I just finished working on a Mike Springer arrangement of "Misty", so now I'm starting on an easy piano arrangement of Benny Goodman's "Stompin' at the Savoy".

13 days later

Opened my Faber again. Oh joy! it's more of the same old, same old. 🤮

Short term project is Angeline Bell's Balestrand. 2 pages and I can finger my way through the first page (terribly) already. I need to back up and break up what I'm playing until I can play the segments properly. Maybe by the next PT recital it'll be ready. I said maybe so don't go getting your hopes up.

Also started on Willie Nelson's version of Always On My Mind. I can almost play the RH for the first line. I emphasize almost because the melody is kicking my butt. It'll sound better after I learn the LH and put it together, but for right now it's just not working well because it's still too early in the learning process. This piece is a long term project of at least 6 months or so.

    Player1 Angeline Bell is a treasure and also a machine, writing so much new material in such a short amount of time. Did you see that she's just gotten yet another sheet music book out and has two more in the pipeline?

        plop_symphony

        Interesting news, I hadn't heard.

        I know that she takes inspiration from other music when writing her own pieces, which I'd consider normal. Maybe that's what drives her muse.

        Andrea Dow is just as prolific in her composing. They aren't the same and each has its own feel and technical/proficiency requirements to play their works well. I have books from both composers.

          I generally have 5 pieces in the works - a sight reading quick study, a Piano Adventures lesson piece, a classical piece, a non-classical piece and relearning an old non-classical repertoire piece that's been forgotten.

          My current batch of 5:

          Piano Man - Piano Adventures Adult Popular 2 book (4 page not-so-quick study piece for sight reading practice).
          Jazz Reflection - first piece in Piano Adventures level 5 book.
          Khachaturian's "A Little Song" (aka "Ivan Sings" or Andantino) from his Pictures of Childhood Book.
          Zigzag by Lee Evans.
          God Bless the Child (repertoire piece that I relearning).

          You all are juggling so many things, I am envious. So far, besides scales and arpeggios, my practice has always been limited to two pieces. Right now, they are:

          • Variations on a Theme by Haydn - polishing the pedaling and dynamics
          • Aria (Theme from La Traviata) - learning

          Once I can get a good enough recording of the second piece, I will start the next new one.

            iternabe

            Those of us on the lower levels also have lesson pieces to contend with. These weekly or bi-weekly pieces, plus a short term piece, and a longer term piece, usually makes 3 things going on at once. Which for most people is manageable without burning out.

                Player1 I only started in January 2024. I am on the lower level! I will have lesson piece again when I start Faber AIO book 2. No long term piece yet, and I am fine with that.

                  TheBoringPianist with competitions over for the year, finally getting around to some of the pieces in my backlog. I guess I'll usually have a larger piece that will take on the order of a month or longer to learn — in this case, the Scriabin Fantaisie in B minor, Op. 28. I'm still trying to even finish reading through this to be honest lol. I've got the exposition mostly figured out and can read slowly through most of the rest, but the recapitulation B theme and coda A theme are giving me fits and I just end up skipping them every time in favor of the "easier" (read: less insane) parts. I'll probably need to dedicate significant time to each one separately.

                  Meanwhile, have been working through some smaller pieces as well over the last couple weeks:

                  • Blumenfeld - Etude for the Left Hand Alone, Op. 36
                  • Medtner - Fairy Tale in G# minor, Op. 31 No. 3
                  • Scarlatti - Sonata in G Major, K. 14

                  "You're a smart kid. But your playing is terribly dull."

                      In keeping with the upcoming change in season, I am working on my best imitation of Sangah Noona playing Autumn Leaves. (South Korean jazz pianist).

                        Pallas

                        I wish my Faber stuff was only 2 lines. Or less.

                          I am working on Romance in G Major from the (translated) 6 Very Easy Pieces Op 52 by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Very easy pieces my foot! Maybe for some, but definitely not for me. I thought a piece with many broken chords would be simple. Again, not for me!

                          Also working on River Flows in You by Yurima. I specifically asked for this piece and it is kicking my butt almost right away. I love the piece, so hopefully I will eventually get it.

                          Sometimes I wish for the days when I was doing the Faber Piano Adventures for the Older Beginner. Then at least I felt I was making progress.

                          Player1 Those of us on the lower levels also have lesson pieces to contend with. These weekly or bi-weekly pieces, plus a short term piece, and a longer term piece, usually makes 3 things going on at once. Which for most people is manageable without burning out.

                          3 pieces would be my ideal instead of the 5 I've been doing lately.

                          I hope to finish the last of the Piano Adventures method book pieces next year. If the Dr. Molly Gebrian method works well for maintaining my mostly jazz standard repertoire, once I've relearned them, I'll only need to play through them and address any issues 3 days in a row every 2 weeks. That would leave just 3 pieces at a time; a sight reading quick study piece (some of them can be knocked out in a single session), a classical piece and a non-classical piece.

                            kanadajin In keeping with the upcoming change in season, I am working on my best imitation of Sangah Noona playing Autumn Leaves. (South Korean jazz pianist).

                            Yes! Next month, I plan to relearn Vince Guaraldi's "The Great Pumpkin Waltz" for a piano club meeting. I hope the section with all the octaves is more comfortable this time around.

                              I've learned both hands for the first page of Balestrand. Amazingly enough I can carry the melody, on tempo, for most of the page! Yay!! There are a couple of spots giving me a bit of trouble but I'll get them worked out. Page 2 swaps the melody to the LH and that's harder for me to finger out for some reason. I'll get it, it'll just take more practice and I'm in no rush. It's such a pretty piece that I really want to play it properly.

                              Always On My Mind is coming along. I'm not working on it that hard, 2 hours per week, but I can play 1 1/2 measures of the first line to tempo and make it sound like it should. Unfortunately, I can't make the second half of measure 2 sound like it should and that's creating problems with going on to measure 3.

                              This is what I'm learning:

                              You can see the treble 8th notes at the end of measure 2. When I play those and the F# in measure 3 I can't make my keyboard sound like the video does. Played alone, my F3# doesn't sound "correct." It's probably the difference in sampling but it throws me off because I always think I hit a wrong key. My mid-range bass never sounds quite right.

                              The Faber stuff is still 🤮. I turned to a new page and it's an arranged Leopold Mozart piece - Minuet in F Major. Blah. At least I can concentrate on spotting and knowing my key signatures and spending some time practicing the FM scale - I need the review.

                              12 days later

                              Three new pieces since I last posted.

                              quick study piece - Tansman - "Dreams" from Happy Time Book 1
                              Piano Adventures piece - Hassler - Allegro in A minor.
                              Non-classical piece - Michael Giacchino - Married Life from the movie, "Up".

                              It took me a while to find an arrangement for "Married Life" on the musicnotes site. There were 4 pages of arrangements that were looked either too easy or too challenging for me before I found one that was a good fit.

                              Pallas Yes! Sadly, I had to pass up a number of arrangements with all sorts of trills, chromatic scale runs and other assorted challenges for a far distant "someday'.