The piece itself is actually underrated and not famous compared to other Chopin’s works. I’m curious how technically and musically hard it is to play compared to Chopin Etudes, Concertos, Ballades and Scherzos?

Hi, I'm currently a high school student who's preparing for an AMEB AMusA exam at the start of December. Currently, I have all pieces memorised, but they sound awful performance wise and my teacher is getting very impatient with my progress (I had a mock exam today was told I would fail horribly). Trust me when I say it sounds bad. I have school exams this week, so I will not be able to practise much, but I have decided to practise the hell out afterwards for the 3 weeks leading to the exam.

Now, due to fear of failing the exam (I've already failed once), I'm considering pushing it back until early next year. I will have to pay a fee, but if it increases my chances of passing, I don't mind.

It may seem like a given, but I would like to know what other people would do in this situation. Should I just tough it out over the next few weeks, get it over and done with, or should I postpone the exam?

Thank you in advance!

And I know this is not possible for obvious reason and it’s just delusional (not even wishful thinking), but playing on pianos with very heavy key response can really affect negatively the practicing/performance experience…(for me personally)

To bring more context, I was doing my piano grades two years ago, and obviously I don’t have/can afford a grand, so I went to practice in piano rooms, for hours…

on the day, an hour before each exam, I was allowed to practice on the the pianos in the school building, and I remember being so annoyed cause the touch was VERY light and needed way less energy than what I had put in in the practice rooms for hours and hours months before that…like the fiver and wrist fatigue were completely different…

it felt like re-studying the piece all over again for an hour…luckily I did well at almost all the grades, but it makes me think I would have probably done 10 times better if those practice room pianos were calibrated like or at LEAST close to those Steinways…

Damn, downvoted already? 🤠

so, I've seen a number of people asking about wrist pain in regards to piano. I'm by no means an expert but I'm privileged to have worked through my own problems with an expert in the past, and I will discuss some tips that helped me. I like playing big pieces, all the major liszt / rach / chopin, but these tips are equally applicable to any level. if you practice enough with bad habits you'll feel it.

DO NOT "PLAY THROUGH" THE PAIN. the pain is bad. the pain is permanent damage being done to your soft tissue that SCARS and does not REPAIR. once you screw up your hand you're DONE. there's only so much even surgery can accomplish. if you are truly experiencing pain, then you need to stop playing hard pieces, take a step back, play painfully easy pieces and focus as if you're learning to walk for the first time.

Main point#1: ERGONOMICS and the neutral position

You want to know what truly relaxed and neutral is. you want your wrist to be in line with your hand as much as possible in 3 dimensions. that means left right alignment and up down alignment, although the wrist being slight higher than fingers is ok since it achieves a natural curve. you want a natural curve in your fingers. you want to start to be aware of when youre NOT in alignment. not just playing piano, but when you type on a keyboard, use a phone, go to the gym, ANYWHERE. it's not like only using the piano counts. you can make slight variations of this (come slightly from above or below to achieve certain tones in a deliberate way.

your body is not just your wrist. you can move your elbows out in, you can rotate your whole forearm left and right, you can move your whole body in and out. you need to be using these to keep your wrist as neutral as possible. example: if i'm doing an arpegio that goes from low to high, you may see me rotate my whole forearm to the right to help keep wrist in alignment as i go high. you will see me move my body along with my hand to keep my wrist straight. your TRICEPS can take a beating too. use them liberally.

Main point #2: TENSION

RELAX. YOUR. HANDS. i know it's exciting, i know you're concentrating, i know there's a lot of octaves and chords. RELAX. when you have a nice neutral position with a nice natural curve, you should be able to drop your hand down and play a solid chord without collapsing, even WITHOUT ANY TENSION in your hand. if you're playing a run of loud octaves, keep your hands fairly relaxed, tense your triceps instead. and between each octave, FULLY relax your hand, with only short bursts of the minimum amount of tension you need to get the right tone as you're playing. it feels nice to keep tension as you're playing a passionate melody as well, but DON'T FALL FOR IT. listen to the sound, but play as relaxed as possible.

Main point #3: Using your body deliberately

this kind of goes to main point #1 but i wanted to emphasize the importance. it feels good to just vibe and move with your music cathartically, and there is room for that, but you need to prioritize moving your body deliberately first. it will become automatic eventually. it's usually the right hand that gets pain, so prioritize moving your body to keep your right wrist in alignment. move back when you want to play loud, not closer.

be aware of every little movement and alignment and tension as you play through it. you may feel like you're going backwards in progress, but i promise you're not. BECAUSE you're learning to be more EFFICIENT with your effort, you'll come out the other end able to play even more difficult repertoire than you were before.

it's hard to truly understand without someone outside analyzing and helping you, but being aware is a good first step.

Very much self taught. Cannot read music and little to no music theory understanding. I see this / pretty frequently when looking up songs to play. In the past I’ve just moved on to the next song but I’ve been making an effort to push past my major/minor boundaries recently and learn what I’m playing.

Hi Everyone!

I’m an indie dev and musician, and I have made a desktop app called Chordcat. It’s totally free and open source, and it has been a fun little project for me. Basically, it is a tool to help with naming chords, learning/teaching music, and just messing around with ideas

Note: I am a complete amateur, so I'm not entirely sure about the accuracy of all the chord names. I would really appreciate feedback and corrections from you guys.

You can download chordcat from the github releases page

Here is some documentation if you are having trouble installing.

I made chordcat because I wanted a simple, free tool that did these things without needing a bunch of proprietary software. I will never charge for it and I hope it can be useful to others too.

