think back...way back

[jeremyjchilds]

What was your favorite piece to play at the very very beginning?
What did you always play, even to the point of nausea
For me it was either

"In a Wigwam" in "teaching little fingers how to play

or "the entertainer" In "bastien level 3"


I pity my parents in retrospect.

[Tash]

LOL how obsessed was everyone with the bastien simplification of the entertainer- i borrowed a friends' book just so i could play it! however i wasn't overly obsessed. i think i really liked some piece in the alfred prep course book b called willie and tillie, oh and money can't buy everything from book c, and from book d the thing that has no name, and the caravan. ha yeah i feel sorry for parents, cos how obsessively do you play them!!

[thierry13]

Probably the "man in the iron mask" soundtrack, or an american symphony.

[galonia]

"In a Wigwam" in "teaching little fingers how to play

lol - I think there's something about the pieces that have some reference to American Indians - maybe it's the rhythm.

I remember I LOVED a piece like that - except I can't remember what it was called - something to do with wigwams, too - it was in one of the John Thompson books.  Even though I had mastered many pieces much harder than this one, I insisted on performing it at a student recital, so my teacher let me play it and a couple of other pieces.

[jeremyjchilds]

lol - I think there's something about the pieces that have some reference to American Indians - maybe it's the rhythm.

I remember I LOVED a piece like that - except I can't remember what it was called - something to do with wigwams, too - it was in one of the John Thompson books.  Even though I had mastered many pieces much harder than this one, I insisted on performing it at a student recital, so my teacher let me play it and a couple of other pieces.

It's just got that driving fifth interval low in the L.H.

Makes you feel like some kind of primitive virtuoso.

[arensky]

  money can't buy everything

Capitalist indoctrination if there ever was, it can't buy everything but it will buy you a new Estonia Grand

[arensky]

"First Dance" by Kabalevsky. Soon I was playing the Bastien "Entertainer" like everyone else, and in my first recital played that and "Opening Night" from Jazz and Rock series by someone(?). I was the star and teacher's pet, and this was the first time in my life that something I'd done was universally praised and approved of. I was good and I knew it !

Thus began my long slow slide into hell ...


(just kidding)

[Waldszenen]

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, 1st Movement. Always loved it.


And I always though the very final line was the most difficult bit ever written for the piano... haha.

[pabst]

My first piece was Villa-Lobos' "Waltz of Sorrows", maybe a bit morose and too mature for a starting piece but that's what made me decide dedicate my life to the instrument
Oh and I still play it to the point of nausea, lol.

[phil13]

The first one I played over and over again was a simplification of 'Pathetique' 2nd movement. I have to say it was quite different learning the real piece.

Phil

[a romantic]

"Love Theme" from The Godfather.

[thalbergmad]

One of my first pieces ( i was 3 ) was The Giant Steps from John Thomspons grade 1 book

[mlsmithz]

Hm.... I think at the very beginning I used to love plunking out the Bastein-simplified versions of both 'Fur Elise' and 'The Hall of the Mountain King' - mostly because when I first started learning piano in 1986, we had for several years owned a Commodore 64 cartridge called Story Machine (made by children's game specialists Spinnaker Software) in which each of the nouns in the game (but most notably the five to which you could assign proper names) had its own musical theme (just a few seconds, one voice).  Of the five to which proper names could be assigned, there was a boy who had as his theme Schumann's 'Merry Farmer', a girl who had as her theme 'Fur Elise', a cat which had as its theme Beethoven's Minuet in G (not Bach's Minuet in G, which along with his C major and F major two-part inventions and the first two phrases of the 'Wachet auf' chorale showed up prominently in another Spinnaker game), a dog which had as its theme a tune I cannot remember, and a monster which had as its theme 'The Hall of the Mountain King'.  So when I started learning piano and found 'Fur Elise' and the Grieg in the Bastein volume 'Favourite Classical Melodies, Level 2', I begged my teacher to let me learn them.  It was a bit jarring when, three years later, I finally learned the full version of 'Fur Elise' - and in the years since I've heard it so often I'm sick to death of it!

[leahcim]

What was your favorite piece to play at the very very beginning?

It wasn't on a piano, but it was grandfather's clock.

Prior to that, my Dad had one of those reel-to-reel tape recorders and I used to sing into the mic, stuff like long haired lover from liverpool and little donkey - at an age when I used to ask my dad to "let the people inside the box sing it now"

I don't have to think way back for piano - the first piece I played [on a 49-key midi keyboard] was fur elise, albeit for the octave E's I ran out of notes, and the intro to k545 switching to one hand only for the scale runs. They were the first bits I played on a digital. The first pieces that I played from bar one to the end though were those mozart pieces he wrote when he was 5 or 6.

[BoliverAllmon]

those mozart pieces are real nice.

boliver

[spirithorn]

those mozart pieces are real nice.

Yeah.  I had a book called "Young Mozart".  Still have it as a matter of fact.  There was a piece called "County Dance" (if I remember correctly), that I especially liked.

Make that "Country Dance".

[lau]

In the very bigging I think I used to play Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin a lot.