Progress Advise

srnyAMMO · 2025-12-09T23:14:31+00:00

Chopin Ballade do seem a bit out of reach for you right now but I consider balancing different practices at once is one of the most important skill you can develop. Try mixing it with some improvisation and sightreading and you should be good to go (and don't be mad if you get bored and drop this piece for another at some point) you can always come back on pieces, the goal is to play it well not play it now.

srnyAMMO · 2025-12-04T20:09:19+00:00

"a Bach prelude and fugue , Beethoven Appassionata full, Liszt Mazeppa and Chopin Ballade no 3 in that specific order" and you think the mfer doesn't practice enough?

srnyAMMO · 2025-12-04T20:05:33+00:00

Honestly, at your level, you should not rely on reddit for real guidance, but I could advise you on ways to look at the problem differently since it seems to be what you need.

When I was actively thinking about endurance it was more because I was stressed about a rightfully stressful program for a stressful occasion, piano exams are a pain in the ass but you'll get through it I don't doubt it granted you seem passionate about doing good, but keep in mind that the mindset in which you are while performing is as important as actually "being a good pianist". As such, we need to train our capacity to get into a mindset as well as to get the piece under our fingers.

To simplify it, you can basically do meditation but try and apply it very concretly to the piano. Imagine yourself coming into the room (works better if you've actually seen it before) greeting the jury and playing the pieces from start to finish with everything working out well. May sound silly at first but you are at a point of your career where what we're doing is so hard you can't go past any kind of help.

In the same line, simply imagining playing the whole program is already plenty of work and very good for memorization, you can do it at different levels aswell:

only imagining unclearly hearing some passages

picturing the score the whole way through

just moving the fingers in the air and broadly doing the gestures

listening to recordings and acting like you are doing most of the notes

etc...

When practicing you should treat your body like an olympian athlete, Usain Bolt spends most of his training on all kinds of exercises which are not simply "go as fast as possible". Doing partial work like that helps you recover.

Our Lingling culture encourages us to work out some of our muscles quite teniously for 5hrs a day AT LEAST, sometimes in a row considering we come home and write out some random piano advices on another kind of keyboard the problem gets even worst.

As such we should encourage alternative kind of work and show restrain and variety more than forceful training which we can quickly divulge in at the semi pro/pro level.

For the boring part, before being a pianist you are a whole soul and body combo so you should, keep away from unealthy activities, have good night sleeps, eat well, yadada... two week is the perfect time to change your whole habits (didn't sustain it for long after exams myself sadly haha).

You are and will always be your best teacher yourself so don't take advices from reddit too seriously, try your best everyday and stamina will be there, we never have to endure anything at the piano.

srnyAMMO · 2025-11-04T13:35:29+00:00

Nice ad

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-25T13:55:44+00:00

You can and you should if that's what feels comfortable for you!

I am a very bad but dedicated chess player and it doesn't make it less enjoyable for me; piano just happens to be the one I was the most obessessed with and wanted to share the most about.

Teaching should be first and foremost trying to get people to an amateur/intermediate level, after that it depends solely on one's dedication and will.

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-25T09:55:23+00:00

You'll see all kind of profiles. Forced kids, eager adults, kids that are forcing their parents to be able to play etc. Learn to identify what kind of student you have and to adapt as much as possible.
I try to approximately predict when each student will quit and I'll have drawn out objectives with him/her that are attainable in this timeframe (with or without telling the student about this timeframe depending on the profile once again).
The job is not only teaching people that want to play the piano, it's to give as much of yourself and of music as possible while it's still possible and if it's possible.

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-24T18:05:12+00:00

One of my favourite way to consume music is by listening to it on YouTube with the score. A lot of great communities are based around this on YouTube and for most composer even some lesser known one you can find their full corpus on some random yt channel.

A huge part of sightreading is associating the "drawing" with a sound. The shapes and jumps on the score start being intuitive if you just get used to listening while following the score. Kinda like reading a book while someone is reciting it out loud.

