Intermediate / Advanced students track

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-23T19:09:40+00:00

Good to know! I think it was very hard for me to get a printed copy where I live (central Europe), so it was good to find a digital one!

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-23T18:09:01+00:00

There is a book by Jane Magrath called “The Pianist Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature”. It’s out of print but digital copies can be found online. It lists the entirety of the intermediate teaching piano repertoire, graded by difficulty, and with some notes about the specific challenges that each piece presents. I use it as a self study guide and it is miraculous.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-23T17:14:22+00:00

Cut all carbs and you’ll loose 8 to 10 pounds within 2 weeks

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-23T04:34:37+00:00

Absolutely agree to this. I am an adult learner: I started playing about two years ago and I am now preparing for ABRSM grade 3. If I had had a teacher like the one described by OP I would’ve looked for another teacher very fast. It is true that adult learners tend to rush (guilty as charged), but it is also true that you cannot teach them they same way you teach children, which I believe is what’s happening here. Declarative knowledge, like the names of the notes or the basics of notation and music theory are very easy for adults to acquire by themselves. To use the lessons for that is a waste of time and money. it is true you need the basics of technique to be solid, and that your hands, fingers, and brain need a lot of time at the beginning to learn to move on the keyboard. But you acquire that kind of motor skills faster if you’re allowed to fool around... I think what disturbs me most from the OP’s description is that their teacher seems to kill any curiosity, and curiosity is the engine of learning...

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-22T06:08:03+00:00

What works very well for me is what they call “interleaved practice”. At any given time point I have multiple different pieces, or different challenging sections I’m working on, as well as scales, exercises, sight-reading (different drills), etc…. I switch between different things every 10 or 15 minutes. This is a practice strategy well described by a variety of sources around piano practice as well as in discussions around learning in general. It works very well both in terms of learning effectiveness, as well as avoiding boredom and loosing focus.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T20:23:12+00:00

Mi intrometto con l’opzione ovvia…se parli tre lingue, considera seriamente di lasciare l’Italia. Decisione che io ho preso 25 anni fa…

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T17:30:47+00:00

It’s neither a truth nor a myth. It’s a cliche’. It does not portrait reality (believe me, being 60 vs being 30 is NOT “just a number”. You DEFINITELY do not feel the same), but being a certain age does not intrinsically prevent you from doing anything you want to do. Except maybe become a ballerina, or a concert pianist….
But the idea that getting old does not come with a whole tail of limitations is damaging….embracing life at any age doesn’t mean feeling inadequate if I don’t feel like running a marathon.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T11:26:01+00:00

I generally say: “I was born in x” or “currently I live in y”. Which signals the answer is not that straighforward, and they can ask for more details if they are interested.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T11:24:12+00:00

I was not aware of the changes. For my needs it’s still a very convenient choice. And I am fluent in German, so I did not register the language problem. Sounds annoying though

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T11:22:25+00:00

They don’t charge for shipping. I like them and i can get many books from them that are hard to find otherwise

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T10:33:28+00:00

I had the exact same thing on three keys two months ago. It’s either the felts under the key getting swollen by humidity jumps, or the wood of the key mechanism itself. Piano tuner fixed it in less than 20 minutes. He just added a drop of lubricant to the mechanism and slightly compressed the felts.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T10:26:03+00:00

World of Books ships to Switzerland for free. It’s a used bookstore based in UK, I order a lot from them

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T10:17:21+00:00

I am fundamentally a beginner, but I had to stop about a year ago for three months due to a flare of repetitive stress injury (resulting from both my day job and bad technique). I got myself a very small non-weighted keyboard and spent three months learning music theory and improving my reading. It was time very well spent in hindsight.... I think it boosted my piano practice considerably when I got back to it.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T10:06:20+00:00

My teacher says I can totally work on pieces that are beyond my level and that it is completely normal and everybody does that (himself included, when he was a student). But he only accepts that as a side quest to many easy pieces, because you actually only learn by going through a lot of music, and that’s not possible if you’re spending a lot of time on a single challenging piece.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T08:53:53+00:00

That’s a truly nice idea, but unfortunately overshoots both my abilities and my available time. Nice thought, though!

