Edit: everyone is telling me to play with a metronome. Okay, what speed of metronome should I use

I tried 120 and it was very hard

I know it’s slightly off but the melody has to be recognizable

I’ve been reading books and slowly teaching myself piano over the course of a couple weeks now. I’ve gotten to the point where I can slowly read some notes on sheet music and have been practicing with small snippets of songs out of my books.

Im currently practicing this little melody out of one my books but im confused as to how you slur the same note in a row like the sheet suggests? It wants me to slur middle C twice. When i googled it, it was suggested that I hit the middle C key lighter on the second note but then another source said to hold the sound for the entire 4 beats. Theres no marking that indicates the damper pedal should be held down either.

Any advice would be appreciated!

I’m 18 and have been playing the piano for about a year. I’ve always been surrounded by excellent musicians, and am now even more surrounded by them because my college doubles as a conservatory. I see these people playing and I want so badly to be able to be like that, but it is frankly too late and trying to catch up just makes me upset. I practice so much and I’m still so goddamn bad. When I play something easy and do it well with emotion for just one second I feel that happiness that I’m chasing and it is then dashed against the rocks the second I try to play something that actually takes skill and try and fail over and over and over and over until I smash the keys and storm off. It hurts so much to be surrounded by people who made better choices with their lives than me and honed the kind of skill I will never have in a million years. My musical hero was making incredible songs when he was 18 because he started practicing music when he was like 10. Even if I did have the potential to one day catch up to him, which I don’t, I would be TWENTY-SIX YEARS OLD BY THE TIME I WAS AS GOOD AS HIM WHEN HE WAS BARELY AN ADULT. I just want to play something cool and beautiful and not so stupid and embarrassing and bad but I can’t

I can’t remember the piece anymore (goldfish memory) and I’m thinking of picking it up again
Some of the notes are messed up

Here is a blind comparison of recordings featuring measures 89–116 of the Arietta (2nd movement) from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111.

Here is the score for your convenience

I came across this video on Bilibili and thought it offered a fantastic exercise for listeners: a chance to test whether we genuinely hear artistic quality or if we are simply falling prey to confirmation bias when listening to legendary figures.

According to the original Bilibili uploader, the lineup includes one "third-rate" pianist and three "second-rate" pianists (at least within the German-Austrian repertoire), alongside world-class pianists

Listen closely and feel free to post your thoughts, critiques, and pianist guesses in the comments below!

Timestamps:

• 1: 0:00
• 2: 1:07
• 3: 2:30
• 4: 3:57
• 5: 5:12
• 6: 6:40
• 7: 7:55
• 8: 9:16
• 9: 10:25
• 10: 11:46

Original Video: Bilibili Link

Feel free to follow this post! Once I get the answer key from the original uploader, I'll post a follow-up with the full list and link it here.

Hi, I'm a 27-year-old adult beginner. I’m looking to upgrade from my Yamaha NP-11 to my first proper 88-key weighted digital piano, and I’m currently leaning towards the Roland FP-40.

I started learning piano in April this year, take weekly lessons, practise consistently, and work on sight-reading, theory, phrasing and repertoire as well as songs I like. My teacher has been really pleased with my progress so far. He was especially impressed with my recent work on In My Place by Coldplay and has started giving me more theory because he thinks I pick it up well. Piano has become my biggest passion, and I've taken to it a bit like a duck to water.

Long term, I want to become as good as I can, and we're planning to start some classical training in 2027. I'd love to eventually perform and play with other musicians, so I want something I can grow into rather than feel the need to replace quickly, but my budget is a max of £800.

I’ve already tried a few models:

• Kawai ES120 - very easy and fluid to play, and I could play fast really comfortably, but the action felt a little light to me.
• Yamaha P-225 - probably my least favourite. I just didn’t get on with the key feel and it felt surprisingly cheap to me for the price.
• Roland FP-30X/FP-40 - I preferred the more substantial, controlled feel of the Roland action, and the FP-40 is the one I’m currently most interested in. I felt like the FP-40 had a nicer sound than the FP-30x.

Has anyone here owned or spent much time with the FP-40? I actually played it on the day it launched, but I don't want to get distracted by the shiny new product. I'm also worried about the Roland action for classical playing? I know it's heavier than the ES120.

So I am asking: have you found the action, sound and general experience over time?

I currently live with my dad and probably will for a while, as my mum recently passed away and I want to spend some time with him. I’m planning to move to London eventually, though, so an acoustic piano isn't really practical for me at the moment (and my dad definitely isn't letting me put one in the house lol, and my teacher actually found me a lovely free upright recently, but sadly we just don't have the space).

I’d also be really interested in any other digital pianos around £650–£800 that you think I should try before buying.

I’m going to test the FP-40 again properly before making a decision, so I’m mainly looking for for real world owner/player experiences rather than just specs. Thanks!

And shorter you don’t have to listen just getting used to sharing

Just over 2 years self taught now. Would be much appreciated if I could receive some opinions on my playing and how it can be improved 🙏.

I really got got by that middle section. Hopefully it is otherwise somewhat musical. I realized I have not played this enough under the pressure of being watched, so recording some full attempts brought to light a lot of sections I thought I had down. Terribly difficult piece.

Hi all. I have my first piano recital coming up next week. I know my piece perfectly, without score. No problems playing in front of my partner, or teacher. I have played in front of a couple friends, I felt the stress and made a couple mistakes at the beginning of the piece, but nothing major and I carried on. Until here, it is all expected and I don't mind, it is part of it. However, we had a recital workshop where all student performed their piece in front of everyone and I fumbled so so much. From beginning to end I was in survivor mode, shaking, repeating measures while I tried to remember the next one (so there is no gap). What can I do to help with this?

