help! no more ideas

[chechig]

hello everyone!
 I dont' know if because of the summer but I have no idea of what learning next. lately I've almost finished all the studies of Burgmuller, op 100. witches revels by Schytté, and I dont' know what to do now. I cant' afford a teacher and I study piano because I love it, not for a living. I love music from Chopin onward, any suggestion? thank you in advance

[robertp]

How about Schumann, Album for the Young Op. 68?

It has pieces from around the level you're at right now..the hardest ones are probably "late Intermediate" or thereabouts. So you can pick one at your current level to maintain momentum, and another one to grow into. That's exactly what my teacher did with my after Burgmuller.

Nice bonus -- these are real pieces, and ones you'll always like to play. I still play them now, although my level is rather higher now.

%%robert

[chechig]

thank you very much Robertp, interesting suggestion. I will listen to them to see if I feel like, and if those are no very difficult.

[chechig]

do you know if Chanson de mai by b. Godard is too difficult for my level?

[ajspiano]

You may like some of Stephen Hellers studies - bits of Op. 45 or 47 perhaps would be in your reach having done all of burg op 100. Check them out at imslp.org - I'm not overly familiar with these in their entirety, there's definitely a couple in there that would suit though. They are progressive in nature, like the burgmuller I believe. I find it enormously difficult to find good recordings of these though.

The easier Chopin preludes? No 4 in e minor, 7 in a major - though these are a few steps up on the burgmuller. Better to learn something you love though, and I'm guessing you love chopin. Number 7 is the easiest of the bunch and is about the same as some of the later burgmuller.

I also think No 6 in B minor is very beautiful - and is clearly works as a kind of foundation for etude Op 25. no 7 (this obviously a very long way beyond you though). I would probably suggest doing some bach before tackling a work of this nature (the b minor prelude I mean) though because it requires a significant degree of hand/finger independance to control the dynamic textures between different voices.

As grounding in bach, you could consider the G minor minuet or the bouree in e minor - then having done one or both of those (or more from the anna magdelena notebook)  - one (or all 15 ) of the inventions, probably 1 or 4 to start with. If you like them of course they are very good for your development as a pianist, so worth the effort. There is also some great content around the forum explaining how to learn these most effectively.

________________

From a more modern slant - C. Norton, rhapsody or oriental flower..  ..I'm less familiar with good pieces/composers in this area though just because I can't get their music for free

[chechig]

thank you very much. ajspiano, Chopin is why I started to play piano, you can imagine how much I love his music. I 've tried preludes 4 and 7, I have a book with the "easiest" works by Chopin . before Burgmuller, I've been playing Clementi sonatas op 36, Bach's prelude n 1 (so beautiful). the thing is, as I dont' have a teacher I dont' have a program, so I look for music I like at my level, but is a bit like wandering with no target. so its a bit frustrating, and some times I feel like loosing my time in a way. thing is also that I dont want to play boring exercices, I did that when I was a child and started to learn, I know maybe it was the only way, but now I play piano becasuse I love it, and I know that there is a lot of wonderful music to learn. to be honest when I started Burgmuller I tought It was quite easy, but I found his music very funny, so it was like an entertainment
xxrusty thank you very much for your post, I didnt' know that site, and it looks interesting.

[ajspiano]

as I dont' have a teacher I dont' have a program, so I look for music I like at my level, but is a bit like wandering with no target. so its a bit frustrating, and some times I feel like loosing my time in a way.

Set a target - or put in more detail..

Listen to heaps of piano music from a variety of composers, whatever you can get your hands on, - make a list of all the pieces you like enough to be bothered learning. Your list should be LONG. 100's of pieces. Do not dismiss a piece and leave it off the list because you think its too hard. I mean that, include the rach 3 if you happen to like that.

categorise the list in 2 ways. firstly, by how motivated you are on each given piece and secondly by difficulty. Grading them might be challenging so maybe something like "easy enough, mild challenge, hard, stupidly hard" as your scale until you can figure them out more accurately. Also, if you can buy a repertoire guide, or a syllabus from AMEB, ABRSM, trinity etc. you may get some guidance there. Additionally - just get scores from IMSLP for whatever you can and try to sight read them - you'll find that you can give yourself a very rough self grading that way of "i can do this" or "this is way too hard".

Build up a plan -
Pieces I'm going to learn this month.
Piece I'm going to learn this year.
Pieces I plan to learn some time in the next 5 years.

On building your plan.
Notice in my previous post I said that the B minor prelude is a good preperatory piece for the etude? You can organise your pieces in this way, for example, there is a heller piece in Op47 i think that is technically and musically similar to Chopin 25/1 but its FAR easier than the chopin.

Also bach's inventions have a known pedagogical order of difficulty (that bach used when teaching, 1,4,7,8,10,13  etc. etc.  I can get the whole list for you if you take a liking to inventions. There is a good reason for the order but its well beyond the scope of my post here..  Study in such a fashion is preperatory to the content of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.

[chechig]

ajspiano, thank you very much. I find your idea very helpfull. I've been doing this list but much shorter, so it lasts for a short while. so I will make it longer.  sometimes I have a look at the suzuki piano method. but is limited. I'll try to get a syllabus. again thank you.

[49410enrique]

hmm how about Scriabin Op 2 No1, even folks who don't like Scrabin (i don't understand them but so be it), like this, it's early in his heavily "Chopin influenced" years , he was 14 I believe when it did it. I remember some non piano performance majors (i.e. prolly a level 5 or 6 out of 10 on the piano performance curriculun w 10 being professional/conservatory level advanced piano student), playing this in our studio a couple times. with enough work you should be able to make some very pretty music of it.

https://www.pianostreet.com/scriabin-sheet-music/etudes/etude-op-2-1-c-sharp-minor.htm

if it's too much for you, the often ignored op 2 no 2 is very pretty and too short i think (i like it, i want more!), at a single page, one minute in length, a simple texture with easy to grasp musical ideas it should be a wonderful little study for you too
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https://www.pianostreet.com/scriabin-sheet-music/preludes/prelude-op-2-2-b-major.htm

[chechig]

Enrique, thank you for your suggestion. L'etude I think is a bit too difficult now, but eventough its beautiful. the prelude is more my level, I think. saludos