Standard Graded Course of Studies For the Pianoforte vs. Faber Piano Adventures

[turbocoder3000]

Hi everyone,

I am a returning piano student at 37. I took piano lessons with a teacher for 1 year in high school for a senior class project. For the project, I progressed rapidly over six months to being able to begin learning Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1 (I say begin because I never fully learned it), and as part of that project’s final, I performed a portion of Liberace’s Chopsticks concerto in front of the senior class at my high school. It wasn’t a long performance but I was proud of it because of the challenge, difficulty, and the fact that I improvised a bit at the piano during the performance (not bad for a first one). At the time, our family owned a real baby grand piano I was able to spend all my time practicing on. Throughout the years, it eventually was sold and other priorities took over. Until this past year.

In August, I completely tore my right leg’s quadriceps tendon and had surgery 9/21. So, I will be laid up for at least another 2-3 months until I recover. In the meantime with my reduced work schedule it is the perfect time for me to get into a much more regular piano practice routine (I want to work up to 3-4 hours practice per day).

Despite the challenges this surgery and recovery has presented, Liberace has continued to remain a major influence over my decision to re-learn the piano over the past year. No, I’m not gay. I have since expanded my classical musical listening to include pianists like Lang Lang, Valentina Lesitsa, Krystian Zimmerman, Anna Fedorova, and others.

So my obsession with the piano re-invigorated itself over the past year (no, this is not a mid-life crisis). It is an obsession I intend to keep and improve on for the rest of my life. I picked up a Casio CDP-130 88-key keyboard (its hammer action outperformed Yamahas worth twice as much and its sound to me sounded far superior).

Now, I have gotten the bug. I have been working on re-learning the Chopsticks concerto, but at the same time re-learning piano technique and fundamentals with Faber’s Accelerated Piano Adventures. I don’t have any illusions about getting to “grade 10 within 2 years” or something like that. But, I do want to learn pieces in progression that will help me better improve my technique on the Chopsticks concerto. With my background from before, I already know how to read sheet music and I am quite familiar with the majority of aspects of music theory.

I would say I want to learn some Liberace repertoire including:

Chopsticks Concerto
Sincerely Yours (Liberace himself admits one of his signature tunes is based on Chopin’s Aeolean Harp Etude)
12th Street Rag
Beer Barrel Polka
La Cucaracha

Some popular repertoire like:

Somewhere In the Night (of Quantum Leap fame)
Unchained Melody
Bridge Over Troubled Water
My Way
Two Mile Pike piano solo (by Barefoot Jerry)

The classical repertoire I want to learn includes:

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto #1
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (1st, 2nd, and 3rd movements)
Liszt’s Liebestraum (Dream of Love)
Paderewski’s Minuet
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
Chopin’s Ballade Op. 23 No. 1 in G Minor
Chopin’s Etude Op. 10 No. 3

I am thrilled to be a part of this forum. While my abilities have all but atrophied and are nowhere near many of the long-time regulars here my aim is to learn, and one day reach my former glories and exceed them. I don’t expect to become a virtuoso re-starting so late, and starting as late as I did, but I would love to learn to make strides to achieve somewhat of a sound that is at least impressive.

Before making my first post, I have been reading and reading, and doing some searching around this forum (especially the student section) and found this course that seems to be something I want to really do too:

The Standard Graded Course of Studies for the Pianoforte by Mathews, William Smythe Babcock https://imslp.org/wiki/Standard_Graded_Course_of_Studies_for_the_Pianoforte_(Mathews,_William_Smythe_Babcock)

After reviewing both the group of Faber books I got (I went on a spree and got the following):

International Edition: Accelerated Piano Adventures Lesson Book – Book 1 for Older Beginners
Accelerated Piano Adventures for the Older Beginner, Technique and Artistry Book 1
Accelerated Piano Adventures for the Older Beginner: Technique and Artistry Book 2
Accelerated Piano Adventures for the Older Beginner: Lesson Book 2
Accelerated Piano Adventures for the Older Beginner: Performance Book 1
Accelerated Piano Adventures for the Older Beginner: Performance Book 2

It appears to me that the Faber books compared to the SGCSP book are all extremely UNDERwhelming. By comparison, the SGCSP studies appear to have so much more in terms of technical understanding and piano technique (I haven’t run into double flats or double sharps in the Faber books yet but the SGCSP book goes over them in the first five pages I think). My main question is: it appears that Faber falls short of everything SGCSP teaches. SGCSP appears to be of a standard quite a number of degrees higher than Faber appears. My question here is: should I choose Faber or the SGCSP books? I plan on teaching myself with the piano, because my foundation is already grounded with a year of teaching and with music theory / being able to read sheet music well.

