Instrument Players - Come and chat (Part III)

[CoteDAzur]

We continue our musical journey on the 3rd thread for amateur adult instrument players

Here is our 1st thread and
here's the 2nd one.

Welcome amiga I know what you mean re starting the piano after so many years and music becoming an important part of your life now.

That's exactly what happened to me. I was stuck at home for weeks due to an injury and thought I'd pass some time on DD's piano. Fast forward several years, and I am now an adult student of the harpsichord at the local Conservatoire where I also sing Soprano in its choir. It's great!

Good luck with the theory! I have a teenager doing it next week but he's a bit too laid back for my liking!
I'm enjoying the Trinity G5 pieces but still need to do a lot of work on them. Early days!
For sight-reading I agree the Paul Harris books are very good. Also trying pieces from lower grades than the one your on can be a surprising confidence booster!

Paul Harris book is going to be delivered soon - thanks. I'm not really sure what grade I am though, so I went for 4. I did pass that grade but it was 25 years ago! I think I did badly on sight-reading then.

So exams are terrifying but also auditions. I once had an audition for an amateur orchestra to play flute and the man said "perhaps you should try a non-audition orchestra", which I found a bit upsetting at the time, but I guess the music world can be quite harsh! I definitely have some music exam / audition baggage. Perhaps it would be helpful if music teachers were trained in psychology?

Yes it makes me laugh seeing my teacher switch from teaching me, to a tiny tot, to a younger guy playing highly proficient jazz.
Lots of different approaches to teaching.
I ended up reading quite a lot about adult learners and fears to reassure myself it wasn't just me.

Adult learning is just so much harder. I see DC practicing for 5 minutes maybe twice a week and playing their pieces pretty well. I practice about 2 hours every day and still struggle

Hello everyone!

Ooops.

I heard Imogen Cooper's late Schubert sonatas on the radio the other evening when I was driving home and now I want to play them...

Hello. Can I join you? I played the piano as a child and stopped around grade 3. Took it up again between 34 and 42 and managed grade 7 (just!). Stopped for a few years as too busy with kids and work and just started again last year at 45! I'm just not making much progress though. At the moment I am learning a piano version of Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers - it is so slow that the flowers will have wilted before I get to the end! Sigh...

Welcome smemorata

Hi Never. Long time no chat!

I've enjoyed hearing things on Classic FM and then being able to get the sheet music and learn the piece - the internet has made finding music so much easier.
A bit of Einaudi, and Tutto è benissimo by Albert Giuroli - which is almost reaching benissimo now.

Hello cote!

I'm in my Schubert phase.

Does anyone play organ? I've been working on some Christmas carols (need to start early to get them good enough if I'm trying to read a score) and to add a bit of interest I've put my digital piano on the pipe organ setting. Obviously it's not like playing a real organ, but it does mimic the organ thing where the note doesn't die away as long as you have your finger pressed on the key, and also the note finishes immediately when you release the key. I hadn't realized before how this really changes how you need to play...or perhaps it shows how un-legato I normally play! You have to really get the next fingers ready otherwise it sounds detached and awful. Just thought it was an interesting way of playing. My piano teacher thinks it's quite a good thing to practice to help with legato technique as it's so unforgiving.

Mine tells me to record myself, partly to introduce an element of "performance nerves" to get used to that, but also to listen back to myself, I think it sounds different to when you're actually playing it.

I sometimes put my keyboard onto harpsichord mode or organ mode for Bach etc just for fun! ( Living in the edge! )
But I've never played a real organ/ harpsichord.

Ah yes I record myself too - there's something about knowing it's a recording that makes it nerve-wracking and different. Even though I have headphones on and I am the only person who will hear the recording! I guess it's a good thing to get used to.

I live on the edge adding some harpsichord mode too - good to mix it up a bit!

Recording yourself is really good for exams but does take some courage!
I've bought the Trinity sight-Reading book, will report back if it's any good.
This week have focused on two lines of one piece - really hope this pays off in terms of technique.I'm trying to cure myself of just playing from the beginning till I get stuck and then going back to the beginning. I'm actually finding focusing on the middle of a piece quite liberating now!

I played a real organ - in a cathedral! It was very powerful and felt like I was inside the music.

Re technique - The organ teacher who was sitting with me said I should aim for quite the opposite of legato. If you don't detach the notes, they all bleed into each other and the music sounds awful.

"the note doesn't die away as long as you have your finger pressed on the key, and also the note finishes immediately when you release the key."

Yes, and this is why it is a very precise instrument while the piano (where all notes continue for a while) really isn't. And on top of that pianists use the pedal which extends all notes you play even further. This doesn't matter when you are playing a single melody but it kills the contrapuntal polyphony of the Baroque period. It's why Bach in particular sounds so incredible on the organ and the harpsichord but not on the piano.

