It feels much longer than two weeks. I wonder what that suggests? 🙂
I’ve been practising for about an hour each evening (I skipped one when I had to do a 550-mile round-trip to pick up my son from university). Generally I’m quite pleased with how I’ve progressed. I’m finding that I can now play the early pieces in both the Faber Adult Piano Adventures and Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course books fairly easily now. Yesterday however I did have terrible trouble with “Ode to Joy” from Faber pp.24-25 where I just couldn’t get my right hand to play the correct notes in the third section for some reason. The rest I could do fine. By comparison I was particularly amazed that the fourth section where both hands are playing the same notes an octave apart (and therefore fingers are working in opposite orders) came very easily.
I have to admit that I’ve been a bit lazy about working through the theory sections of either book. I remember a certain amount of music theory from dabbling with instruments in my childhood (though that was a few years ago now), but I really should go back and check I’ve not missed anything as I’ve noticed an odd notation such as “1 on _?” appearing in the Faber book.
As time has gone on I’m finding I prefer working with the books than YouTube, though there are occasionally helpful videos there. I’ve mostly abandoned Andrew Furmanczyk, but I may stick with Bill Hilton for a while yet. My preference just be a reflection of the fact that I’m used to learning from books, I guess.
Of the two books I’m perhaps starting to prefer Faber, though I think perhaps doing the exercises in Alfred might help focus me on the theory a bit better. Another reason I’ve passed over those is possibly that I just wouldn’t write in a book. What I might do is photocopy the pages of exercises and do them on the copies.
One thing I’ve started doing this week is turning on the metronome feature of my keyboard. I’m finding it quite useful in terms of keeping to the correct rhythm, though I found it very hard to get used to at first and I swear it speeds up when I set it to 3/4 time rather than 4/4 😀
Watching a few videos of progress at one month from YouTube it’s hard to believe I’ll be anywhere close to most of them in another two weeks. It’ll be interesting to find out 🙂