I've got two questions here really.

One is how do you actually get from one grade to the next on piano? I'm not sure how to explain exactly what it is I'm trying to ask. On flute, there are new notes to learn and to develop tone on. But piano has all the notes right there ready to play. Other instruments seem to be more like flute - extra notes to learn or new things like changing position. With piano, how do you know what you need to do to progress?

The other is what do you play between grades? How do you know what grade pieces are if they havn't appeared on the syllabus at some point? With flute, you can sort of tell roughly what level a pieces is by which notes it uses and how long you have to go without breathing and stuff like that - things to do with physically getting the sounds out of the instrument. With piano, how do you tell?

I'm working for grade 5 at the moment and I don't know how I got here from grade 4 - I didn't actually work on anything or learn anything specific. I find this quite disconcerting. How do I tell if I'm actually ready for 5?
And, in the unlikely event that I decide to keep going with piano after 5, how do I figure out what to do to progress from there?

T.

Well....I haven't been having lessons for very long so I can only speak for myself! I am currently preparing for Grade 4 but I have also started learning some Grade 5 pieces too. Some of them seemed much too hard whereas others were "doable" (thinking of Jackson Street Blues). I don't think you need to get too hung up on what grade pieces are - if you like pieces from a higher grade, try them out! If you find that you can get started on them but that they are still a challenge then why not have a go?

When it comes to just playing stuff, I don't really pay attention to what grade it is.

But when it comes to trying to work out what grade I'm ready for or finding pieces to learn to help work toward the next grade, it would be useful to know what standard things are and I don't know how to tell.

I also have no idea what the difference is between grades (which is probably why I can't tell what standard a piece is). I figure there has to be something more to "being grade 5 standard" than just being able to learn the grade 5 pieces - after all, with the notes all sitting there ready to play, /anyone/ could learn them if they spent enough time working at them. Whereas with the flute grade 5 pieces, you have to have learned how to get the notes to sound first and have developed a certain level of breath control. Doesn't matter how musical you are, or how long you spend learning the pieces, there are specific physical things that you need to have learned to do before you can play pieces of that level.
That's what baffles me about piano - I can't see a difference in what you have to be able to do from one grade to the next. Yes, the pieces get longer and fiddlier and use more time and key sigs, but other than musical complexity I don't understand what changes.

Flute, I know I have to learn to play two new notes and get them sounding cleanly before I'm ready for the next grade. Piano, I have no idea what I have to do apart from learning some new scales and pieces, so I don't know how to make the necessary progress.

I'm working for 5 at the moment, but I don't know how I got here and that just kinda bothers me. It makes me doubt my readiness for it. I could be grade 1 standard for all I know (grade 4 was a long time ago and years of no piano lessons and no practise would presumably mean I'd gone backwards some way).

Is there some sort of rule of thumb about time taken to learn a piece that you can use to tell if you're really at the standard of that piece rather than just learning it slowly even though it's beyond your actual level?

What's to stop someone of grade 1 standard from spending a year or two painstakingly learning the grade 8 exam stuff and taking grade 8? (Other than just the fact that that doesn't sound like a sensible thing to do!)

T.

This is indeed true, spend long enough working on any piece and one will eventually learn to play it. I think the key is in how good the end result is and how long 'long enough' is. You're quite right though, I'd say most comfortably grade 5 pianists could learn a grade 8 piece given enough time, dedication and the right expectations of the performance outcome (i.e. being satisfied with a pass mark but not necessarily 29/30).


This I guess is the parallel with the flute, although it's quite hard to draw. There are certain techniques one will develop on the piano, for example pedalling; playing passages in thirds with one hand; playing staccato with one hand, legato with another; expressive counterpoint etc. The problem is, depending which pieces one choses one could avoid the things one doesn't like. In a parallel with the flute, obviously dynamic control, tone, articulation skills will develop throughout playing. I can see what your asking for, what technical skills are required, but unfortunately no such list exists .


The very fact that you're thinking about this stuff and caring where you should be, rather than the highest grade you could get, suggests that you're probably at least at the standard of playing you suggest .