I know this will get better and better as I perform in public. But any tips on how to get the first one "okay" (I don't mind mistakes, but I want to enjoy playing)? At least, I know the piece well enough that I can just pretend to play if I forget a measure, or skip few beats without any real impact on the overall piece. It is all related to stress, not knowledge. Please help 😊

I was wondering if it is possible to play 2 different piano pieces simultaneously (for example, playing the left-hand part of a Bach piece with the left hand and the right-hand part of a Chopin piece with the right). The only condition is that, after the performance, the two streams of notes should sound indistinguishable from the pieces being played normally.

One could use two separate pianos to avoid the problem of the two pieces’ notes overlapping. Also, MIDI could be used to play back one piece at a time, so that each can be judged on its own.

If this is even possible, I wonder how far one could take it. Playing Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and Gaspard de la nuit's right-hand section at the same time would be wild.

If this isn't possible for a normal human, could a person who underwent a corpus callosotomy accomplish it?

I resumed playing the piano three years ago and have been practicing for about 10 minutes daily. This pace seems to suit me well. For those of you who are also teaching yourselves piano as adults, what strategies have you used to make practice a habit? I think your way of making schedules and keeping records will be helpful for other self-learners.

I’ve been learning piano using fabers and it’s mostly classical, which i don’t mind but i really love jazz. are there books for learning jazz specifically or? do i just find jazz songs at my level and start learning them?

The family let me know that the deceased was a big fan of Liszt. What pieces might be appropriate for a funeral? I've done a handful of his Transcendental Etudes and such so it's not a question of technique, and I can sight-read almost anything. The pieces shouldn't be longer than 4-5 minutes.

On my shortlist I have one of the Consolations, Liebestraum no. 3, and Un Sospiro. What else do you think would work? Thanks in advance!

So I've been obsessed with the nord grand sounds,searching and doing some research on the web. But unfortunately on the city im living in I am not able to play it only buy it.

So I had a question which is ofcourse is optional to each individual but still helps!

How the key action feels on the nord grand 2?
Ofcourse im describing the feel when someone wants to play piano sounds not organ synths etc.

I heard few people in the web saying that the sounds are amazing but they didnt like the key action.
So in the end some opinions here would help me more and be appreciated!

This is just a short section of the piece I’m learning. Maybe I should be farther ahead than this… please critique. And yes I did almost make a mistake 😭

Hello, I’ve been looking to start learning piano but couldn’t figure out what should I buy
My budget isn’t that much and cheaper and good otooins would be better because I don’t wanna invest too much right now
In future if I do really like it then I’ll buy a better one but I would love suggestions on something that I could start right away
Cheaper would be great!

I was wondering if anyone has ever been in the same position as me, and in what ways they managed to overcome it.

I'm an early-advanced mature student, I can learn ABRSM grade 8 repertoire pieces in a few months and learn some diploma level pieces as a challenge. My sight-reading is reasonable. I completed my grade 5 theory, so I can identify the chord changes and I have a basic understanding of functional harmony.

However...I nearly always fail to hear these chord changes when I'm learning a piece. I can hear that the piece is moving somewhere, but lose sense of the 'home' key and when 'tension' has been released. I therefore feel like I have no bearing on the structure or journey of a piece which I think would speed up my learning.

I am bad at identifying cadences unless they are in super obvious root positions or cliche sounding etc. It's like I have no intuition for the harmony and can only identify it when I sit down and focus on analysing and writing the chord names over the top of the bar, but then it just becomes more like a puzzle of distinguishing between the passing and chord tones than really helping me understand the music. The chord names I write down just get ignored eventually.

If I play a I-IV-V-I in root position, I can hear what it is by following the bass, however as soon as inversions are used, the harmony just turns into mush to my ear. It's like I am missing the link between the formulaic on-paper analysis and actually hearing it.

I've been discussing this with my teacher, but I think he finds it hard to teach because he learnt how to hear this stuff at a very young age, so he just has a fully baked in intuition. He'll say "Can you hear it resolve?" or "Focus on the journey, tension and cadences in the piece" or "Just listen carefully to what you are playing" and I'm often just sat there confused and frustrated.

I feel like this gap in my skills is probably holding me back from getting to a more advanced level and learning pieces more quickly.

Can anyone relate to this or been in a similar position? How did you get out of it?

TL;DR - I'm terrible at identifying the harmony in the pieces I'm learning, and need some help building that skill.

I know Piattino caster cups have been around for ages, and my understanding is that their primary purpose is to reduce vibrations from the piano touching the floor to stop the resonances reaching your neighbours, particularly those below you in an apartment setting.

I can find reviews, but does anyone have any experience of them working? As in, neighbours complained, bought the expensive caster cups, and now they're happy?

My neighbours are fine, but I also try to be a good neighbour. I'd happily buy them just as an extra buffer if anyone could say they made a difference in their situation.

So I have a former friend of mine that plays piano and guitar. He actually gets paid by the city that he lives in and adjacent City to play at farmers markets and stuff like that and I'm wondering what skill set you need to get gigs like that.

Ive been playing since i was young, classically trained. I can read a leadsheet but i often feel i dont do "enough" to be able to get gigs like that... I'm trying to figure out what skill set I should work on and what I would need to have in place in order to be able to get gigs on the side . Anyone has any suggestions?