Music

Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor. It not only has pages of very big chords but also pages of lots of fast notes. I picked it myself. You might have seen it on YouTube with a guy playing the extra big chords with bars.

Wow…don't hurt yourself :)

Do you know where to get sheet music for that piece?

I'm actually working on that same one! They say it's one of Rachmaninoff's easier pieces… :)

I love that Rachmanimoff piece!!! It is so cool. :) Right now I am learning to play Contrapunctus 1 by Bach. It has a very nice melody and is quite fun to play.

I'm working on Schumann's Aufschwung and Bach's Preludium and Fuga #5 in D Major

Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor? Bach's Contrapunctus 1? Schumann's Aufschwung? Bach's Preludium and Fuga #5 in D major? You guys are making my head hurt! :P

Probably Amazon has it.

Yes. He has some very difficult pieces. Have you ever heard Chopin's 16 Prelude? I played that last school year, and I'm finding the 2nd and 3rd page of the Rachmaninoff much easier having played that. You might enjoy listening to it if you haven't heard it before.

If it makes you feel any better I wrote a piece this summer (which was my teacher's idea), and I couldn't think of a name for it for the longest time. I had to call it "Song Without a Name" for the improv recital I played it at. Finally my older sister, Sarah, christened "White Keys". That's what we've called it ever since.
I think the composers only called their pieces those names because they couldn't think of anything better in the time they had to it crank out. They would call something "Sonata in B minor" because it was a Sonata and it was in B minor. After that recital, I can sympathize with them!

I found it online for free :)

EDIT: I meant a different piece, I got confused :P Thanks!

That's great. I have it in a book of a bunch of other Classical songs, so I wasn't sure where you could get a copy of just the Prelude by itself.

Oh. Well, whatever piece you found I'm glad you found it.

It was one you mentioned earlier :)

How many of you have started working on Christmas music?!

Mi! I am trying to learn Jingle Bells on piano, though I can barely play. Really fun song.

Does anyone know of some pretty sounding christian christmas sheet music that is available for free on the world wide web? I am looking for hymns that have a nice accompaniment with it much like a solo or duet arrangement. It doesn't have to be arranged so that it can be sung to, like solo or duet arrangements.

I have! My mom got me a really big book of Christmas songs that have piano, vocal, and guitar chord arrangements. We have a small church and my dad is the pastor and my brother leads worship on the guitar. I'll probably get to accompany him on the piano a little this Christmas!

Cool! We played Jingle Bells last year in our string group and it was really fun!!!

@so_sew, No, sadly. :(

@I'm4given, Oooh! That sounds really neat!!! I love playing with people, and it's even better when it's your family!!!

Me! :D one of my favorite times of year :D

Anyone have the trouble of starting to much music at the same time? :) On Monday, I'll be starting an arranged version of "Onward Christian Soldiers", "Stand up, Stand up for Jesus" and finish learning "Mozart's K545" and "For Ye Know the Grace". Besides that, I have about 25 other pieces that I have either started on…or am going to be in the near future. You should see my stack of piano books =)

@HIS SERVANT~ You asked me to let you know when I make some of my music available on the internet. I made an arrangement of the tune for "The Bible Stands"; it is not me playing, but a special soundtrack I made. I added to it because I added some more words, which you can find on the Poems and Acrostics forum. Here is the link: http://s1290.beta.photobucket.com/user/On-Christ-The-Solid-Rock-I-Stand/media/asf.mp4.html

In the future, I intend to post some of my piano/guitar music with the words as a slideshow.

Thanks for sharing OCTSRIS! I listened to the music, and really liked it! So…you're saying that you can play it on the piano, but you just aren't in the video? You should put up some more of your music soon! I like listening to it! :)

Well, this one kinda got lost and the "Musician" topics created by the Strangs are broken, so….!!! :)

Yeah, it's high time to start my topic back up again!! :P

Anyone having a recital lately? I've got one coming up next week. I will be playing two pieces for it - at the beginning, Scherzo from Sonata in B Flat Minor by Chopin (the same sonata with the Funeral march) and at the end, one of my own compositions for piano.

We have one coming up on June 7th! I'm playing 2 pieces, the first one is "Sonatina in C Major" by Friedrich Kuhlau, and next an arrangement for "Abide in Me".

we're having a recital today!