If you find one let me know .


The actual answer to that is absolutely nothing, indeed it's common for people to do this. In piano some people just do 3 grade pieces and nothing else (obviously resulting in a lot of slog on 3 pieces for grade 8). There's a difference between having passed grade 8 and being a grade 8 standard pianist, you're quite right.

I think the only answer to this one is you have to decide what you want grade 8 (or any other grade) to mean to you. If one wanted it to mean one has the certificate, learn three pieces in a maximum of 2 1/2 years and one has done it. If one wants it to mean one can tackle grade 8 repertoire in general in a reasonable (defined by oneself) length of time, then one needs to pick a varied range of grade 8 repertoire and play that before tackling grade 8.

As you've realised, a grade is more the choice of difficulty of pieces, not so much a standard. It's not straightforward to say who is the better pianist: a grade 5 player that can learn three grade 5 pieces to distinction level in 3 months compared to a grade 8 player who has learnt three pieces in 2 1/2 years and scores the pass mark for them. Given the grade 8 pieces and 2 1/2 years, I'd suspect the grade 5 player would actually do better than the grade 8 player.... So it's all about what you want grade 8 to mean to you as to when you're grade 8 standard: whether that's when you can play 3 pieces to pass level; or you could reasonably hope to tackle any grade 8 piece in 4 months, or whatever.

Some insightful questions, most of which don't have right or wrong answers, but I hope my ramblings are of some help .

I've been teaching for years and still find it a bit of a gamble when working out the approximate grade of a piece.

There are some things that you can look out for - more complex key signatures, semiquaver runs, increasingly complicated ornaments - pedal is used much more from grade 5 up - but sometimes it still seems like a guess.

I was playing Jackson Street Blues just yesterday, and when I wandered back out the music room and ran into my parents my dad said, "what grade is that?" "What do you think?" I said. He went for Grade 4, and my mum thought a bit and then said Grade 5. "I thought it sounded simpler than that," my dad said.
He would have been listening to it musically/harmonically, I think, but my mum used to play piano, so she could recognise that there was some more technical stuff going on - mostly pedal and some tricky leaps in the left hand.

I don't know if this book is still in print, but a few years after I started teaching I picked up a book called "Piano Teaching Repertoire" by Fannie Leigh. It divides into musical periods, and then into approximate grades from 1 to 8. It's not definitive - there's just too much music in the world! - but I've found it really useful to check when I really wasn't sure where something fit in. But then, it's all very approximate at the best of times, as the exams are refined and requirements changed slightly, pieces can easily slip up or down a grade.!

Don't know if any of this will help at all, but don't give up! At Grade 5, piano just starts getting good...

Only on piano though! I could spend months trying to learn pieces way above my grade level on other instruments and get nowhere with them, because I couldn't make the notes happen.

I think it's the concept of "comfortably grade 5" is a good one. That's what I'd like to be by the time I take my g5, but I don't know how to tell when I'm there.

I'd quite like a merit.
Piano isn't my instrument, so I don't think distinction is realistic.
I did g4 when I was 9, wasn't ready for it, scraped through with the pass mark and gave up piano soon afterwards.
My exam a few weeks ago I did get 29 on one of my pieces, but I don't think I really deserved it cos I made a mess of one phrase but the examiner didn't notice. (Got 27 for the other pieces and he commented on the slips in them.) So, 29 would be pretty ambitious even on an instrument I really play. I don't play the piano properly, so I don't think 29 would be possible even by a total fluke.



I don't even know how to control tone on a piano. I just press keys and get notes out. Can manage some dynamics, but without the subtlety I'd like.
The way the sound decays on long notes sounds weird to me and I don't like using the sustain pedal (it makes things sound sort of muddy to me).
I'm developing decent articulation on other instruments, but I don't know how to carry that over to piano.



I suppose. I just don't want to find myself hopelessly out of my depth with the piano stuff. And although I can get my fingers round things, I know that's very different from really playing well.



Even a rough idea? Like, should I be able to learn the g5 pieces in a week? a month??



