Does anyone fancy a piano chat thread?

[LemonViolet]

I’m awaiting delivery of a new piano, squeee!!! I haven’t played regularly for 20 years. I got to grade 6 as a teen, failed grade 7, carried on tinkering for a bit but have not really lived anywhere with a piano since age 18 so am well out of practice.

Whilst I hope/plan to put a baby grand in our front room, once it is done up - which may be some time - at the weekend I just realised, what am I waiting for, I want a digital anyways for playing at less sociable hours, so went ahead and ordered myself a nice Kawai digital and it arrives on Friday!!!

There’s a music chat thread on the extracurricular board but that’s more parents discussing their offsprings’ exploits, I have seen on the music board it’s quite pianissimo but there clearly are other grown up women around here playing/learning/relearning piano for our own pleasure, entertainment, therapy etc! So thought I’d post to see if anyone else is interested in hanging out on a piano thread to chat about our piano journeys, successes and failures, pieces we like, what we’re practicing etc?

It could be called the piano bar or the pianist beaker, seeing as this is MN

If there is one I’ve just failed to find, please point me in that direction.

@LemonViolet - what do you think of the sound and keyboard weight?

@How2Help - that’s really helpful info. My acoustic piano (which I still have but can’t have in my flat) was accidentally a really good piano with incredible tone. I really want the same richness, so your piano recommendation is great!

That’s it. You have all helped me make my mind up. I’m going to the nearest Bonner’s to London to try some. I’m so excited!!!

I’ve somewhat optimistically bought the grade 8 pieces from Amazon. Luckily I still have all of my old piano books for when I need to be a little more realistic 😂

@Serenissima21. Honestly, I never ever ended up polishing a piece. I was never an very accurate player. Also has this weird thing when I was practising for exams I would get better and better with practice…and then it was like I always went over the hill and down the other side making it crap again. But crap in really annoying ways - like the same mistake or messed up rhythm. Most annoying.

But I’m ok with being a bit of a crap piano player!

So lovely to get a piano in the post! My parcel today was vintage Tupperware bowls from eBay to replace a couple of old favourites now past their best.
Next week after I’ve road tested my old fingers on my friends piano I’m going to order a Kawai digital with weighted keys and have it upstairs sharing a room with my sewing machine (s)
Maybe I could combine piano practice with sewing you all piano covers! All in the same room.

@Serenissima21 I don’t think I’ve ever properly polished a piece. I get about 85% of the way there and then lose interest. I have a list of pieces on my board to polish but instead of working on them I bought a new book and started cocking about with the pieces in that.

As I said earlier I did grade 8 flute as a teen and I loathed all the practice for the exams. I think that not finishing a piece is 42yo me rebelling against that still.

@broccolibush, me too, I’m just going to play solely for my own pleasure! I hated just practising exam pieces over and over again.
I’ve just looked at the syllabus for the last exam I did, trinity college grade 7 ( 1972!) and those scales sound incomprehensible, can’t believe I could once play contrary motion!

Going to jump on. Love this thread. I teach piano and it's great to see everyone on here enjoying playing!

@broccolibush I’m totally with you on this. The grade system sucks the joy out of learning, or it did for me. And it’s also really odd - you polish and polish pieces especially for exams, but can you really play to that standard, as in pick up another piece off the syllabus and bash it out? Probably not - it’s not the way we were taught. It was all about passing the grade and moving on.

Best thing about being an adult is that I play for me, and don’t care about what standard I am. Really enjoy the tinkling and the piecing a tune together than actually being able to play it flawlessly. I love putting emotion in, and I don’t think I appreciated before how much tone you can get out of a piano.

@azilliondegrees I agree. I passed Grade 7 and then realized I literally couldn't play anything. I'm working on building a repertoire now.

How often do you get your pianos tuned? I had mine done 6 months ago but it's already out of tune!

Mmm so my goal is to be able to play a range of music well enough for myself, probably not aiming past G4 to be honest. I like the way I have to slow my thinking down and relax. It’s really quite mindful!

