I've dug out my Grade 2 pass certificate from 2009. Of course I know how I did overall but as this bit of paper has been sitting in an unused pile of sheet music in the cupboard for over a year...18 out of a possible 18 for aural, my best mark. Worst marks were for the three pieces, 24, 26, 27 out of 30, meaning I have a confidence issue when playing.

Sight reading was 19/21 - okay you might think for my Achilles' heel subject but it was not done confidently. And he picked me up on my expression markings!

The pieces I'll be playing teach today will certainly have emphasis on the dynamics, indeed right from my first practice of the piece it did!

Dave - have you kept up your practise despite not having lessons? How quickly did you progress to grade 2? You sound like you don't have any problems with the supporting tests, which is excellent! Polishing pieces sounds like what you need to do to get to that next level and that can be hard if you don't really practise properly (taking thinks right apart).

If your interested in practise technique see the thread in the General Music board or PM me and I'll send you some advice I give to my pupils that works very well for me.

You will love you piano journey and if practised well you should be able to progress quickly too

Pixie, the answer to your initial question is NOPE. Up until just before Christmas my Yamaha YDP131 has stood idle since my last piano lesson apart from when I dust and/or polish it.

I used to practice relentlessly in the period that I had lessons, scales, arpeggios, Hanons, pieces (mostly classical) until that moment last year when I realised I was pumping money into a failed notion. During 2011 most of what I'd learned vanished into the haze, apart from the note names, 3 major and 1 minor scales, and where the notes are on the grand stave (I'd relentlessly play note reading games on the musicteachers.co.uk website)

Guess I sometimes felt like the only pianist in the world, apart from my old teacher! But I've never given up on the fact maybe I've gone about it the wrong way and there are more than one way for a bloke in his 40s to learn the pianner classically!

Okay. had my piano lesson. My teachers such a great teacher, he's so enthusiastic and bubbly, enjoys everything he does and is very proffessional.

But he has given me two new pieces to learn from the 'Classics to Moderns' book 1, one of which is in the key of Bbmajor, of which I had forgotten the scale of. Plus the G minor scale with the augmented seventh, the name of which has also disappeared into t'haze. Harmonic?? Melodic??

I'm having a lesson weekly so this will involve lots of sitting upstairs in the coldcold practising.; I think I'm going to really enjoy it this time around!!! I think I deserve a lower fat toad in the hole made with oil!

Excellent, dave brum - glad you enjoyed your lesson
G minor with the augmented second E flat to F sharp is harmonic.
Have fun with your new pieces!

They are very respectable marks for pieces!

Hope you enjoy being back learning.

Teach told me the same thing and that I have a good sightreading skill. I just ain't confident.
It was also good to play a duet with him also on one of my homework pieces. Anne would never have done that! (sorry Annecakes:-(()

Spent an interesting 45 minutes upstairs at the pianner.

Now I realise I have much to learn. As far as hand co-ordination goes I need to learn it all over again from one, and why do I always want to play the Bbs and Ebs as Bs and ###### E's, I'll never know.

Plus I was starting to get frostbite on my shoulders and arms. I need a brew to warm me up!!!

Music is a never ending journey, but it is so fun and interesting. Allow yourself time to catch up - you haven't played for a while but it sounds like it is still in there

When I restarted piano my coordination was terrible, but it came back quicker than it took me to learn it in the first place. Ditto reading music! I had 15 years off.

I can see me having to replace the radiator in the piano room as I'm going to be spending more time up there in 2012. Now, how to persuade wife moving piano downstairs would be wise...

Hi Dave,

seems like you found just the right teacher for you. It sounds like she is extremly encouraging.
Maybe it is wiser to replace the radiator rather then moving the piano down. I apreciate to feel on my own when practicing because otherwise I tend to play and not do propper practice.

I had a little notion today while I was out driving. I have this skill of being able to adjust the temperature control, radio volume and other dashboard controls whilst my eyes are firmly fixed on the road ahead. Is it like this for a piano player I was wondering, with theplayer devoting his/her concentration on the printed music - and infact when my teach plays, she doesn't look down at all!!!

Do you look on the keyboard when typing? I think it is similar but it might take a long while to get to this state.

I do for most words, but many 'common' English words such as 'you', 'the' etc. I can type without looking down (using 2 fingers!)

Glad you had a good lesson!

I one time learned how to use all my ten fingers when typing and have to type a lot every day. I never look down on the keyboard, it would puzzle me if I'd do so. But it takes time and a piano keyboard is something totally different. But you will get there one day.

Piano's quite tidy too!!!

A good way to lean you way around the keyboard (you probably already know your way around it but don't trust you do) is to get a chordal accompaniment and play it through with your eyes closed. Start taking pieces with bigger and bigger jumps - close your eyes and play. It will build your confidence and you'll look at the piano less and more at the music.

I've mainly been learning accompaniments today - these are coming on really well and take so much less effort of late

sounds like what I need...Glad you had a good (and by the sounds of it enjoyable) lesson, Pix.

I don't have a lesson until next week just a practise session, I do a lot of self directed study

The Laendler piece by Schubert is coming along nicely. I would never have dreamed about using the sus pedal in pieces but I can now play both hands slowly. rather than risk playing wrong notes, I am trying not to be afraid to pause (unofficially) as I play, which will help my sight reading skills.

Well done! One of the main problems with learning a piece is not being patient enough to play it slowly, especially in the early stages. As thay've said on various occasions on this Forum, the brain registers all you do and have done; incl. mistakes, and these interfere with accuracy all the time.
As MadTom (one of the very active Forumites) once put it, it is accuracy first, then fluency and eventually speed.
I began my piano journey when I was (much ?) older than you. Indeed, I was 48 and now at 54 - almost 55 - I'm enjoying it a lot and hoping to take my Grade 7 exam in June.
We can never stress too much how important slow practice is and to prove this, just think that you may learn something fluently by repeating it very very slowly a number of times correctly but the memorizing does not take place if you try to learn it by repeating the same thing fast an equal number of times.