I'm a bit scared that this is what I'm doing with g5.
Since I started doing a bit of piano, I've worked on about 5 pieces and havn't entirely perfected any of them. And now I'm going for g5.

Pieces I've been messing about with are:
Burgmuller - Arabesque
Joplin arr. Bastien - Maple Leaf Rag
Mozart - Viennese Sonatina no.1
and a couple of things from the Anna Magdalena notebook

Can sight-read stuff in the red Classics to Moderns book and stumble through things I'd learned from the green book when I was little. Can also stumble through my old g4 pieces and other things I learned back then.

About the only thing I can play fairly well is Solfeggietto (sp??) which I learned when I was 8 and can still play from memory.



I guess I want it to mean that I really can play at that level. I think if I just learn the pieces and don't feel that I'm really at grade level, I'll feel like a fraud.
I tend to think of g5 as representing a certain basic level of competence on an instrument and I'd like to feel that I've attained that.

Yes, you're helping me clarify the issues here. Thanks. :-)




Pedal I don't like and am avoiding in my g5 pieces.
When I did g4 I couldn't reach it properly, so I never learned the technique for it. And now, it's just completely alien to my way of thinking. In Teigr-world, a note sounds for exactly as long as you hold its key down, and then it stops. No exceptions.



I can't play Jackson Street Blues at all. Completely defeats me. But I sight-read Le Chevaleresque right the way through a couple of days ago. (Which was weird, cos when I first looked at the book a few months back I throught it looked too difficult and ruled it out without even trying to play it and I've done /no/ piano practice in between!).
I think I'm going for the Despic Fanfare for list C - sight-read it (badly) a couple of days ago and had a quick look at it in my lesson yesterday - I'm to see what I can make of it by my lesson next week and we'll look at it properly then. I've done a bit of work on the Windsperger too.



Sounds very useful - will see if I can find it. Ta! :-)



Well, I had fully intended to get g5 and leave it there. I have no enthusiasm for the piano at all. But having started to do some practice this week and surprised myself by how I'm finding the g5 pieces, I'm starting to actually enjoy it a bit. I'm getting a real kick out of being able to play stuff and seeing things improve. But I still pretty much just sit down, work on some of the exam stuff, then go away again. Other instruments I can spend ages just playing through things for the sheer fun of it.

I'm still not really a piano person though. I don't listen to piano music and I don't go nuts for various bits of the repertoire - I do those things for some other instruments. I figure that being able to play the piano to a reasonable standard is a useful skill and one I ought to develop. But it doesn't fascinate me the way some other instruments do.

Also, I'd always assumed that g5 was the highest I would ever be able to manage on piano. Piano music looks and sounds really complicated and a lot of it seems to be in styles that I don't have a natural affinity for.

But maybe I'll come back to piano again sometime in the future and see if I've gotten any further with it. I don't know how to develop beyond g5 piano, but maybe it'll happen by itself, the way getting to g5ish happenned - I didn't do anything to get to g5, but I seem to be more or less there. Maybe the same will happen with higher piano grades sometime. (I'd be more inclinded to actually work at it if I had some idea how to.)

Piano sight-reading is currently the red Classics to Moderns books.
But I sight-read a lot more elsewhere - recent sight-reading fodder has included the Bach Duettos (the book I have them in has the word "easy" in the title, so I had no idea at the time that one of them was set at 8 piano), Jongen - Priere du Soir, the Introduction from the Elgar Vesper Voluntaries, the first page of Gigout - Grand Choeur Dialogue (manuals only), Charpentier - 2 Noels pour accompagner la Messe de Minuit, a bunch of Lefebure-Wely pieces and Bach P&F in Em BWV 555. No idea what grades most of those are (the Bach is set at g5) but I'm working for g4 at the moment.

I figure the more stuff I play, the better I'll get at reading music and at finding my way around a keyboard. But I don't know how much of it will feed into my piano playing because the technical side of piano is so different.

Thanks again,
T.

Although you can't control the tone of an individual note independent of the volume (you can only control the speed at which the hammers hit the strings), you can control the relative loudness of notes played simultaneously to bring out a melody line for example.