@Serenissima21

Does anyone find it really hard to polish pieces? I have so many that I can almost play!

I find I always make a few mistakes in every piece I play whether it’s an easy or a difficult one. I also get at least one problem bar in every piece which becomes a bugbear which is largely psychological. As I get near the bar my fingers tense up and no matter how often I practice it separately, my fingers seem programmed to do it wrong.

Ok I have to stop playing now I am making my wrist sore! (Broke my arm a few years ago and it is a weak spot still).

In terms of sound and feel, I am super impressed. There are 4 proper piano sounds - Concert Grand, Studio Grand, Mellow Grand and Modern Piano. As well as things like harpsichord, organ and random stuff like a tinkly fairground sounding one that is really creepy when you play anything in a minor key in it . I like Mellow Grand best I think but it depends on the piece, also sounds different in headphones vs out loud. You can choose different levels of reverb - room/lounge/small hall/concert hall/cathedral which alters the sound too. With regards to feel/touch it can also be altered light/normal/heavy, I just kept it in the middle, but maybe I should switch it to light touch if I’m going to strain my wrist!!!

Today I played some familiar Bach inventions and little preludes, a simpler Chopin that I recognised (Waltz in A minor), some Grade 3ish things from the start of Romantic Sketchbook 2 which I found accessible to stumble through sight reading and then practice and get reasonably well put together within 10-20 minutes or so each, so I guess that’s the level I’m really starting at, around grade 3. Oh and then later my Adele book arrived and I had a lot of fun with that, not necessarily playing all the right notes on the page but at least messing on the right chords. Actually a lot of them aren’t that technical and you can get them sounding good quite easily, songs like Turning Tables and Someone Like You are basically just lots of arpeggios. I think it was all those riffing chords/arpeggios that have knackered my wrist though! Putting some voltarol gel on it and resting tonight!

WRT not perfecting pieces - yup I recognise that 100%. I guess whether it matters or not depends on why you’re playing and what your motivation is? I like the concept of “active repertoire” pianodao.com/active-repertoire/ where you aim to have 3 pieces that you can properly play at any one time. I think I’ll pick 3 to actually work on and get them polished, whilst tinkering widely at the side as well.

@Serenissima21

How often do you get your pianos tuned? I had mine done 6 months ago but it's already out of tune!

Just had it tuned a few weeks ago, but only bought it start of last month.

@LemonViolet she's beautiful!!!!!!! And yes I like the concept of the active repertoire as well, although I have to say, after a while I get a bit sick of playing the same pieces again and again!

@dgirluk I went right back to G2/3 when I started again. It meant I could enjoy playing whilst getting my fingers stronger. Mind you, forcing myself to be patient was bloody hard!

And (shock horror!) I actually made a point of NOT playing scales and arpeggios because I can't stand them, it was so liberating These days if I do things like scales/arpeggios it'll be because they're a part of the piece I'm learning!

Ah I am crap at sewing but I do like the cover idea thank you!

This evening has been crap but I did just make time to play for a bit. I’m so glad I went digital - my old piano is very loud and there’s just no way I could play at this time of night. Tonight I played with the headphones on but then a couple at the end just with the volume down a bit.

Played some Yiruma, bit of Einaudi and one of my fave bits of film music - from the Fantastic Beasts soundtrack :o

I need to work out what my favourite settings are for reverb, touch etc and actually write them down. I can never remember which keys are for various functions either 😳

Ooh I love scales. Arpeggios not so much. One of my pupils seems to quite like them too, so we’ve done more than I usually would at this early stage. Broken chords instead of arpeggios though.

I don’t know about how I’m going to approach scales/arpeggios apart from I think perhaps using them as warmups choosing keys from current pieces maybe? I was surprised yesterday that I do know them all automatically still - even though I perhaps would find it difficult to quickly name the notes of any given scale immediately if asked as a verbal question, I’d have to think about it, apparently I ‘just know’ muscle memory how to play them starting on any given note. Same as I ‘just know’ where the notes are without looking at my hands when sight reading. It’s weird but just all very familiar, like coming back to a place you used to go to and it all being just how you remember it but you didn’t even realise you remembered it, IYSWIM.

