Proof of mastery

[The Sadist]

Hello, I've just registered to this forum and its great!
Anyways, I'm 17 and I've been independently learning the piano for a few months now and I've been wondering how well I am compared to other players. I've learned 1 1/2 songs (Blue Danube Waltz and learning Variatios on the Canon) and bits and pieces of other pieces. I know I really suck compared to everyone and I'm not in a good learning age, but I still want to learn. Would you suggest pieces to stepstone my way up or some difficult one's I can pound in my head so I can jump to a good level. Thanks in advance.
-Dan

[dj]

well of course, if you are serious about learning 2 play well i would suggest finding a teacher; however, if you just want 2 b better than you r now, maybe try some clementi sonatinas, then ask again when u've learned a few of those

[dreamaurora]

Please try not to fall into the trap of comparing yourself with other piano students. This is a very unhealthy and often pianists forsake musical studies of pieces for the sake "competing" with others.

I admire that you want to take the piano seriously. I myself started at your age. Let me tell you my experiences. If you want to be real good at piano or you want to be at least a decent amateur performer, you really need to be properly instructed in piano. For 3 years, I was instructed by teachers that basically that did not know how to teach and I was forced to work out things on my own. As a result I picked up PLENTY of bad habits that even until now hamper my music making and I have to be very patient to unlearn them. If you are just planning to enjoy music and playing for leisure, then by all means go ahead and play whatever you want, but if you want to be serious, do take note that piano learning is not easy, especially for late starters, who have the tendency to pick up bad habits more since our muscles are not that flexible anymore. A good teacher is definitely needed to learn proper technique and to teach you how to understand musical ideas from the scores.

If you are learning by yourself now, I would suggest not to try pieces are difficult, as you will pick up a lot of bad habits along the way, I know because I made the same mistakes too. I was stubborn and impetuous, and as a result I messed up a lot of things.

Anyway, do take a look at Schumann's Album of the Young , Bach's Anna Magdalene Notebook , Burgmuller's study pieces, Bartok Mikrokosmos, etc. In these collections you will find many beautiful short pieces that you will enjoy and comfortable with.

[piccolo]

Don't, whatever you do, pick a hard piece and just learn it by rote. You will get no benefit at all - quite the reverse, you'll get bad habits and no musicianship. You will also find you'll get disheartened because that one hard piece will take you forever to learn and get anywhere near right.

For preference, find a good teacher and take their advice. Otherwise, pick pieces just above the level you're at now and learn them thoroughly and carefully before moving on to pieces just above them.

If it's any comfort, I'm just starting to learn seriously aged 24, and I'm currently feeling rather inferior to most of the other people here, too!

[The Sadist]

Thanks a lot, at least I know I'm not alone. I'll try learning these "clementi sonatas" and hopefully I'll get more advice after that. I have no time for a teacher so I pick up whatever I can from my friends. I can read pretty fine, just not fast. I'll try to learn some more of your suggested pieces. Should one these pieces take me less than a week to learn? Anyways, I'll tell you what I think of them. Thanks all.

[dreamaurora]

About the time spending to learn a piece, it really depends on how much are you willing to put in effort to make music.

In fact , anyone with a lot of hard work can learn notes to any pieces within a short period of time. But making music involves a strenous long period of time of playing the text slowly and very careful listening, analysing, etc. But of course, since you don't have a teacher now, at the best you can only learnt the notes by rote, so stick to the pieces we have mentioned, you should give yourself more time , perhaps at least two to three weeks. Don't rush through the pieces, rushing is not going to help anyting.