Teigr, I just wanted to say:
well done for getting to grade 5 when the piano is 'not your instrument' and does not 'fascinate you' that much! I could never imagine myself getting grade 5 on a brass or wind instrument for example as I really don't have the 'attraction' to learn one of these (although I do like listening to them).
so anyway, well done to you!

Thanks!
I'm not really sure if I am grade 5 standard though - that's kinda the problem. I'm working for grade 5 but, as all the notes are sitting there ready, a trained monkey could do the same, given enough time! Maybe I'm only grade 1 or 2 standard now - I've probably gone backwards since I was 9.

Also, piano was my first instrument when I was little. I started at 5, had fun to start with, but by the time I was 9 I hated it. All my teacher did with me was exam stuff - one time she even gave me the exam book for the next exam before I'd even taken the one I was working for. I did get to play a few other things at home (the Classics to Moderns books mostly) but it had stopped being fun and grade 4 was a nightmare. It was only 2 terms after I'd done grade 3, I really wasn't ready for it and I went to pieces in the exam.I did pass (only just) but I begged my folks to let me stop doing piano after that, and they let me. At that point I really /hated/ the piano.
Then they decided I should learn an orchestral instrument and asked which I'd prefer - flute or clarinet. I said flute, but somehow ended up learning clarinet. Which was kinda fun and at least meant I could play in orchestras and ensembles.

I've messed around a little bit with piano from time to time since, but not studied it or done any serious practice. I got a guitar for my 14th birthday and that let me play harmonically complete music by myself, which meant even less reason to take an interest in the piano. Not really into the sound of the piano anyway, and the memories of what it was like being shoved through the grades and being made to practice when I was little still linger a bit. But I don't hate the sound of it, and no one makes me play it now, so it's really not a huge obstacle - I'm just not terribly interested in it. And I find the not-knowing-where-I'm-at very frustrating.

I do get a feeling of satisfaction out of being able to play it though (though not the huge kick I get from some other instruments), and I like it when I manage to play something that I didn't think I could. It's also very useful to be able to play it.

T.

I'd keep trying at the pedal if I were you - it's useful for a whole lot of things. I have (relatively) small hands, for a pianist, and I use it to help sustain notes that otherwise I couldn't reach. It's worth going back to easier examples and developing it.

For the record, you used the exact word I use to describe bad pedalling - muddy... As a (very general) rule that means there's something up with the physical pedalling, rather than pedalling of itself having that sound. For example, the earlier a piece is, the cleaner it should sound, so no pedalling in Baroque for example. There's an unintentional, I hope, example somewhere on Youtube of someone playing Clementi (can't remember the piece off hand, it was in the grade 6 list before last - Allegro? in D?), anyway, the person used pedal throughout and it was unpleasant...Blurred, muddy - instead of crisp and clear.
It's good that you recognise that.

I like early and baroque music, so maybe that's part of why I don't like the sustain pedal. I don't like blurred or muddy sounds on anything - spent ages working on getting really clean legato for my exam this summer.

Your pointing that out gave me another idea. I hadn't really thought too much about links between period and technique before (for piano anyway). But now you bring it to my attention, it's got me thinking about the Scarlatti I'm doing for list A. Can I play it with terraced dynamics, as that's all that would've been available on harpsichord? Or, as it's for a /piano/ exam, would that be inappropriate?

Is articulation on piano linked to period too? Like, a very smooth legato line for romantic and modern stuff (unless otherwise specified) and a more detached finger articulation for baroque? (I'm working on pieces by Reading and Guilmant at the moment and working really hard on getting the different articulations spot on).

I'm actually finding all this piano technique stuff kinda interesting now that I've started thinking about it and asking questions about it. Before I was just thinking of it as "different and scary". I guess I might start to appreciate it more as an instrument in its own right if I can learn to understand it better.

You're right about learning to use the pedal properly. I should do that at some point. Not really sure where to start though. Is your heel supposed to be on the ground acting as a pivot point or can you just poke it with your toe?

Thanks,
T.

I just poke it with my toe

I'm also a terrible self taught pianist, without a piano at home!

