Slowly progressing, and I am nearing completion of book one of nine. Were the past 7 weeks or so more a success or more a failure? Well, when I lived with my parents as a boy and teen, there was always a piano in the household (fun fact: my e-piano today sounds a lot better...), and sometimes I just spent some time fooling around with it a bit, even had one or two small pieces of simple melody in my "repertoire". Thats was nothing, just fooling around. After this time spent now I can say that the course I use makes a tremendous difference. It has led a basis for the later books to come, focussing on basic rythms, chords, simple triads, and kind of prioritizing triads over melody. That is not helpful if you want to learn more classical piano - and very helpful if you want to aim more at the ability to improvise. You would be surprised how many profesisonally trained pianists admit that despite their technical skill they find it hard to play without notes, playing free improvisations. My mum too simpyl cannot play without sheets, she gets stuck with whatever she tries after a few bars. Mind blockade, and lacking experience with free improvising chords - she cna only play with sheets. Its two VERY different worlds. The course, Piano for all, lends itself perfectly to the one world, and not too well to the other.

A basis has been laid on which to improve. Its difficult because my brain is not as fast anymore, but the pace nevertheless is right for me, and repetitions over time make any exercise I try easier and more automatic over time. I practice almost evey day, and on most days two or three times, 30-50 minutes. And i like whats going on. What keeps me engaged is that from week to week I see not giant, but undeniable progress. Piano is a very complex affair to get engaged with, and maybe best advise is to not think about reaching a final goal, but to understand that the way is the goal - and that this way can (and must?) be walked a whole life long, and certainly so at my advanced age.

With mistakes a lot, and at slow pace, and sometimes needing to take a second of break to think out my next "move", I can do simple, meditative impovisations already, simple melodic frames with the one hand, and matching triads with the other. I mmust nio longer randonly press keys to find the next amtchign sound, but start to have a feeling for where the next matching sound is located, and I hammer the key(s), and it sounds nice. The hands and muscles seem to get a memory of their own that keep information where this and that sound is to be found on the keyboard's landsacape, maybe a bit like in sports (muscle meory), I dont know, but maybe it indeed is just brain stuff getting rewired. The number of mismatching chords or notes that break the melodic bow, has started to drop, I produce less "garbage" and less "random" notes, it more often than five weeks ago results in something you can actually listen to without getting ear cancer. :) Simple, lovely, uncomplex tunes, improvised, maybe a bit naive and somewhat childiush, but hey, I am an absolute beginner, every time I play them they sound different, but there is less disharmonic error and more harmonic order in it all now despite that I improvise it every time I play. That is a tremendous motivation to stay engaged! :up: Not the great art, but pleasing.



Where I struggle, is quick repositioning of the hands on the keyboard and so missing the next correct keys, also my tempi are all over the place and the wish to add rythmic structure collides with my need to be slow and even pause for a second at times to find the next matching triad and sevenths or a pleasing continuation of the melody I improvise. That is to be expected, I suppose, I am a beginner, and I can only cure this problem with practice, practice, practice.

The material I practice with, was the best choice I could make, I tried Skoove and Flowkeys meanwhile, and did not get along with them too well, maybe in a year or two, but for a beginner, it is not the right thing, at least not for me. I felt being turned into a robot. It killed the joy and the motivation. PianoForAll so far has not left me in need for a real teacher, because I had no questions. And I can recognise my faults myself, and know where I struggle especially. The teacher of it is a professional player, and he does some things differently - and better - than other piano computer courses. And as I see it, that difference is for best effect in the student. I absolutely intend to complete the full course. One book almost done, 8 more to follow, more diffcult than what I had so far. See you by the end of next year at the earliest. :D

My initial doubts have been answered, I think, after seven weeks I dare say so: whether this shot into the blue would be just a brief episode, or will turn into a long-time hobby. Well, the answer is: the latter. :yeah: I love it, and a day I did not get to the keyboard starts to feel kind of incomplete. Anbd I ove the instrument I have chosen, it sounds and feels so very nice - even more so for that price. My father bought a cheaper one with less sophisticated keyboard and plain, smooth pastic keys, and he complains about the keys now in the heat feeling greasy from his fingertips sweat. A problem I do not share, mine, also plastic, feel like a piano, and feel like keys made of wood with a wooden (or as they say: ivory) surface. Sweating is a complete non-problem.


Interested to start your own thing? : For 40 coins, this is a steal, you cannot go wrong, you just cannot.

https://oldtimemusic.com/piano-for-all-review/

https://www.digitalpianoreviewguide....no-via-ebooks/

Looking forward to see you post some beautiful piano music in our Music thread :D

Markus

Dream on. :)

:Kaleun_Sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEMgNMNeBr4 :arrgh!:...and a little Igor Levit inspiration fer ya! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSyJNWyRZ8Y

I eyed to perform that for next christmas' Germans got talent show, but then decided to postpone it until my next life if then I can't get myself some Japanese war drums first.

