Lee - an adult beginner

lzp11 wrote: Oh, I do have a couple of questions please

Hellene - you suggested I should aim to play the Christmas carols with less than 3 errors and 'artistically'. Can you help me to understand when I'm playing something artisically? I know this might be subjective, but as a beginner it can be difficult to know when you are getting something right or not!

Timing - one of my biggest issues is with getting the timing right. Partly it is because I'm quite impatient and probably try to practice more quickly than I'm really capable of playing easily. When learning clarinet in the past, the teacher used to make me play a piece slowly but with the correct time. I used to count in my head (one-and two-and etc). Maybe this is why I never learned to play anything very artisically if I was too busy counting!!! But I am tending not to count using SM and just follow the software and go with a gut feeling, watching the screen and also knowing what the piece is supposed to sound like (another really great feature!!!). There seems to be less focus on bars and time signature etc. But sometimes I do struggle with leaving a left hand finger on the key for too long.

Also, at the moment, my timing of pieces is very variable, it tends to speed up with easy sections and slow down with harder ones. Is this OK or should I aim for an even tempo throughout?

lzp11 wrote: An update on my progress! With Christmas being so busy and going away to visit relatives over new year, I haven't had quite as much time to play but I have been able to get started again this week. I will do a separate thread for teaching DD (somewhat challenging ) very soon.

I have gone through the whole Christmas carols album for sight-reading practice. I managed to play most of them on presentation 5 with less than 5 errors and reasonably musically by the 6 th time of trying. One or two were harder (e.g. god rest you merry gentlemen has F#). I am now able to play most fairly well although not perfect.
Some example scores (all on P5):
deck the halls - 107/108 - t19
Jolly old st Nicholas 66/67 - t11
Merry Christmas 114/117 - t35
angels 110/113 - t19
away in a manger 72/72 - t22
Christmas tree 91/92 - t17
coventry 40/41-t11

Should I continue to work on these as clearly not perfect or move onto another album for sight-reading practice? Maybe to start on the two albums for the May recital?

Then the main piece I'm working on for technique is March from the Nutcracker suite. I will try to post a video soon as it will make it easier to comment. I'm still not certain about some fingering of the right hand but I'm improving with both hands separately although coordination of both hands together is difficult.

Latest scores:
R5 338/342 t80
RH5 324/342 t116
L5 159/164 t46
LH5 160/164 t48
P5 481/506 t167

Finally I am playing note alphabet school and gradually increasing scores (latest is 490 with 5 mins playing). I do this with solfege symbols to help me learn these with DD as I've never used before.

So it is all good fun and very much enjoying the learning process

lzp11 wrote: Thank you Hellene. I am self-taught on piano - have never had any lessons but we have a piano at home since childhood and I have practiced a few pieces over the years, following the fingering guidelines in the books but no formal instruction, so I undoubtedly have a number of bad habits including a lack of patience (like mother like daughter.... ) I learned to read music from the clarinet and my mum showed me the notes on the keyboard as she can play herself.

I will start on the sight reading pieces for the recital. How many times should we play them (e.g. I just played all the pieces in the Nursery Rhymes Primer with v few mistakes!)?

So for March from Nutcracker, I have a few questions:
Which finger should I start on C in bar 5 (I am using 4th finger)?

Same for B in bar 6

Also for bars 13 and 14. I find this section harder to know where to cross fingers.
I am trying to ensure that I use 3rd finger on f# as per the chromatic scale exercise - is this correct?

Also, with bar 17, I have been starting on 5th finger and crossing 3rd over on Bar 18 (on . Then on bar 20 putting thumb on G and squeezing in the third finger so I can stretch the thumb down to work back down the keys. Is this somewhere right?!