As for grades, I've decided to ignore them and I am actually going to learn all the music I've accumulated over the years, and hopefully when I've finished I'll be a lot better than when I started

Um...don't know enough about harpsichord to say....someone else on here should know...?



The short answer would be yes, (there are always exceptions, just to be awkward!). Particularly in the bass parts of baroque pieces, there's a tendency to 'separate' the notes - not staccato, but not legato, to get a little closer to the sound the composer would have heard.



Heel on the ground preferably. The piano where I have my pupils' annual recital is raised up on wheels so it can be moved easily, and somehow they have it higher than it should be, so you'd have to be seriously deformed to reach the floor... I can do it both ways, but you have much more control with your heel down.

By the way, it's just dawning on me that it sounds like you're working for grade 5 on your own. If so, and if you haven't already, I'd try and get hold of the Teaching Notes. ( my secret weapon...ssssh) It covers every piece on the syllabus from 1 to 7 and has extra information and detail that you don't get just in the book.

Basically, harpsichords have terraced dymanics (assuming you have a stop or two, or two manuals (maybe with a coupler)). What you can't do is graduated dynamics. I don't know if imitating that on my list A piece is a good thing (in keeping with the style of the piece) or a bad thing (as it's a piano exam maybe I should play it like a piano piece). I'd prefer to do it terraced, but the examiner might think that I just can't do graduated dynamics.

I prefer harpsichord to piano - would /love/ to study it, but I think it would be very difficult to find a teacher and get access to an instrument. I don't know if I'd get figured bass realisation on the fly to the standard required either - it's the section of keyboard skills that I struggle with most (can do it properly on paper, but at the keyboard I'm limited to 5/3, 6/3, 6/4 and make consecutives all over the place - it's dire!).



Cool! That separation is what I've been working on. :-)



I'll experiment and see what I can manage. The piano at church is on a wheeled frame thing like that which makes everything higher off the ground, so I know the sort of thing you mean.



I'm actually working for g5 with a teacher, but I havn't done any real work on piano until now since giving up just after grade 4 ages ago. I'll ask my teacher if I can have a look at the Teaching Notes if she has them (I would guess she has).

T.

The one at church is on high castors but I have a wooden platform that slips under the centre of the piano so that I can use the pedal properly.

well,
- my teacher gives me studies and exercises for hands
- maturing the scales and arpeggios (speed, firm tone, etc..)
- improve my sight reading from pieces and studies my teacher give to me..

Between grades (for me) lasted 35 years and here's what I did (not necessarily in chronolgical order):

Stopped piano lessons & took up a sport. Got good at it.
Got into Medical School. Qualified. Trained as a surgeon. Spent a year living in the USA. Came back. Became a consultant.
Got married. Had kids. Bought a house.
Played guitar. Played Bass guitar. Joined a band as Bassist and backing singer. The band split up. Went back to guitar and toured the local folk clubs.
Taught my son to play chess. Got into chess as a parent, then a player in my own right, then a coach and arbiter.

Continued to play piano for fun and relaxation. Had fun. Played stuff I knew was beyond me technically but I enjoyed the attempts (you wouldn't want to hear my rendition of the fist movement of the Pathetique, for example!). Tried to pick out a few things that I thought might be good for my technique but basically struggled until . . .
. . . Feb this year, got appendicitis. During convalsecence spent several hours a day playing piano. Decided to take it seriously again. Started lessons again in May.

Current plan is to be doing grade 5 theory in November and grade 8 piano next year. On advice from my piano teacher haven't started the grade 8 repertoire yet, so am filling in with other "difficult" stuff i.e. stuff that she has suggested which stretches my technique but not to breaking point, thereby improving my technique. I suspect this is what you actually meant by your question!

Long term plan is to improve repertoire and technique with a view to diploma, LRSM, FRSM, Cheethams Summer School 2008, the Yamaha 2009 competition if there is one, etc. Basically, to continue to have fun.

In the meantime I continue to play guitar and chess and have bought a flute with a view to starting flute lessons next month.

