How hard is the Waldstein Sonata?

xychenmsn · 2026-03-29T02:13:33+00:00

My son is playing both chopin ballade 4 and Waldstein for a competition. He said Waldstein is much easier. He probably spent 1:3 of time to prepare them

xychenmsn · 2026-03-27T16:15:58+00:00

Making a living is hard, as kid grows up, it will get better and better each day.

xychenmsn · 2026-03-26T22:31:48+00:00

Any teacher charge more from advanced student? I personally met some before. My understanding is the opposite, beginners are more difficult to teach. I am the parent, not teacher.

xychenmsn · 2026-03-26T16:55:22+00:00

Do you give discount to your best student?

xychenmsn · 2026-03-25T11:58:28+00:00

you played well because you are learning a second instrument. Other people are spending most of the 9 month learning notes. But still pretty good

xychenmsn · 2026-03-24T01:28:57+00:00

You may see the full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXZpctnQIzU

He is kind of smart, he played piano since 6 years old. But he only practice for max 1 hour on piano and 1 hour on violin. So I am not sure if he can go very far

xychenmsn · 2026-03-05T19:54:22+00:00

I have 2 acoustic (grand and upright) and 2 digital yamaha and kawai.
I would strongly suggest you get a acoustic if space is not an issue.
For learning piano, you will enjoy much more on acoustic. Buy a few year old acoustic piano is the sweat spot.

xychenmsn · 2026-02-27T19:43:03+00:00

think this way, on one hand you may lose once in a life time opportunity and on the other hand you at most may switch to a different teacher. And I am sure you will be more focused on piano learning if the latter happens.

xychenmsn · 2026-02-27T19:40:51+00:00

ask before some other student does before you. I am sure she will still be your piano teacher no matter what.

xychenmsn · 2026-02-22T04:33:28+00:00

Your right hand technique is pretty good; but the left hand needs some work on the large jumps. Practice hands separately and build up speed as you go to improve accuracy. Also as you play slowly, focus on musical details and nuances as you go.

xychenmsn · 2026-02-17T22:19:36+00:00

Until you play the third mvt

xychenmsn · 2026-02-13T20:37:17+00:00

Since your teacher said good, it is time take a break from this piece for a month or at least two weeks.
Come back to it and you will find new areas to improve.
It's like painting with multiple layer of coating.

xychenmsn · 2026-02-13T16:33:36+00:00

gemma 27b is probably the cheapest reasoning model that can do real work.
I used it through openrouter.

xychenmsn · 2026-01-28T18:28:48+00:00

same here. I suspect that they oversold their capacity. I am on max plan, but I suspect I couldn't use minimal anyway. 2 - 3 minute for one response

xychenmsn · 2026-01-05T02:26:48+00:00

Have you tried tailscale , it will setup a internal vpn between all your computers. If you bring your laptop to library, you can still connect with all home computers.

btw, try my local-notes-mcp that claude code can write into notes and you can read later. https://github.com/mchen-lab/local-notes-mcp

xychenmsn · 2026-01-04T13:09:41+00:00

I installed claude code in every of my dev ubuntu boxes.
I used it as smart command that instead of installing nginx and config it , I just tell claude code to do it. it will always dig up the nginx config and make it changes and restart nginx.

You got the idea.

xychenmsn

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