(Notes die as soon as you lift you finger from the key in the harpsichord, as well. Another similarity between the two instruments is that the volume of a note does not change depending on how hard you hit the key - another reason why Baroque music doesn't sound great on the piano).

It must have been awesome to play in a cathedral! That's very interesting that the teacher said that Cote. I'd only heard about the legato approach, but then my knowledge of organ is almost nil.

I just did a bit of googling and on a quick look it seems like there might be two separate techniques - 'articulated' for early works (pre 1750), and legato for more modern pieces - eg described in the blurb for this book: www.amazon.co.uk/Organ-Technique-George-H-Ritchie/dp/0195137450?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

So I think for my hymns, legato makes sense, but for Bach I should be articulating the notes. Now to actually achieve it...

I find articulation in general much easier on flute than piano - it feels like I have much more control over the sound.

I went to a cathedral school, the sound of the organ building up for hymns and psalms etc was amazing ( especially when you're only 11!) It seems to go right into you. That was about the same time as Close Encounters, I felt like I was in a spaceship!!

Re practising, I always play from the beginning, and recognise it's not always the best way to improve, and my teacher tells me too. It's hard to balance the joy of playing with the rigour of working on a small part over and over. I think my teacher even did his thesis on how people practice.

Tintin did you learn the flute as a child. That was one of my retirement aims, I bought one, first discovered I got nickel allergy ( I've put a bit of sticky back plastic on it!) But worse, after the first 5 notes I've found I cannot produce the lower notes. It's been back in its box for a long while and the piano has taken over. Do you have any advice?

I played a real pipe organ, thanks to my lovely teacher - it was amazing! When you play the pedals the sound vibrates through your whole body, I loved it! I play a little digital organ at church, bit it's not a very impressive instrument! And it doesn't have pedals except for the volume pedal.

I record myself and cringe when I listen to the recordings! I also get performance anxiety really badly, and even a bit when I'm recording myself.

I just don't get how you can also play notes with your feet too on the organ - but I suppose it seems hard to play different notes with your two hands on piano at first and then you just learn to do it!

Performance anxiety is very strange. When we first got a digital piano I was amazed at the difference it made when I used headphones and knew I was the only one who could hear...even though without them it was only my family who could hear and they don't care. Gradually I'm getting used to playing without headphones. But yes playing worse when recording is normal I think.

Amiga yes I learnt flute as a child/teenager and did the grades and all that - it's the instrument I'm best at I guess. The frustrating thing as a beginner on woodwind is just not being able to get the notes out. At least on piano anyone can actually make all the notes sound! It's normal for the low notes to be hard at first. I guess worth checking with a teacher that your embouchure is looking ok. I can't really remember much about my beginner days on flute since it was so long ago. But perhaps related, I've found when playing tenor recorder (new instrument for me) that similarly the low notes are hard and if I really try to imagine the pitch I'm going for it can help. I also relax my mouth on recorder for low notes. But it's much harder to know what I do on the flute because it's so instinctive now.

Actually I sometimes wonder if it would be best when you learn as an adult to be taught by someone who was also a beginner as an adult - so they can really know what it's like. And it would also be a great motivator for the student to know what's possible, even starting later. Those teachers must be rare though.

Just found this nice video of Bobby McFerrin demonstrating how we all instinctively know the pentatonic scale and thought you lot might like it:

I do like to dig out my recorder occasionally and play a bit of baroque stuff. I mentioned this to my piano teacher and he said Oh, yes I did my Grade 5 recorder last term, just for something to do. (Some people!! He's a professional drummer and keyboard player, plus clarinet or oboe or something else.) I should try again with the flute and be more determined. And yet more relaxed, I don't think tension is going to help me!

I've been rooting through sheet music that I've had since teenage years, I found:
Theme tune to All Creatures great and small.
Billy Joel - just the way you are
Barbra Streisand - Evergreen

And being an 80s girl I wanted to try the Associates, Party Fears Too, I found this guy on YouTube
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He does arrangements of all sorts, and puts the chords in the comments section. Still hard to pick it up at speed but I'm going to work on it.
I used to do this with a tape recorder in the 80s. Spandau ballet, True; Toto, Africa etc. It's a slow process.

Looseattheseams did your teenager do the exam yesterday? Did he have any comments?
There were only 8 taking it in our area, I wasn't the only adult but I was definitely the oldest. Happy it's done now. My teacher says we're going on to some Christmas things now before looking at Gr5 playing next year.

amiga yes he did - he said it was very busy at his centre but he thought it went ok. Good to have it done and fingers crossed out of the way!

amiga it is a slow process working it out from recordings but ultimately very rewarding and great ear training! I haven't done it for a while (need a good free day to really work on it I find) but when I do work out a piece I then feel like it's really 'in me' and that I know it much better than the ones I learnt by reading.