Yesterday I had lunch on top of Helvelyn.

Wow! That's a much longer gap that I've taken.
How long did you have lessons for and what grade did you get to before you took that gap?



Well, I havn't done things like med school and having kids, but I have played other instruments in the gap (including guitar), taken up sports, etc. - didn't play piano for fun and relaxation though. (At 9 I hated it so much, it's taken a long time before I've started to see it as something potentially fun again.)



Do you find it at all disconcerting that you've somehow arrived at grade 8ish, while not studying piano in the gap? I know playing other instruments helps and your/my musical maturity will have developed along the way, and in your case you at least kept playing the piano (I dabbled with it a little from time to time, but never tried to improve my technique or anything). But it just feels weird to me that I gave up piano, got on with life, pretty much ignored the existence of piano, but somehow my piano playing has gone up by a grade 'behind my back', while I've been off playing sports and other instruments. And, without grade 5 theory, I'm guessing you hadn't done piano beyond grade 5 before. So your piano playing's improved by several grades while you weren't looking!

You're right that that's what I meant, but actually the earlier stuff is much more on the mark in terms of what's bothering me about the piano. It bothers me that I don't understand how/why my piano playing has improved a bit. And I worry that maybe it hasn't really and that somehow I'm 'faking' being g5ish and that I shouldn't really be working for 5 - maybe I'm doing the "trained monkey" thing of learning the exam work of a grade I'm not really at the right standard for.
Whatever it is that people normally do between grades to develop their playing, I'm pretty certain I havn't done it! (I might try to do some of it before I actually take g5 though.)



Awesome! I'm not looking beyond g5 (for piano) at the moment, though if after that it sneakily improves when I'm not paying attention to it again, I might come back to it and try a higher grade sometime.

Don't have a long term plan for piano, but I want to get g8 in flute or clarinet and maybe study music at Uni.
At least you're working for g8 while planning to get various diplomas. I've only just taken g3, but I'd like to aim for g8 organ and CertRCO eventually. Maybe even ARCO. That's years and years away though. I know it's daft to be thinking that far ahead - I don't know yet if I'll be able to get to g5 yet, let alone beyond.

Flute is brilliant fun - what made you choose it?
Flute was the first instrument that I chose for myself and really worked seriously at just because I wanted to. Other instruments I either studied cos I was told to (piano, clarinet) or played around with just for fun (guitar, recorders, etc). Then I discovered that I could play a whole truck-load of flutes at a time and flute slipped to second place (but I still love it and work quite hard at it).
Asked to choose between flute and clarinet when I was 10, I'd picked flute, but somehow ended up learning clarinet instead. Then, when I was playing clarinet in orchestra, we did Faure's Sicilienne and I knew right then that I wanted to play "that" one day (that piece, on that instrument). Played it for my g5 last year but have also discovered a whole bunch of other flute pieces that I like just as much or even better. I love the sounds I can get out of a flute (on a good day!) - I like the lightness and sweetness and the way it can just fly sometimes. It's hard to explain what I mean.
It's also a very convenient instrument to play - easy to carry around and no need to sight-transpose, so I can just bung it in my rucksack when I go places (unlike guitar) and I can play in church music group without having to think as hard (compared to clarinet).

Good luck with all your piano stuff and your new adventures with the flute!

T.

music lessons from age 4, piano & violin lessons from age 7, stopped violin at 12 piano at 13.

Give it time!

Not really: I knew that the stuff I was playing was about grade 7/8 standard so it's more a question of relief that when I went to a teacher she didn't say "your technique is terrible, we must go back to basics"


Yes and no: I actually passed grade 6 or 7 theory when I was 12-ish but can't find the certificate and can't remember exactly which grade or even which year except that it was before the ABRSM went to computerised records. A microfiche search without knowing which grade or year let alone which session of that year, could turn out to be expensive so I'm simply re-doing the theroy but at the lower exam (which, not wishing to sound arrogant, I would expect to pass with ease).

On the other hand, yes: Grade 5 was where I had got to.

yes, but not quite while I wasn't looking!