We have a recital coming up at the end of June. I'm playing three pieces, the first one is "Canon in D", the second one is "Butterfly Waltz" (from Bethany P. :), and the third we have not decided on yet……

Oooohhhh…I love those pieces! :)

I really like them too :D

Bethany sent me the Butterfly waltz too :)

Oh, fun!! :-) Do you play it a lot?
I am so excited for the recital because I will get to play one of my favorite songs (right now at least) on the piano, and one of my top favorite classical pieces! :D

I've been thinking about teaching myself the violin and doing a half-credit for my 10th grade year. Does anybody have any recommendations on what kind of violin I should buy/rent?

Hey, I'm (sort of) teaching myself violin too! :) Not sure on what to recommend to you though…

Try looking on e-bay or craigslsit. Amy got a VERY nice violin on there for $35.

I was going to suggest craigslist too

That's what we were planning on doing. I was looking more for advice on what specifically to look for in a violin. For example, any flaws that sellers might try to get away with for a cheap price. Courtney wanted to do violin several years ago, but she was discouraged and quit because the half-size violin that my mom got her was not very good quality - it was very finicky about getting exactly the right tune, and furthermore it wouldn't even hold its tune for five minutes.

Sorry, but I have no idea about that. I known next to nothing about violins. Though, I'd really like Amy to teach me sometime…

@Matthew - I play violin and you shouldn't order off Ebay. We haven't ordered off it but we asked our teacher about it and she said don't do it. We just bought one from her because she knows what would be good. Maybe going to your local music store and asking what they charge to rent. It'd probably be better to rent than buy since you are just starting - just in case you don't like it. Also, be sure to try out a couple of violins to see how you like the sound first. Hope this helps!

If you're not sure if you'd like to actually buy a violin, consider renting one!

Yeah, my first violin we rented. But it was mostly because we didn't want to buy a 3/4 violin and then have to buy a full sized one. Our music store had this thing where part of the rent money went into an account to eventually buy a violin. When we've bought violins, we've had our teacher come check it over to make sure it was a decent violin…

@Rachel & Emily - great advice!!! Totally agree. :)

Thanks for the advice everyone!
I've thought about renting, but I've prayed about it and I think I'm pretty set on buying one. I have a life goal of learning many different instruments - inspired by a man at our church who can play just about anything. Violin is definitely one of the ones I want to know, like it or not (though I'm sure I'll like it.) :)

So what pieces have everybody been learning lately? I'm working on Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique, Polonaise in C Major, & Moonlight Sonata; Melodie in E Major by Rachmaninoff; and Polonaise in C Sharp Minor, Minute Waltz, & Revolutionary Etude by Chopin. Next on the list is Chopin's Fantaisie (sp?) Impromptu, which I tried a long time ago but gave up after several months with no progress. I was about 12 at the time.

That's a great goal, Matthew! :)

Does anyone have a suggestion for a piece I can learn? :) I'm trying to find a new piece, but am not having much success!

I've been playing the violin since I was 3 …so like 13 years. piano since i was 4 harp since about 12 mandolin and banjo kinda picked up in the last year or two.
Matthew, about violins,the more money you spend on one , the easier it is to play it. I would definitely recommend renting one, as the "good ones" usually price around 2,500 dollars.
I compose some music. There is this really awesome FREE software called musescore, where you can type out music and print it. I am an Itzhak Perlman fan also.

Sweet I just got a musescore account the other day cause I was
Looking up some music. :)

Cool! I'm working on Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique too!! And a few other songs that aren't too interesting…I like having lots of songs to work on, but I don't at the moment…

Neat! How far are you? When you do sonatas, do you like to learn the movements in order or out of order? I've learned the first two movements. I kind of like to do them out of order for some reason. :) For this song, it was because I originally printed out the piece for the second movement. But then I started playing the first one and thought "Hey! I've heard this one too!"
Yeah, I do too. I've been really working on increasing my repertoire lately. I have the sheet music for 20-odd pieces in a very fat folder. I think I need to get a filing cabinet… :)

Umm, I can play all the way to the Adagio Cantabile part (it probably has a better name than that, but I'm not quite sure about the different movements yet…) But I still have a lot of trouble with those parts, after you do all the crossings and you do that back and forth thing farther and farther apart (if that made any sense). I don't know why that part is so hard for me:P I didn't really have any trouble with crossing.
I've never learned a whole sonata before, so….:) I've only learned parts out of sonatas, mostly because I didn't have the music to the whole thing.
lol, that's pretty cool! I like having lots of music…. I have a huge stack of books I always bring to lessons, it's actually kind of funny. Now my brother doesn't have room to put his books in the bag.:P I think we'll have to upgrade to the bigger book bag.