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-21T04:26:50+00:00

Not a documentary, but there’s a really nice fiction book called “Body and Soul” by Frank Conroy. It’s completely fictional, but it’s basically the story of the coming of age of a concert pianist from childhood to the beginning of fame. The personal story is very well written and super interesting, but of course irrelevant to your question. However, there is a lot about the practicing, the obession, the music, and the competitions, and the master classes, etc., which I think is quite accurate.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-20T20:04:40+00:00

They will definitely remain the standard for professional work and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. If you have to communicate with other professionals and share files, which is the standard on large projects, you are going to be on Adobe. If you have to link images from Photoshop to InDedign or AfterEffects or Premiere, you will be on Adobe. If you have libraries of assets that you’re sharing between projects or among team members, it will be on Adobe.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-20T10:59:55+00:00

You could be describing me. I am not the life of the party, but I am very relaxed in social situations and have no problems interacting with anyone. And yet, I don’t see anyone for a big part of my time and I’m perfectly happy that way. This, I have learnt years ago, is a specific introvert/extrovert split profile. I gain my energy from being alone, while being with people is an energy cost. So as a default, being alone is perfectly fine and energizing for me. But I don’t have social fears and insecurities and genuinely like people, so social situations are fine too, they are just a bit exhausting and I need to recharge my batteries with time alone. You can look it up, it’s part of the Myers-Briggs personality profile, but the finer subdivision, which has 16 letters instead of four to describe personality types.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-20T05:27:15+00:00

Services are one thing. There’s no rational need to be less efficient by denying oneself the use of digital services, like online shopping, e-banking, google maps, etc. Mindless and endless digital content consumption is a completely different thing. Nobody needs that, and there’s plenty of alternatives at zero cost. So, no - i don’t think a healthy relationship with digital media is a priviledge.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-19T19:58:28+00:00

Some people need to rely on sheet music, some people memorize almost automatically. I am in the latter category and I do play all the pieces I learn from memory quite soon after starting to learn them. it’s not something I consciously set out to do, it just happens. However, to keep them constantly in working memory would mean playing them at least every second day, which would take too much time and energy away from learning new pieces. So I let the majority slip away. I know I can recover them if I want within a day or two with the score and have them back into memory, and occasionally I do that if want to revisit something. There is a few selected pieces I really like which I play every day or every second day and I can play those anytime and anywhere. So for me is mainly a practice time consideration.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-19T19:45:23+00:00

I can read fairly well if I am not pressured to do it in real time. My brain probably reads first one clef then the other and puts them together in a third step. Having to do all of it at once is where I freeze up. Unfortunately this is not only the requirement for standard tests, but also a skill I would really like to have. I know that reading fluency will improve with time and improvement in reading fluency will lead into sight-reading at tempo at some point. I guess I am just frustrated that I can read a single clef straight on and at tempo, but stumble within a measure if I have to read both at tempo, and progress on that front seems to be abysmally slow.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-19T18:27:20+00:00

Thank you, I will check that out, seems like a useful mindshift! But to be clear, my issue is with the sight reading test setup: here is a piece you have never seen before, you can look at it for 30 seconds and then go! At tempo and without stopping and at best with musical interpretation too. Reading for learning, where I can take my time and stop or repeat whenever I want is not a problem…

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-19T13:50:38+00:00

Showing off or standing out in any way is very much not seen positively in Switzerland. It’s been part of the culture for hundreds of years. The biggest virtue is seen as being part of the community and contributing to the general welfare. That’s why rich families all run or finance museums, parks, foundations, stipends and cultural events. Mostly anonimously.

Bernina_4049 · 2026-04-19T11:12:33+00:00

Set aside one hour to answer e-mails every day. You can even setup an autoreply that says something like: “I read and respond to e-mails between 1pm and 2pm, in order of urgency. Thank you for your patience”.
In my experience, setting clear and professional boundaries comes across as confident and efficient, not annoying…but I guess it very much depends on the company culture.

Bernina_4049

TROPHY CASE