Victor’s Piano Solo (Complete)

Here my finally complete version:

Victor’s Piano Solo (Short)

After a learning time of 16 days here the video on youtube:

Actually, I cheated a bit. The last 3-4 measures normally are very fast. Because I learned them 2 days ago, I only could play them quite slow. So instead of repeating the measures 4-32 I slowed the last measures down for a nice ending. 😉

Yann Tiersen – Comptine d’un autre été L’après midi Amelie (Piano cover)

Here my version of Amelie:

Lots of mistakes 🙂

Two contests on youtube

There are two playing contests on youtube.

The first one is from Thomas Andersen (aka thomandy) who announced a playing contest of one of his own compositions in a very funny and must see video on youtube. The title of Thomas‘ piece is Prelude in F minor. Thomas means it’s about grade 1-2, but for people who didn’t ever play F minor it’s not that easy – including me, of course 🙂 But the piece is short and slow and I really like it 🙂 Deadline is the 16th Sep 2009.

The second one is from Andrew Furmanczyk (aka Lypur on youtube). He wrote a piece, called Dolphins. Andrew says in his announcement, that the piece would be about grade 6 because the timing is sometimes a bit tricky. Deadline is the 1st Nov 2009.

The price of both is exposure for about 2-3 weeks on the youtube channel of both. So, if you learn the pieces, post it and win the competion, you will win thousands of hits on youtube.

Thoughts

Did you ever think:“Wuuh … that’s sooo bloody hard, I won’t ever be able to play this fluently and in the right rythm“? 🙂

That was the case with the current piece Amelie Poulain – Comtine d’un autre ete l’apr.

Kind a brain teaser …

Tried a couple of days with about 2-3h daily … The unbelievable happened …

It turned out, that I will be able to play this piece of s… uhm … music 😀

Never say you will never learn something! Just try 🙂 It will become easier 🙂

And one further tip: remember that there were things you thought you wouldn’t be able to do ever – finally you did it. Just keep trying and everything will be possible 🙂

Alea iacta est

So, I decided which will be my next piece to learn.

It’s a piece of Yann Tiersen which name is Amelie Poulain – Comtine d’un autre ete l’apr. Unfortunately I don’t speek French, so I don’t know what the title means. Please let me know, if you speak French 🙂

Here the reference:

I started learning this beautiful piece, which should be well-known by a lot of people (do you know the movie? 🙂 ), about 1 week ago. Actually it was a week earlier, but then I was one week on vacation, so it doesn’t count 😉

This piece is very repetative and it’s soooo different to River Flows in You. There are 4 different measures for the left hand which repeat all over the entire piece. Secondly the 2nd half is almost identical to the 1st half, but one octave higher. So, actually someone has to learn less than a half 🙂 But Although this piece seems that easy it sounds sooo nice 🙂

So, let’s see how long does it take …

Ah, forgot to mention … reading from the sheet is still difficult …

New Recording of River Flows in You

After a learning time of 7 weeks now a complete version. But still lot’s of mistakes … I’ll continue playing this piece and perhaps record a new version in a couple of weeks. Will be interesting, how it will sound then …

Recommendation: Lypur on YouTube

Andrew Furmanczyk has recorded and uploaded a lot of „how to play piano“ videos on YouTube. His intention is to provide piano learn lessons to people who can’t afford one in real life. The lessons are not only very professional but funny as well 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/user/Lypur

A must see 🙂

Difficulties of learning piano

People, who want to learn something, often ask themselves, why is something supposed to be difficult, like playing piano.

From the point of view of someone, who isn’t even a beginner, a thing could look easy. You have got notes on a sheet, so you have to learn notes. And you have keys on a keyboard, so you have to find the keys and associate them with the notes on a sheet. Then you have to memorize the notes and practice by repeating and repeating until you know where the keys are, withouth thinking, because that would prevent playing fluently.

I could say, I now know the right keys on the keyboard and I know when to play them. Actually from the point of view above I should be able to play the piece.

The other thing ist … It’s getting clearer and clearer where the real difficulties are. It’s the dynamics, it’s the change in dynamics, it’s the perfect timing, it’s about emotions and so on …

The beginners point of view is: Ohh … I will never learn this … can’t do …

The basics can be learned fast, but then you get to a point, from which it’s a lot harder to progress further …

Whatever, I didn’t manage to play 3/4 of River flows in you without problems in timing and dynamics … Still, the last 1/4 has to be learned by heart …

My next piece?

I’ve been searching for quite a while for my next piece I want to learn.

At my current level, I will have to like it for about 2 month 😉

I tried the first 20 seconds and it felt sooo impossible, again … This was about 4 days ago … Now, I feel that it could be possible …

But that’s a feeling I got from „river flows in you“ as well, when I had to learn to play a new section …