Lee - an adult beginner

This is a very interesting question. My husband ask the same question last week if our daughter knew which finger to use when playing since she is playing advance songs where her finger moves everywhere on the keyboard. I told him " Well, she seems to use whichever finger that is comfortable to her and sometimes I would play the songs and tell her the fingering to play". He then told me about his experience of his learning piano using conventional method as a kid where there are fix fingering. The songs that he learn is only from Do-So and Ti-Mi and he quit after few months.

This is a very interesting question. My husband ask the same question last week if our daughter knew which finger to use when playing since she is playing advance songs where her finger moves everywhere on the keyboard. I told him " Well, she seems to use whichever finger that is comfortable to her and sometimes I would play the songs and tell her the fingering to play". He then told me about his experience of his learning piano using conventional method as a kid where there are fix fingering. The songs that he learn is only from Do-So and Ti-Mi and he quit after few months.

Ok, so here is a quick update of my first week using Soft Mozart!

It has been a really exciting and enjoyable week! I am really impressed with the software and can now understand how it can help to accelerate learning of the piano as well as making it much more fun and enjoyable. I have some basic experience of learning piano in the past - but I have found that I have made more progress and much more quickly using this software than I ever did previously when just playing the piano alone. I managed to practice for between 15 mins and 45 mins on most days, although some days I did not have time because of other commitments.

The ability to measure progress, both in terms of number of correct notes and timing is extremely helpful. I am recording the date and score for each time I play a piece. This is very motivating - it puts me in competition with myself - I want to beat my previous scores and constantly improve! So I am more disciplined and try harder to keep focussed. This means that each time I practice I get more out of the time spent. I found that it was much better to spend a shorter, more intensely focussed time than spending too long and losing focus. I will keep this in mind when starting to teach my toddler - keeping focused on the activity is suprisingly tiring, so we will stick to 'little and often' especially at first.

What was also a big hit for me was the way you can practice one hand along side the computer playing the other hand at the same time. This was so much more enjoyable than just playing one hand at a time without the software. It means I have been able to focus on improving particular skills at a faster tempo using each hand separately, before moving on to both hands together which is a more complex stage involving reading the music and coordinating two hands.

So, I have noticed my scores improving steadily. For example with March from the Nutcracker suite, I have gone from:

Day 1: R5 314/342 on accuracy and time of 230,
P5 477/506 time 339
Day 7: R5 337/342 and time of 77
P5 496/506 and time of 190

I did also practice the left hand but don't want to fill up this posts with numbers!

I also practiced about half of the Christmas carols - some are more difficult than others. I plan to move onto the other half over the next week whilst the Christmas mood remains!

Overall, I am very very happy with having purchased the software and can immediately see an improvement. Thanks Hellene!

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?

Thanks - I know there will be a lot more questions to come!!!