Not sure: I wanted to do a wind instrument and flute has no reed and no raspberries? I like the noise? There seem to be a disproportionate number of flautists on the forum? Whim?


Thankyou: You too - enjoy the journey and don't worry about the destination!

I think that's what's surprised me - that I didn't get sent almost back to the beginning.



How did you know what to do to get yourself from grade 5 up to grade 8?




*grin* Sound like pretty good reasons to me. :-)

There do seem to be a lot of flautists on here.
Are you going to the Flute Choir Day next week?



I'm enjoying the journey with flute and other things. :-)

Piano - I seem to have just arrived somewhere with no idea how I got here and no memory of the journey at all. It's unsettling. Makes me feel like I have no control over what's happenning with the piano stuff, which I think is part of why I'm not planning on taking it beyond 5. If I don't know how I got this far, how can I carve a sensible route onwards from here?

Progressing with flute is like taking a ride on a steam train - you chug along, enjoying the journey, watching the scenery, etc. and you can see the route you've taken and where the line goes next.
Piano, it's more like having been bundled into the back of a truck with no windows, driven around for a while, then turfed out in some featureless place in the middle of nowhere with a sign saying 'Welcome to Grade 5'.

T.

That's the funniest description that I've heard in ages!

I did have a similarish experience in that I learned from 5-7 and chucked piano after my grade 1. Didn't play for some years and then started playing by myself at 10. Puttered through my old books again, then bought new ones. Didn't have lessons again until I was 12ish, by which time I was about grade 3! But like you, I don't really know how I got there...

Pedalling on the piano - CHORDS!!! your lucky because on any other instrument, you dont need to really know about chords.

Huh??
Sorry, I don't follow you.
Pianists are lucky because they get to play chords? Or everyone else is lucky because they don't need to??

I play several instruments that can make chords, but the only one where I really think in terms of chords rather than notes is guitar (when I'm playing songs rather than classical stuff). Organ, I think in chords for some of the keyboard skills stuff, but not much else (even when I'm playing chordal textures). Piano, I don't really think in chords at all (apart from keyboard harmony), they're just a whole bunch of individual notes that need to be played at the same time. Kantele is a law unto itself - I can play some chords on it, but I've never really thought too much about how I approach it (and sheet music is rarely involved).

Whether you play an instrument that uses them or not, you still need to understand chords for theory anyway. I think being able to at least pick stuff out on a keyboard instrument helps a bit with harmony, but you can do chorale harmony like a maths exercise or a logic problem - no access to an instrument, just crunch the numbers. (If this, then that, which means you can't have X or Y there, so it has to be Z, which means that this one has to be...)

T.

In between piano grades you have fun! Get yourself a duet a partner, it's great practise for sight-reading (however you tend to fall off the stool more often) With piano grades, the music tends to just get trickier to play and the scales suddenly go immensly difficult! Don't worry about the standard, if you like the sound of it then play it! Also get your teacher (or look it up on the internet) to tell you about the piece(s) that you are playing, because some stories behind the creation of the music are rather interesting (and funny).

Checked out the grade repertoire lists and scale/arpeggio requirements, identified my own technical deficiencies and looked out for pieces that would push me in these areas. The idea is to be pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, but only just outside so that its hard but achievable. All things are either impossible or easy. Practice is the process of moving from one to the other.


No, not starting lessons until next month and not starting without in case I develop bad habits.


I think part of the reason for this is the simply vast repertoire available to a pianist. It's hard to recognise the scenery at first, a bit like being dropped off in the middle of London when you've grown up in Little Ruralville. I worked my way around the piano repertoire in rather the same way I navigated around London on two wheels as a student: Keep going long enough and you'll find somewhere familiar eventually, and as time passes more and more of it becomes familiar until suddenly you feel like you know where you are(mind you, anything East of St Pauls is still a foreign country!)

Were you fairly systematic about it? Like, working through each grade in turn?