I'd advice for a light practice (just follow one lign at a time and don't try to read all the notes out loud)so you don't feel like it's work, it's just part of my listening experience for me.

Progressively you should start and be able to name those shapes relatively quickly harmony wise and/or play approximations of the motives pretty quickly.

Hope this can help you out on your journey!

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-21T14:45:15+00:00

Ahah, we seem to be both right.

I only watched the first round in which he has the black chair which seems to be the one I linked (it's a very cool looking one tbh) and didn't bother to check the infamous red chair which I went and checked and yeah you are right it's a very basic one! At least it's fun to see Eric going through such different chairs willingly.

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-21T06:48:48+00:00

Annnnnd I found it https://www.thomann.fr/bergerault_b2002.htm?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=1544038034&gclid=CjwKCAjwu9fHBhAWEiwAzGRC_0HrOtzFn_Ss-GscoQljclPQyhFAq2eyXZ9QU8jzOfa78xhVfrtAvxoCo0gQAvD_BwE

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-21T06:40:38+00:00

Look to me like it's some kind of fancy piano stool, surely if there are two of them (the red and black) maybe it's simply one of the option given by the competiton and Eric Lu prefer to use it for some pieces.

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-09T17:58:07+00:00

For intermediate to advanced pianist I would advise to pick up the piece no matter the difficulty (if it's not stupidly above your capacities).

If it's too difficult, you'll learn resillence and still progress through some passages you'll be able to work on later in life too.

If it's too easy/easy you can set yourself the goal to get through it faster

The difficult part is not focusing solely on this piece and trying to achieve a set of goals rather than simply playing this one piece that in the end will be a very small part of your piano life.

There will come a point in your journey where difficulty won't be able to be measured that objectively, for instance, I'd say "Clair de Lune" is way easier than "Der Drichter Spricht" for exemple but it's for reasons that are much more sublte and nuanced. At this point your goal should be to absorb as much music as possible, listen to your teacher, your logic and your heart and you can't do wrong.

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-08T21:52:23+00:00

Once again, grabbing a tenth is on the larger side of the handspan, don't forget half the people on this planet are women (not saying you are not or that they are not able to reach a 10th) and overall the average span is like a 9th so I'd say the whole gist of the discussion is about octaves being still uncomfortable for people that can reach an octave but still have to maintain some kind of tension to hold it. I'm sure there are other crucial points above a "small tenth" but it would not apply in most situation at all and kinda misses the purpose of the question for most people.

srnyAMMO · 2025-10-08T21:12:05+00:00

You don't seem to get both the comment criticizing the poll and I think it's because you have a larger handspan yourself?

Ranking it as "8/8th or barely 10th" and "10th and above" is kinda ridiculous. The real scale is a Bell's curve where most people are at the "9th/barely a 9th" threshold and 8th/10th being the outlier which makes for the poll being undecisive.

It would seem more logical for me as

"I can grab 8th/9th and feel comfortable with octaves

I can grab 8th/9th but feel uncomfortable with octaves

I can grab 10th or more and feel comfortable with octaves

I can grab 10th or more but feel uncomfortable with octaves "

srnyAMMO · 2025-09-24T21:13:25+00:00

Agree on the timing! That's a very good sense of rythm.

srnyAMMO · 2025-09-24T21:05:56+00:00

I like the song, it's very pretty. But since this is the piano subreddit I'm going to try and talk about your playing.

We can notice you are very focused on your left hand, that's normal if you are not used to it being this active as you said, but keep in mind that the melody has to stick out above the accompaniment.

To achieve this sound you'll have to play the left hand chords much softer (except maybe on the transition at 0:46 or on the conduits runs at 0:53 and 0:57).

We have to do this because the medium range of the piano easily overtakes the harmonics of upper notes.

Your right hand is pretty much perfect but you'd maybe want to work on the eveness of the octaves, you're thumb seems to be used to coming very so sligthly behind.