If this sounds like something you’d use, feel free to give it a try. It works on Windows and Linux.
(BTW if you are on linux, you can get it from flathub as well)

chordcat with the FirstTimeWriting font

I want to be a accompanist pianist - I already play a little and I'm able to play songs with someone singing a long. I want to know what option would be better:
1 - Should I focus on reading the songs I want to play with sheet music?
2 - Should I focus on chords, scales and rhythm?
3 - Both
4 - another thing

Am I cooked, I'm playing ballade no 1 for a music assessment, and I put off learning the coda but I just realised I have 5 days left. for context it took me about 2 weeks to get the rest of the ballade down so I might have a chance but if anyone has any tips that would be sick, cheers

I learned canon in d during Christmas last year, and felt like learning something else's this year. What is a song I could learn in under 100hrs that's around the same difficulty

Hello!

I have been out of a teacher for quite some time so I dont know what pieces to play. I've learned Clair de Lune nearly perfectly (just very well) like 8 months ago

I just finished up learning Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto (just the last 3 minutes of the last movement, im not that good).

I still feel a little novice somewhat but ive been playing for about 5 years, and Id say im somewhere upper intermediate or low advanced, and am looking for something new to learn! Maybe I should learn the rest of Rach 2z

Hi all, I've seen many piano videos have a background sound effect, presumably maracas (not sure if this is the correct instrument), and want to do the same for my own recordings. Can anyone point me to what tool is typically used for doing this and where I can find the resource for this sound effect? Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-fxH--8LFI example around 0:04

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NduWMqDuRmU example around 0:12

Hello. I've been learning to play piano for a little over a year and this is my first time trying to play a piece with a 32nd note run. May I have some advice on how I should approach this fingering wise? Any other general advice is also welcome. This is from Keudae's cover of Slow Dancing in a Burning room by John Mayer.

https://preview.redd.it/0ruqf50cslyd1.png?width=1686&format=png&auto=webp&s=616a788c9fbe70fba75e1c4432c76853df94ab5f

I am chasing a resource for major and minor pentatonic fingering for LH and RH over 2+ octaves. Across different keys.

I am on a bit of a mission to get familiar with a bunch of these as I have only ever played classical and want to jam with others in a different style

From my search of reddit there seems to be a lot of different opinions. Like in C either start on second finger on C, or alternately first finger on C 1,2,3,1,2.

It seems maybe as well the fingering is less important, and needs to be more of a mindset than perhaps certain exercises like up 3 down 2, and when you start adding fourths and fifth intervals or slides.

I just want to get some basics concepts for this down since I have only ever read sheet music and it is very different to improvising where you seem to want to have the freedom and not get caught out stuck on a thumb or pinky.

Merriam Music just did a great video exploring the different options:

https://youtu.be/1ITIQULVhYM?si=lGbXo9MJc2ygwMnM

I am currently playing on a standard upright piano but, I would like to get an electric piano so that I can practice at night and in the morning without disturbing the other people in the house and also so that I can take it with me when I move out. I would like for some recommendations as to what brand and model I should look into. Mainly, I want playing the keyboard to be as similar to playing my upright as possible and I'm also not looking for any fancy features. I don't have all that much money to spend but I recognize that I shouldn't cheap out on something like this and I would very much appreciate some suggestions.

I want to find a book of maybe 50 or more extremely easy sightreading pieces. I have played for 3 months and I can read music but I realized I should start sight reading right now but every book I look at on Amazon, the reviews say the first 3 pieces are the correct simplicity for a true sight reading beginner but all the ones after are intermediate (at least in terms of sightreading).

This can include anyone: concert pianists, pop musicians, specific people on YouTube or social media, really anyone who has videos of them playing available online.

Who regularly wows you when you watch them perform these days?

I can keep my tempo decently while learning sheet music or anything of the sort, but whenever I try to play chords in the left hand and improvise a melody on the right, the tempo just completely collapses. Any tips?? :’)

Hey, I'd like to know if you could give me some advice and recommendations on a tablet for sightreading. My budget is tight (around $200 USD). I know I won't get anything fancy in that price range, I just want something that gets the job done. Thanks

Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GnGY0njOlY2whchMOPrALjYQ2snxom8d/view?usp=sharing

Warning: The following may be a dumb question idk.

Context: This action belongs to a Weaver Verti Mignon piano constructed in 1937. I'm assuming that it had not had any repairs for many, many years as the inside was dusty as HECK. The focus in the video is that the main action rail, for some reason, has two parts, the top part having the damper flanges and the hammer butt flanges attached to it. I've been searching Google for any signs that this is normal and have not found any. Turning the damper rod allows the top part of the main action rail to become angled and move the dampers and hammers, disallowing the dampers to get pushed by the damper spoons. Has anyone seen a piano action having this obscurity and what do I do about it if this is not normal? Also, when the hammers are launched forward their path is obstructed by the dampers and this can sometimes cause the hammer to get caught on the damper felts. I'm assuming this is because of the weird main action rail(s) misplacing the dampers and hammers.

I just started playing with metronome a few weeks ago and I noticed that when I play without my internal pulse is not regular. If anyone has tips it would be great

Hello, im shopping for a keyboard. The first one I got was a yamaha, i got it off the curb and played it for 6 months. The keys felt super light and touchy but it got me started.

Now i played my friend's keyboard and there was a bit of resistance and weight and I played so much butter because i could exert more muscular control of how hard I wanted to play the note.

I live in a van so I only have room for a 61 key keyboard. But I can't find any 61 key that are fully weighted.

Anyone have product recommendations for my scenario? looking to spend 180-300 at most.

So I just completed Chopin‘s Op.9 no. 1 and 2 nocturne and I don’t know what to play next. Just want to ask for advice. I prefer Chopin‘s nocturne or etude tho.