldi's ear on how we can entice you even more into the wonderful colourful world of blues>

                                        In what lesson had you been promoted to a lovely beginner? Because in lesson 6 you were still a bloody beginner, so it must have been a bit later. 😵