Probably a sensible plan. I tend to use a less-common fingering for Bb as that was the one I learned before I started having proper lessons.
When I first got my flute, I spent a while huffing into it, trying to get a proper note, then an hour or two with a fingering chart, trying out scales and working through Tune a Day. Next morning, did more of the same, then scraped through the first page of Faure's Sicillienne (very very badly). When I started having lessons, my teacher almost had kittens about that! She had to spend the next couple of years trying to keep me away from Faure, so I didn't learn it with entrenched faults.



I suppose what you listen to makes a difference too. I listen to flute/clarinet/organ music on CD, but not piano music (I don't enjoy the sound of it). I go to organ recitals and I listen to the organ music before/during/after services. I'll listen to top-notch organists just practising whenever I get the chance. The one time I had a chance to hear a piano recital (when I was at a music summer school), I bunked off to go look at a nearby organ instead. Means I have more idea of what's out there for those instruments than I do for piano. And often I'll hear something (on CD or live) and want to get hold of a copy to have a go at (or, if it's way way out of my league, I add it to my list of "stuff to learn one day").

What would be some good books to get to start filling in some of the gaps for piano?
I'm eyeing up the AB Keyboard Anthology series, but I don't know if I should go for book II (to catch stuff I missed along the way), III (as it's the level I'm nominally working at) or IV (to push myself further). I have first series book III already, but nothing else (there are 3 series of these).
Same with the Classics to Moderns series. I have up to book 3 (both series) already. Should I get book 4, or maybe book 5? There's a piece in book 6 I can play already, but some stuff in book 3 I find tricky.
I have Baroque Keyboard Pieces bks 1-4 and the Anna Magdalena notebook.
Thinking about getting the Burgmuller 25 Progressive Studies (AB edition). What else in that AB series would be good to consider?
Any other suggestions for books to try?

I think part of the confusion I have with piano comes from the fact that I find some things easy (which maybe seem hard to other people who are grade 5ish on piano) because they relate to things I do with organ, and find other things (that piano people would consider much easier) harder, as they're more idiomatic piano things.

T.

You'll get lots of different suggestions for this I'd imagine. It depends on how much money you're willing/able to spend...

Personally, I have a fondness for Classics to Moderns 4 (brown, I think). There's Chopin's Prelude in B minor, Tchaikovsky's Reverie, Debussy's Le Petit Negre and others. I'd point out, though, that the Chopin appeared on last year's Grade 6 list as an alternative so the book is further on than you might expect. The Chopin in particular would be good to look at pedalling with, particularly if you could hear someone else play it first, with and without pedal. Just wouldn't be the same without it...

If I were you I would try to pick up some easier stuff to look at (imagine that you're checking the map to have a look at the part of the journey you missed!) but I'd try to pick it up second hand, at charity shops and online. Then you can save a little for the good stuff...

Enough to get get 3 or 4 books probably. Maybe some more later...




No wonder it's hard to work out what's what with piano!
The descriptions on Musicroom say that Classics to Moderns bk 4 is "from grade 4" and bk 6 is "from grade 6". But book 6 includes Solfeggietto, which the thread here about what grade various pieces are lists as grade 5 and I think it may be lower even than that (I learned it when I was about grade 3). So, add in your discovery of a g6 piece in bk 4 and there doesn't seem to be much consistency in terms of the difficulty of each book.

I don't like Chopin at all. :-(
I suppose I have to learn some sooner or later though.



I think I took an alternative route. *grin* One which avoided piano music completely...

What sort of easier stuff should I look out for?

There's good stuff for piano??? *ducks*
I know there must be really, but I just don't dig piano music.
I adore stuff like Messager - Solo de Concours and Finzi - Five Bagatelles for clarinet, Faure - Berceuse and Moore - Elegy for flute, and my "I must learn that one day" list for organ is getting out of control. (Durufle - P&F sur le nom d'Alain, Bach - lots of things, Pescetti - Sonata in Cm, Martinson - Aria on a Chaconne, Stanford - Postlude in Dm, RVW - Rhosymedre, Marsh - Toccata on Pat le Facteur, Archer - Toccata from Suite for Organ, Rutter - Toccata a 7, etc.)
I never hear piano stuff and think "I really like that" though. :-(

Thanks,
T.