I’ve never played any new composers like Eiunaudi or Yiruma but they sound very relaxing - I’ve ordered this book Contemporary Piano Masters 40 pieces from 20 of the world's leading piano composers www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1540047954/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_AS2M9EJ70VJEWBRXM523?tag=mumsnetforu03-21 to explore them a bit, looking forward to it. My favourite music was usually late Romantic/early Modern stuff before, I think. Turn of the (last) century. I wonder at what point we’ll stops calling 20th century stuff “Modern”? Some of it is now over 100 years old, and what we consider both “Classical” and “Romantic” periods spanned less than 100 years each.

@ablutiions

Can any of you lovely pianistas recommend a sight reading course/app / book please ?

@ablutiions I’d look at the “Improve Your” series by Paul Harris, I found them really useful when I was learning clarinet and there’s a whole lot of piano ones. If I did want to prepare for an exam then I’d get the exam board practice books for the grade as well, I see now ABRSM has a few options - the standard “specimen sight reading” books, as well as a second set “more sight reading” and what looks like a workbook series “joining the dots” too. I wonder if there are sight reading books second hand on eBay though - it’s not like you can really re-use them yourself by their very nature!

I wonder if there are sight reading books second hand on eBay though - it’s not like you can really re-use them yourself by their very nature!
I have the Harris books and I have such a bad menory that if I leave them a few weeks it's like a brand new book again.
Thanks for posting the active repertoire challenge. It looks really useful.

This thread is so inspiring- and very busy!
Re sight reading, I bought the grade 3 and 4 ABRSM books to have a go at. They have loads of exercises in. They're also reassuringly manageable which is giving me hope.
Re scales- what is everyone else doing? @LemonViolet I'm impressed you can remember all your scales. Ive been trying to work my way through, and have improved for sure, but I'm struggling with some of the tricky ones like B flat minor, F sharp minor etc. I've mastered C sharp minor recently though, which was one I don't even remember from my previous piano playing days.
My teacher has a digital piano and a grand. I play on the grand and she demonstrates things on the digital. It sounds great, and I'm seriously tempted to get one myself so I could play when the kids are in bed.

I woke up before the kids today and had a lovely half hour playing with headphones on. Normally I’d just sit scrolling my phone so huge thank you for the thread as it inspired me!

I played a bit of Harry Potter music, and some sonatinas by Kuhlau and Clementi (they’re pretty underrated I think, really nice to play)

I also recently found a book where I’d composed some simple pieces. I’d love to try and get a book published of fun pieces for beginners.

How do you all learn scales? Note by note or by formula? (I learn by formula and I find it much easier, but I was never taugt that way).

Is everyone aware of IMSLP - the massive, free online resource of pieces out of copyright? My teacher finds it hilarious that I buy books rather than just download from there. It is useful for finding the odd piece or seeing whether something is totally overwhelming before ordering a book with pieces recommended in it.

Re scales I tend to do them as a warm up when I start to play just to get my fingers moving. RH/LH/Hands together and contrary motion. I don’t think about what notes I’m playing, they just kind of happen (not helpful I know) which is probably because I know what I’m expecting to head interval wise so I just play it. I barely bother with arpeggios though, which I probably need to incorporate as lots of the pieces I try have arpeggio work in them.

@Buggerthebotox good question- I check the scale in the book to see the best finger positioning, then play it over and over until it feels easy. What I've noticed is, the more I play them, the more obvious the formula seems. My teacher explained relative minors to me- it was something I had never heard of when I was learning. So the relative minor has the same key signature as it's relative major but the seventh is sharpened, etc. Formulas like that make more sense the more scales you play so it's fitting together nicely.

Like many of you I studied piano whilst at school. Have played piano and keyboards over the years. Mostly badly but enjoyed it.
During lockdown I bought my first ukulele. Such fun and reasonably easy to sound good from the start. Loads of help online.
Buy from a proper dealer though as they set them up for you. Worth a try and they take up very little space!