Many adult students call me and purchase my piano books in order to learn how to play the piano and how to learn playing the piano correctly. They tell me, I will work hard, I am now retired and I really WANT TO PLAY PIANO. I say, no problem - I am all here for you to help you out and to get you to accomplishing your goals.
There is truly nothing I want for you more than to see you play the piano beautifully!!! - When I get you to a point where your heart sings and your fingers are working for you and you understand how to get there - I feel that I did my job.
I am working very hard myself on this area of marketing, so you can all have access to my knowledge and can take advantage of my skills. On the great side - the payment gateway is working on the www.playpianoinallkeys.com website, so you have access to all my available print books - and there will always be a book on sale! I am also offering FEDEX shipping now and International shipping. The shipping rates internationally are quite high and - guess what I am looking at solutions to make my products available at a reasonable cost.
Wherever you are, feel my compassion reach you, so I can be there for you helping out.
Now back to you, developing your talent, so you can play all those songs that you always dreamed of:
I am firmly telling you, that I strongly suggest you spend the 12 weeks getting through all the scales, chords / cadences and arpeggios. Work a little bit each day. And if you need extra time, take extra time.
I always say: don't run your head into a brick wall: "But I have to,... No way I can't,... Let me try again,...." well you see, my little ones have to learn the very same lesson. The younger they are, the quicker I can tell them, the older they are the more resistance I get, because the EGO of adult accomplishments gets into the way, well sometimes. In a nutshell, the answer is simply this: -- and it works EVERY SINGLE TIME!!!! --- WHEN YOU WANT TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW VERY QUICKLY, YOU NEED TO SLOW IT DOWN, UNTIL YOU FIND A SPEED WHERE YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO IT. If you have NO TIME, or if you go too fast - you cannot control each little detail and you will "crash". This is how I attempt explaining this to my little ones: when you learn to drive, you need to learn how to stay on the road, or you are not going to be driving for very long - if you crash into everything because YOU GO TOO FAST!!!! Well, piano learning is very similar: You must give your body and mind the slow motion time to actually do everything correctly -- and once you have one slow metronome speed, - well by all means go 1 click faster (the metronomes I use are the regular old fashioned metronomes: the clicks are 60, 63, 66, 69, 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, 92, 96, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120 - there are more but these are the ones you are mostly working with.
You can play 1 note per click at 60 -- GREAT! -- move to 63 -- can play at 63 -- move to 66 -- starting to mess up -- move back down to 63, etc. You see - if you go slower your mind has more time to control the physical motion and finger number translation - if you go too fast - you cannot control the translation or physical motion and errors occur. And just to put your mind at ease -- Just naturally you will be going faster as you get more familiar with everything. So zigzag your way faster, slower until you have good control and then faster again, a little step, until you can control all speeds eventually -- and remember this is not the first and last time you will ever play scales -- it all goes in rounds -- first round introduction -- go through all scales / chords / cadences / arpeggios -- get familiar, enjoy working each set until you feel you accomplished something - even if you are many clicks below where you want to be, eventually. You will get there, eventually - playing accurately at very high speeds comfortably takes a little more know-how than I am able to communicate to you at the very early introductory lessons. Just think of all this this way, like learning to drive - you learn to drive a little at a time and you keep driving - and you will get better at it.
But stay motivated! Play piano every day a little bit -- if you are stressed with time -- the very best advice is to set the kitchen timer for a block of 5 minutes -- hey 5 minutes, you can do this -- block out the world and everyone else - 5 minutes for yourself -- everyone else can wait -- and I promise you, you will find out how LONG 5 MINUTES REALLY ARE! 5 intense minutes, you will get lots accomplished and you stop before your mind gets too tired. You know, then come back and practice another 5 MINUTES!!!!! And soon it will all become easier for you and you will be able to work blocks of 10 minutes.
If you feel BORED: then you need to go faster - you need to check your relaxation - are your muscles relaxed or tensed? Maybe it is time you call me for a quick piano lesson and I can help you create your next challenges. Maybe you need to go a little faster - do not stay at one speed forever -- start going faster when you can play one scale in 1 tempo.
SIMPLY PUT: IF YOU CAN PLAY FLAWLESSLY IN 1 TEMPO CHANGE THE TEMPO: trust yourself, try it faster and if it did not work, go slower. You are working with the metronome, so you can keep track of where you are. The formula is: no errors, you can go faster, error equals stop and go slower, until no error, then speed it up again.
Some of my students are so busy in school - most of my students are Honor Students in school with many extra curricular activities and challenge classes - they really work and accomplish tremendous things. OK - piano practicing suffers - so they have VERY little time to practice -- so they try to RUSH THROUGH EVERYTHING, because there's no time -- and then we DO NOT PROGRESS, it is impossible to progress this way UNTIL I GET THIS FORMULA ACROSS, THAT WE MUST, MUST, MUST SLOW DOWN until there's no error, then we have made progress, then we have acquired a foundation to start speeding up from. AND THEN WE GET RESULTS - our RESULTS as usual, fabulous playing beautifully and error free. SIMPLE!!!!
Quite in an extreme, I had some students where it literally took me 5 years or so to get this idea across - well the other thing was, that besides no time for practicing - they WANTED TO PLAY the piano, so they PLAYED AS FAST AS POSSIBLE - and unfortunately that exactly prevented them to fully correctly learn the piece and memorize and the results could not occur. Once I had them SLOWING DOWN and realize that: well - my head was still harder than theirs... - and they finally DID SLOW DOWN - AND I MEAN SLOWING DOWN AS IN SLOWER - NOT QUITE THE SAME SPEED, MEANING MORE TIME FROM ONE NOTE TO THE NEXT,... you see, the hard work getting this across - but once they got that, they started to learn 4 to 7 measures a week - suddenly, the miracle could occur and the pieces were DONE, nicely - they were satisfied they were playing nicely, their talent and emotion was feeling complete with a sense of accomplishment -- and everyone listening to the pieces, could feel the pulse and accurate notes and a nice sense of music. And all, because I could help them GO SLOWER 1 click, when a mistake was made and then speed up 1 click at a time, back and forth until the desired tempo was accomplished.
You see, I can PROMISE YOU to take you there! - Because I have only DONE IT a few thousand times with all the pieces we performed. I counted 210 National / International programs (that is 10 -20 piece programs performed from memory without error). That is more than 2000 flawless pieces with all types of students from 3 years of age to grandma - practicing hours a day or minutes - if that.
For your application as an adult - you want to play piano, play YOUR tunes, your pieces, develop your artistic creativity on the piano, play all the music you are dreaming of - and this is the exact way for you to get there. First a little foundation - make it a goal get through it once. Then you can build on it, then learn notes, note reading, theory, a little ear training, sight reading, rhythm and all the various musical genres where your heart is.
Please, visit my site, enjoy my blog, sign up, so you can receive many more helpful emails helping you to play piano.
Sincerely, Eva
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