Videos: Please critique my technique :)

[bustthewave]

Hey guys, I posted kind of an introductory post yesterday about my journey with piano. If you don't feel like digging it up let me explain - I have been playing my entire life, but almost completely by ear. I squandered my time with teachers, and never learned sheet music, I still can't read it very well today (I have to find middle C on the staff and count up or down). I do however know keys, and chords, and have played and performed with several bands as the keyboardist.

So now, as I've been changing myself for the better, I've been becoming really serious about piano. I want to learn classical chord structures, I want to be able to site read, and I want to be able to compose music that's actually decent.

I've just learned only today about this concept of "quiet hands." I had never heard of it before. Naturally playing by ear, and teaching myself what I know, my technique is going to be strange...

I want to get myself outside of the box I'm playing in, and develop a better technique.

So here is the first vid (note that none of these vids are polished pieces in the least... also note that a piano string snapped a few weeks ago, and now the middle part of my keys is muted substantially).

So during christmas, I worked on this version of joy to the world that i didn't really finish. I'm posting because it gives an example of something I do that feels natural to me, where I combine my right and left hands to either hit a note extremely fast, or if I'm playing beats and bass for other people.

The second piece I started working on the other day, for fun. A rendition of the tetris theme -

And finally, my first piece of music that I've really sat down to site read, Chopin's prelude number 15, "raindrop." It took me 2 hours to learn just this much...

[jimbo320]

I can hear the quality of your playing improve from the first video to the third one.
In my opinion people make to much out of " The correct technique " anyways. Just do whatever feels and sounds right.
You are on your way dude. Keep up the practice ......

Jimbo

[noon]

 I think you have to work a little more on the sound even when you  do sight reading and it's hard to think about anything else than notes. You doing fine!

[bustthewave]

Just realized I didn't reply to this.

Thanks for the feedback guys, it's helpful.

I think my problem is, I feel like it shouldn't be this hard . I'm enjoying the challenge though (I mean it).

If I play my own thing, I can play fast and dramatic and fluidly. If I play someone else' thing, my mind doesn't have a mental framework for how to handle the specifics. So when I get to a phrase I'm not comfortable with, it feels like I'm pushed to the edge of a cliff and I don't know what step to take. It's a big learning curve.

Today I was working on Liszt exercises, and this is simple scales. It took me an hour before I could do these very simple two finger movements with any kind of speed (I'll probably be posting a vid of that for critique here soon). But I finally said to myself, "it doesn't matter that you can play well one way, and not another. You are doing this to play well in both ways, so get over it." I didn't feel so defeated after that.

I practiced for almost 4 hours today and loved most of it .