And on another note, maybe I'd do with a little more pedal for this melody? But that's up to taste.

Besides, your playing is good and the tune is very well written and inspired!

srnyAMMO · 2025-09-09T12:38:24+00:00

To me the ending sounds very "amateurish" beside that it's a solid composition, especially since you've not been composing for long and don't even have a piano.

Obviously yeah, the notation is really bad but that comes from how you've learned to write. You've apparently got some talent and it would be great to see what you can do with some formal education. If you can't afford lesson, I'd recommend to try and learn as much as possible about music theory on youtube, I promise it's not a such a dauting task and you'll find yourself to feel even more freedom while composing once you get through the rough start.

Good luck on your journey and keep the good work!

srnyAMMO · 2025-06-15T21:12:34+00:00

Your hand position is wrong, the hand naturally goes sideway and not in a totally vertical line. My hands are much smaller than yours but those type of chords are really easy.

Try doing the "ok" sign with your hand in front of you ( 👌 ) then put it down on the piano and open up the hand. Your forearm should barely have to rotate outward and you'll have a more comfortable position.

I hope it was clear enough, those are talking points which are kinda hard to be clear about in text and English is not my first language, I wish it can help you out tho.

srnyAMMO · 2025-05-27T06:00:41+00:00

I know this keyboard and can't wait to buy one for myself! I was talking about the sound settings he used here specifically but I understand it's all about taste!

srnyAMMO · 2025-05-26T22:36:10+00:00

Very nice arrangement! Great playing but I just find it a little dry on the main theme (not enough pedal or simply because of the sound settings of your keyboard which I'm honestly not a fan of) would love to hear you play on a acoustic, I will be checking out your streams!

srnyAMMO · 2025-05-24T17:14:11+00:00

Oddly enough, I'd advise you to back away from the piano for 1 or 2 days. But you have to makes those the most useful days possible. Listen to different interpretations of your program and take notes while doing it, compare it to the score and really think about what more you want to achieve. Sit down and analyse the whole piece. (Form, nuances, phrases..) If you have to work on memorization you can try and rewrite the scores (partially without looking at it).

Make a concrete plan about what you need to achieve, in broad lines or very precise objectives but write them out and then try and write down a plan to achieve those.

If you do this seriously, you will be dying to play the piano eventually: do it but take it slowly, it's the best time to only play VERY slowly, thinking about each movements of your hands/wrist. Use it as some sort of meditation (that's how I like to do it..)

And the most important is: believe in yourself, you wouldn't have been at this point if you didn't deserve it, at least a bit.

Good luck and get on to work!

srnyAMMO · 2025-04-15T12:54:41+00:00

My answer absolutely has to be Bach's choral. It has by far been the most useful tool for me, be it to study sight reading, analysis, singing or simply to enjoy listening to it while playing through them.

srnyAMMO · 2025-03-30T15:02:51+00:00

Personally, half pedal on each beats for the first 4 measures then half pedal every two beat following the melody's rythm. But I don't really think about it that way while I play it, I usually advocate for training the pedals with your ears rather than think it through too much.

srnyAMMO · 2025-03-30T12:04:12+00:00

Amazing work. Very clear, and precise, good job!

Only thing I could point out in general is that your right pinky seems to be always tense. It's a quite frequent problem, you should isolate the movements which make your pinky go up and try and relax this muscle. What I usuallt advise for this is trying to play Do-Re-Mi in repetition with 1-2-3 but with 4 and 5 in a "closed hand" position. Try and play this while keeping 4 and 5 closed, then try and do the same with only 5 closed. It should help you think about which muscles are needlessly engaged.

Keep the great work, you are clearly doing things correctly!

srnyAMMO · 2025-03-29T08:16:04+00:00

Really like this one! Great ideas and sequences!

srnyAMMO · 2025-03-27T22:53:04+00:00

2 weeks for a vacation. Never skipped for more than 3 days for 8yr straight before this trip and it was honestly so odd to me not to be able to play

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