I guess my last question here is: what pieces should I learn first (progressively) to provide myself with enough piano technique to learn the techniques required of the Chopsticks piano concerto? I am using the Elmo Peeler transcription, which is based on this version:

[adodd81802]

Too much to read. I've just skipped to the end where essentially you're comparing to modes of study.

You seem competent (I'm not truely convinced by your story but nevertheless ) However a teacher is always a good option, it will make your learning efficient.

The books you are comparing are quite different... One promises to be an all in one, and the other is accelerated for older beginners, of course they are going to vary majorly in content. The Faber ones to me, come across as "piano for dummies" style where it seems to aim to make everything look easier.

What I would say is just breeze through those books, almost like in a revision style to make sure there's no fundamentals you're missing but don't sit with them for too long. If you're looking at the theory of music, there are much better books, consider Edward Aldwell - Harmony and Voice leading or Stefan Kostka Tonal Harmony (you can find these both online and the Tonal Harmony also comes with a workbook - it's a monster theory book)

If you are looking for more comprehensive piano study courses, let me know and I'll fire some more at you. The sort of books you tend to find easily on Amazon are not for advanced learners, but people who want learning the piano to be made easy for them.

[turbocoder3000]

Too much to read. I've just skipped to the end where essentially you're comparing to modes of study.

You seem competent (I'm not truely convinced by your story but nevertheless ) However a teacher is always a good option, it will make your learning efficient.

The books you are comparing are quite different... One promises to be an all in one, and the other is accelerated for older beginners, of course they are going to vary majorly in content. The Faber ones to me, come across as "piano for dummies" style where it seems to aim to make everything look easier.

What I would say is just breeze through those books, almost like in a revision style to make sure there's no fundamentals you're missing but don't sit with them for too long. If you're looking at the theory of music, there are much better books, consider Edward Aldwell - Harmony and Voice leading or Stefan Kostka Tonal Harmony (you can find these both online and the Tonal Harmony also comes with a workbook - it's a monster theory book)

If you are looking for more comprehensive piano study courses, let me know and I'll fire some more at you. The sort of books you tend to find easily on Amazon are not for advanced learners, but people who want learning the piano to be made easy for them.

Hi adodd -- nice to e-meet you!!

I am in no way competent at piano playing at this stage of the game - only reading sheet music, which I learned during the year I spent with a teacher.

I am completely starting from scratch on the piano playing part as far as my abilities are concerned. I don't think much from that first year survived beyond the music theory part. I do have a good memory, and going through the Faber books has helped jog a few things I had forgotten prior to my return to piano.

As I get competent and feel more comfortable with my own playing, I will for sure be posting videos here.

Thank you for the additional references. I am always interested in learning as much as I can - not just the easy stuff.

[adodd81802]

Glad to hear. Definitely the more comprehensive books can seem a little difficult to chew at times, but you are getting a lot of information which is key. As mentioned use the easier books as revisions or easy explanations of things you are unsure on.

As always advised is to get a piano teacher if this is within your capabilities. There are some very flexible offering 1 per month or bi-weekly lessons to suit your budget and just make sure you stay on the right tracks for progression.

For someone starting from scratch here's one thing I find that can fool some people -

SITUATION
You find a piece you love, it's a little difficult, but you power through it, you can play it quite well after a couple of months, you check online and behold it's a grade 6 piece!

In 4 months you can consider yourself grade 6? Surely not... EXACTLY. the answer is no

There are many technical aspects of a piece that make it the grade it is, please do not get bulked down with where you are, just take your time, progress logically and patiently and try and broaden your skills as much as possible.