Salute, JC!

I have just done a brief bit of playing and yes, I still have to do the Schubert slowly but it's beginning to sound more like a tune and less like a collection of notes. Little and often is what a lot of teachers say with regard to practice (instead of three hours before each piano lesson) but yesterday, due to suffering a very bad 'downer' and trying to fight a food craving I only wanted to practise in the morning.

However, Im a bit stuck on one particular aspect of the music involving the pedalling in one section, and I'm gonna have to ask teach about it on Tuesday.

Gosh, Grade 7!!!! I wish you all the luck in the world with it Juan (rather you than me at this present time!!!)

Thank you Dave Brum!
To be honest, although I have had my pieces off and on for about one year (and over) I'm beginning to quake in my shoes ... insecurity is a serious issue when it comes to exams or to playing for somebody else other than my other self
I put in a lot of practice every day; being a home worker, I do between 2 and a half and four hours but much of this is wasted because I'm a lover of scales/arpeggios/etc and I often lean back on those rather than facing my hopeless inefficiency at sight-reading or polishing up pieces (an arduous task once the piece has been learnt, so to speak). The sight-reading section of the exam is really very stress-inducing although I dutifully sight-read every day - with little success, other than that of keeping disciplined routine practice of that sort of skill - but progress is slower than a snail's pace (... I wouldn't know which animal to use for comparison purposes ... ) but I keep going because I just love playing the piano and am trying to catch up on what I did not do when I was younger ...
However, it is never too late ... to end on an optimistic note!

I've just been reading in a book about 'bad habits' when you make a mistake whilst you're playing don't keep on going over them to play the note(s) correctly but carry on in the rhythm of the tune. This is one of my worst habits and something that I'll try hard to break.

I can play all the grade 6 pieces I'm learning from memory I've never been able to memorise even a line of music before, just goes to show I have been practising properly

When I was studying for my grade 2, I found I could do likewise, however now I couldn't even remember WHAT I played.

I used to pop on the bus down to Cranes (big acoustic piano store in Worcester) and play the same grade 2 piece on each piano!!!

ps how are you ???

well done-i actualy passed the theory exam in the 70s and recently started recapping it,strange im finding certain sections hard!

Just had another lightbulb moment. I play from memory not the printed music, and it's a bad habit - no wonder I'm c*ap at sight reading. Must fix this immediately.

It's not necessarily a bad habit.
You do need to make sure you spend enough time looking at the music to play accurately from memory. I've had the odd good memoriser who part learned then guessed which meant never getting anything either accurate nor fluent.
Even if your memory is good unless you learn by copying you need to be able to decode the score with reasonable efficiency.

lesson at 2.30 today. Might take the camera and ask if teach will let me take some of the mowmows.

Ok had my lesson, and it was, on a scale of 1 to 10 around a 7 1/2.

One of my pieces got a gold smiley on my music, and teach also liked my scales. I now have 5 scales to practise, all Grade 3 ones. I've been asked me to do a 'scales pot', ie do a 'lotto' with the names of the scales in the pot. Pick a scale, play it. If i play it incorrectly it goes back into the pot. But if I play it correctly I leave it out and draw another 'scale'.

I have a homework piece called The Soldiers Song. It's not the national anthem of Ireland though but another similarly titled piece. Its all in RH chords.

Issues teach has picked me up on incluse awkward fingering. I don't realise I do it but I really must control my hands more. You see my teachers' hands are like 2/3 the size of my huge masculine clumsy paws and I must turn them into Rachmaninov digits.

Next lesson next week at the same time.

Excellent idea! random practice of scales/arpeggios is invaluable and also, do not neglect hadns separate practice ... the left hand gets very 'naughty' at times ...

What I've done in the past, including the Laendler piece I won the golden smiley for, is first play RH, then play LH and attempt to bring the two together. That way I can pay particular attention to dynamics, phrasing etc.

My sight reading is near perfect for one hand at a time, but for two hands simultaneously it's not at all perfect. Remembering to sharpen and flatten also banjaxes me, but if LangLang and carol*piano can do it, then so can old faceache 'ere!

I did used to have a Scale of the Day, and as I have loads of ice cream containers over from Christmas one will undoubtedly become my Scale Pot.

Thank you Dave for keeping us updated.
Seems like your lesson was good again.

Thank you, schraeubchen. Got a lot of hand control and fingering work to do, and my Scale Pot too! Pixie*Porsche has hers today.....good luck Pix!

I'm not sure we're quite in the same league!

Go on Carol. I'm sure your is nearer that of LangLang than that of Les Dawson...

Just had a game with my 'scales pot' and I have to say it's more of a challenge than having a weekly list of S&A's to practise, as the randomness feels more like an exam situation than working from the AB Grade 3 list, or my teachers' notes. A and B major double octave perfect so far, gonna have another go after lunch.

I used to have a scales pot when I was learning the high clarinet grades. When I decide to do a piano exam (teacher mentioned either doing the gd. 6 or 7.) I will do the same a few months before. It's really good practise.

I got some lovely music very cheap yesterday

I'm doing my scales pot twice daily. Plus I'm writing out key signatures like a kid would do a hundred lines, as I know teach will test me on them next week.

Oxfam Books and Music stores are really good for picking up cheap sheet music. My old teacher used to trade sheet music on a donate-and-buy sale, with the proceeds going to Smile Train.