Are you still remembering to practise each hand separately?

This is what I would've done, if we'd found a piano somewhere :) I have one old old photo of my son's hands on his granddad's piano, I love it, precious memory. So will this be one day.

I'm sure we'll have precious memories once the emotional scars from forcing encouraging her to practice have healed!
 
I'm sure we'll have precious memories once the emotional scars from forcing encouraging her to practice have healed!
Thankfully we are through the other side of that phase - from about Grade 3 onwards, it actually became a pleasure to listen to my lad practice, and now he's working towards his Grade 8 I'm actually floored with how beautiful it sounds - brings a tear to my eye.

Don't forget to take video, as well as photos, there are so many happy memories created by music it'd be a shame to miss them.

 
Thankfully we are through the other side of that phase - from about Grade 3 onwards, it actually became a pleasure to listen to my lad practice, and now he's working towards his Grade 8 I'm actually floored with how beautiful it sounds - brings a tear to my eye.

Don't forget to take video, as well as photos, there are so many happy memories created by music it'd be a shame to miss them.



Hopefully we can stick at it long enough to get to that stage! It's crazy we spend 20 mins shouting at each other then the switch goes on and she'll learn it off by heart in about 10! How long's your son been learning he sounds really good. I actually need to get an electric paino now it looks like she's taken to learning it.
 
Hopefully we can stick at it long enough to get to that stage! It's crazy we spend 20 mins shouting at each other then the switch goes on and she'll learn it off by heart in about 10! How long's your son been learning he sounds really good. I actually need to get an electric paino now it looks like she's taken to learning it.

I'm sure she'll stick with it, once she clicks that the more she practices the better she gets - (a useful life lesson, that one)!

We found the electric piano (a Yamaha Clavinova) a real boon in the early stages (up to about Grade 4). I bought ours on eBay for a few hundred pounds, before Thomas had even started to play, and indeed, before we had moved house - so didn't really have much room for it - cue fairly one-sided discussions with my better half about the 'benefits', or not, of having bought such a thing.

The real beauty of the CVP range of Clavinova's (as opposed to the CLP range), is that they can recreate the sound of lots of different instruments (300+ I think), so as kids get bored, they can switch it over to playing harp, or guitar, trombone, or whatever. Not really useful technically, but it keeps them interested enough, instead of playing that 'boring piano' all the time. But then, as a technical aid, you can practice one hand at a time, and record it - and then play your other hand, to the recording, and so get to hear the full tune, while still just playing one hand at a time. Built-in metronome of course, and can even add auto-generated rhythm backing tracks - so just playing very simple tunes, can sound like a complete band is playing! All fun and games - but it just helps keep the interest, and even encourages 'messing around' - but it's all time on the keyboard (which is weighted to feel like a real piano) and so the kid progresses, without even realising they're practising!

And of course, this can all be done while wearing headphones - which may be handy!

Ours is an older CVP-207, but I'd recommend a 300 series and up now, as the 200 series suffered from a known fault with the keyboard (ours was replaced FOC despite being well out of warranty, but don't know if Yamaha would still do that today).

HTH

edit: I forgot to say that Thomas started playing when he was 10 years old - he's just turned 17 a couple of months ago.
 
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Nice pic, almost looks as though it was shot with a film camera :smashin:
 
I'm sure she'll stick with it, once she clicks that the more she practices the better she gets - (a useful life lesson, that one)!

We found the electric piano (a Yamaha Clavinova) a real boon in the early stages (up to about Grade 4). I bought ours on eBay for a few hundred pounds, before Thomas had even started to play, and indeed, before we had moved house - so didn't really have much room for it - cue fairly one-sided discussions with my better half about the 'benefits', or not, of having bought such a thing.

The real beauty of the CVP range of Clavinova's (as opposed to the CLP range), is that they can recreate the sound of lots of different instruments (300+ I think), so as kids get bored, they can switch it over to playing harp, or guitar, trombone, or whatever. Not really useful technically, but it keeps them interested enough, instead of playing that 'boring piano' all the time. But then, as a technical aid, you can practice one hand at a time, and record it - and then play your other hand, to the recording, and so get to hear the full tune, while still just playing one hand at a time. Built-in metronome of course, and can even add auto-generated rhythm backing tracks - so just playing very simple tunes, can sound like a complete band is playing! All fun and games - but it just helps keep the interest, and even encourages 'messing around' - but it's all time on the keyboard (which is weighted to feel like a real piano) and so the kid progresses, without even realising they're practising!

And of course, this can all be done while wearing headphones - which may be handy!

Ours is an older CVP-207, but I'd recommend a 300 series and up now, as the 200 series suffered from a known fault with the keyboard (ours was replaced FOC despite being well out of warranty, but don't know if Yamaha would still do that today).

HTH

edit: I forgot to say that Thomas started playing when he was 10 years old - he's just turned 17 a couple of months ago.

Interesting, thanks. Unfortunately we made the mistake of going into a music shop and she now wants a fancy white Roland one! But yeh I'm keeping tabs on eBay for something to come up locally. Some of the features these days, teaching apps, Bluetooth, split keyboard are really excellent these days.
 
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