I.E I wouldn't go through the whole SGCSP complete grade 10 and go right now i'm ready for that Chopin Ballade... Unfortunately piano isn't that linear.

Learning a piano piece is almost like writing an essay, you take lots and lots of different research from different sources, improvise a little, add your own flare to it and put it all together. if you just researched from one source, you could find not only are you missing a lot of information, it could also be very incorrect.

[turbocoder3000]

Glad to hear. Definitely the more comprehensive books can seem a little difficult to chew at times, but you are getting a lot of information which is key. As mentioned use the easier books as revisions or easy explanations of things you are unsure on.

As always advised is to get a piano teacher if this is within your capabilities. There are some very flexible offering 1 per month or bi-weekly lessons to suit your budget and just make sure you stay on the right tracks for progression.

For someone starting from scratch here's one thing I find that can fool some people -

SITUATION
You find a piece you love, it's a little difficult, but you power through it, you can play it quite well after a couple of months, you check online and behold it's a grade 6 piece!

In 4 months you can consider yourself grade 6? Surely not... EXACTLY. the answer is no

There are many technical aspects of a piece that make it the grade it is, please do not get bulked down with where you are, just take your time, progress logically and patiently and try and broaden your skills as much as possible.

I.E I wouldn't go through the whole SGCSP complete grade 10 and go right now i'm ready for that Chopin Ballade... Unfortunately piano isn't that linear.

Learning a piano piece is almost like writing an essay, you take lots and lots of different research from different sources, improvise a little, add your own flare to it and put it all together. if you just researched from one source, you could find not only are you missing a lot of information, it could also be very incorrect.

I am going through two books right now - Practicing Perfection: Memory and Piano Performance by Roger Chaffin, Gabriela Imreh, Mary Crawford, and another book - Fundamentals of Piano Practice by Chuan C. Chang. I have no delusions of grandeur in terms of quickly progressing through piano practice, but my goal is to use my time as effectively as possible until I get a teacher to augment my training. I want to go through all the levels and progress as is necessary, and learn the hard things as well as the easy.

Since I am recovering from quad tendon repair surgery (I completely ruptured my right quad tendon in August), I don't think too many teachers nowadays will make house calls. Although, I understand there are Skype lessons and lessons via video.

I totally get the outline you posted about that situation! My dream piece I want to learn is Liberace's Chopsticks concerto. I want to be able to perform that piece in front of people for sure. I certainly wouldn't call myself a grade 8 if I learn a piece like that and it's considered a grade 8 piece - no way. Am I assuming correctly when I think that you would probably need to be able to play a number of pieces with varying aspects of that grade level and varying difficulty within that level to be able to be considered that grade level pianist? That's not my goal - just an example. I want to become an advanced pianist around grade 10. Would I be able to play like Liberace? Likely not. But I want to get as close as I possibly can.

You hit the nail on the head on learning and my usual learning process. I am like a sponge: I enjoy soaking up as much information as I can get my hands on in order to learn the best way possible to accomplish learning songs I want to play completely and accurately.

By the way - I have started posting pieces I have learned during my practice sessions in the audition forum.

[adodd81802]

You sound like a reasonably logical person, and so if any of my comments came across misjudged or aggressive, apologies!

Your clarification regarding considering yourself in that "grade" based on varying pieces, really comes down to being able to play different styles and different genres.

Take singing as an example, it's certainly true, that if you wanted to only sing love ballads, it is most unlikely you would want to spend as much time doing rapping, rock and folk, but what you will find is that if you at the very least introduce and practice those style, it will not only improve the style you want to master, but will give you some new insights into the styles that exist.

Many people get too focused on that one piece, and you know, it may certainly  be achievable to learn only that piece in say 6 months of gruelling practice, but in the long run, you could spend 5 of those months learning easier pieces collaboratively From different styles and genres, and then find it only takes you 1 month to learn the piece you wanted to play all along PLUS you can then continue learning other pieces easier.

Good luck BTW, I hope you see it through, the initial steps are difficult, but you will forget how hard it ever was when you can really start playing pieces you enjoy.. And despite your end goal to be playing just that one piece right now, being open minded about others will surprise you every day just how much you will find new pieces to love just as much if not more.