You guys are funny - and obviously never have tried to learn piano, eh? :)

Well, I have far more moderate and realistic goals. And even from these I am still a felt lightyear away. If I could ever make it to the level like in the following example, I already would have acchieved my objective, and more. And I think, one day I can get there: its slow, and not complex in structure. "Simple". Well, not really, but you know what I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40fulS_olU8

I feel like aiming at Jupiter and beyond - but so far have just crawled into Earth'S orbit. Next comes docking to the station. Then the Moon base. Then the Mars base.

And then, maybe, Jupiter. :D

Somebody said its full of stars notes.

I got a motivation boost, because in the past 2-3 days I suddenly had a big jump forward in trying to get used to move both hands' fingers independently without them two always falling into synch sooner or later. The result was that I now, within one week, learned to play my first two little songs: Little Trinketry from the video above, and the famous Milton's Tower Theme from What Remains of Edith Finch. Nothing spectacular (but beautifully fragile), two simple, "easy" pieces and hardly a reason to brag about - but what is not noteworthy for mankind, is nevertheless a big step forward for my slow learning brain. I maske a lot of mistakes, and cannot keep the loudness with every key as is needed, and in Trinketry the huge octave grabs cause me to hit the wrong key more often than I like (or better the little finger huts not one, but two keys) - but the "partition" is in my mind, and while the execution still lacks, I know what it should be like, and can correct myself. Miltons Tower I can get through without mistake if I concentrate, Trinketry I can get through but do mistakes from mistypings (after twenty years in this forum you are expecting this from me, I assume...) , in the left hand, those octaves are killing me still. I play slower, however, and the tempi are sooner or later getting a bit out of tact. :) Lets not discuss artistic impression and interpretation... :O:

There is a deeper effect from it, I can see it and experience it. You cannot imagine how difficult I found it to learn to do chords with the one hand, and a totally different simple meldoy or improvisation with the other hand, the brain flipped out. Short time after my last post I was so frustrated from uselessly trying and trying that I almost gave up. But for some reason I tried on, 3, 4 times a day, again and again and again and again. And suddenly some switches flipped over inside my brain, and the two songs worked. In the aftermath, there is an effect beyond these two songs: I suddenly find it much easier to operate my two hands independently from each other, its as if a wall has crumbled that I slammed my head against long enough. And I mean not only in these two songs, but in general its easier now.

Proof of progress! :yeah:

At the other front however the battle has frozen in place: my attempt to learn reading notes fluently, so far stalls again and again. I need to decypher every single dot individually and its time consuming, I know the verses that should help you to memorize which note is on what line and in what space, but all that takes seconds to process (per note!), and when I made sense of one note, the music already is ten bars further down the sheet. LOL I just cannot memorize the notes psoitions on nthe lines, and that now is extremely frustrating after six weeks without visible progress. Maybe I must refocus and adapt to my brain's limits there, learn music by sound and use the notes only as a visual help to remember the structure of the rythm at which the memorised sounds must drip down into the fingers. Hard, very hard this notes stuff all is, its the most difficult of all challenges in my ambition. And I hate it with passion. :arrgh!: Only understanding the need that a certain minimum of understanding these things is inevitable, helps me to keep on trying it. Apparently now this is a wall which I need to slam by head against for much longer before it will crumble, and probably with more furor...

On the good side of this unsatisfying situation is that I find it surprisingly easy to learn music not by notes, but by listening. I can memorise the partition just from listening. My father says that is remarkable, and it makes things a bit easier for me. Maybe my blind chess playing from my youth helps... :)

With both hands now slowly unlocking their sychronous acting, it starts to make fun trying simple improvisations. Nothing spectacular, just a light-hearted playful toying around. I did that before already, very slowly, but now all by itself I noticed that I started to not just hit the key and get the sounds, but that I started to hit the key in rythms. I was not even after it, it happened all by itself. Now that is a pleasant thing to happen! The course I also still follow, focussed until here just on leanrign chords and ryathms, and this suddnely poppwe up all by itself here. So, may autodidactic approach to all this seems to bear fruits.

So I am still at it, and all in all I enjoy it, almost every day and then 2-3 times per day. Progress comes very slow - but it comes. It has started to seriously pick away from my computer time.

And if there may be a blackout, I must not worry: the piano sucks only 15W, and my battery holds 2 kW/h - that should keep me going for quite some days.:haha: Winter, where is your terror, blackness, where is your threat? :D