Crossword Help Forum
Forum Rules

Hi Elle
Accident on the A214

Hello, Cloverjo.
I agree with your sentiments.
I like both forums and there are many who visit both.
I think that's the way it should be!

I never passed any kind of music exam in my life JG. But I do sympathise with having to collect a certificate with much younger children on the same grade. Are you pleased you once learned to play the piano?

Not only tone deaf,elle, but completely untaught. I have no idea why Miss T would expect us to know what a key was, or a chord, or the names of the notes or anything else. She hadn't taught us and most had never had music lessons (and didn't want them as a result of her ministrations, either). If she was trying to find out which of us knew anything, she chose a rather cruel way of doing it!

Fast forward decades and younger son is doing Grade 8. His father is sitting at the Hammond making what sound to me like random noises. After each pair, the son says "a fifth", "a third" etc. However long I listen, I know I will never be able to say what the intervals are. Ah well, no knowledge is wasted they say.

hi Ros
Yes, am very pleased I learnt to play. When I was 6 I used to try and play tunes on Grandpa's upright and couldn't wait to get my own piano.
Pa couldn't afford one, but managed to get a honky tonk at an auction.
Afte a few lessons, my tutor said I deserved better, so a lot of saving to get a re-conditioned one. I was not allowed near the keyboard until all theory was tested by exam, writing on staves etc. But behind the tutor's back, I was playing Winnie Attwell tunes ! Naughty !
(My cousin was her drummer )

Anybody willing to reveal their AB usernames?

Geevo, you cheeky pussy cat !

I had piano lessons from the age of 7 till I was 12 - I loved playing,
but hated 'music theory'! I can still read notes, but am not very
quick at it anymore. One day, the teacher told my mother that
I had an extremely good ear, and subsequently played lovely
tunes, albeit they were not quite what in keeping with the what
Debussy, chopin or schumann etc had written!
I did practice every day, but played what I thought sounded nice
as opposed to take the trouble to decypher the music sheet:
My poor mother never knew about it because it all sounded good!

I did play (aged 10) in front of an 'audience', but this was just my
teacher's and her mother's other students, and all the parents -
Still, it did not bother me one bit, and I refused to have the partition
in front of me, but just played by memory.
Stopped lessons after 12 because workload at college was taking
too much of my time and I had no time to really practice the piano
anymore. (We did have a lot of homework in those days)

I have a electric 5 octaves keyboard (portable piano) and I still
thoroughly enjoy playing whatever passes through my head, but
more often than not, I only use the right hand, or just guess at
a few accords from the left! My ear is still as faithful as ever, and
I reckon this is what has helped me so much in acquiring a good
English accent.

Hi Pigale
Your portable keyboard sounds like one I had Mine was Yahama PSR-37( 5 octaves.)

Mine is a Schubert whatever the reference, but it also includes
a synthetiser part, which I never use!
I am happy experiencing with the different instruments sounds
though, ie accordéon for French songs, etc...

Don't you have a piano anymore?

Hello, Elle,
We had a fine time, thank you!
More likely to be a traffic accident than a robbery, I would think?
No athletics for me today.
Watched a bit of the cycling and the horse racing from Ireland.
No snow yet, but they say it is on the way in the next day or two!