Roll Call!

Introduce yourself to the Playground Community.
andrewwegierski
Posts: 783
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2018 4:37 pm

Re: Roll Call!

Post by andrewwegierski » Thu May 31, 2018 7:55 pm

Welcome, Paul! Awesome setup.
Andrew Wegierski

Customer Support Representative
Music Arranger

support@playgroundsessions.com

JVela951
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:41 am

Re: Roll Call!

Post by JVela951 » Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:54 am

Hi all, Jorge here,
Checking in from the Sunny Southern California. I've always had a love for music as far back as I can remember. I've always wanted to play the piano. I could never afford an instrument but my dad found an old toy keyboard at the local trash dump. For some reason it worked. I loved that thing until a few years later our 19 foot trailer where my mom, dad, and 2 younger siblings lived in, was broken into. Needles to say, the keyboard was taken. I was 8 at the time. Now 41, I've come a long way and, without tooting my own horn, am proudly saying that I have finally reached a point where it feels good to have gone out and bought myself a Williams Allegro 2. This is my 1st full size keyboard. I'm here living out a childhood dream of one day playing the piano for my family. I want to wish everyone the best of luck in their "playground session."

Paulopedia
Posts: 41
Joined: Wed May 30, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Roll Call!

Post by Paulopedia » Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:35 pm

Good to see you active on the forums, Jorge. Good luck to you as well... although I think in both of our cases, commitment to practice will be the utimate determinant.

andrewwegierski
Posts: 783
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2018 4:37 pm

Re: Roll Call!

Post by andrewwegierski » Mon Jun 04, 2018 1:36 pm

JVela951 wrote:
Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:54 am
Hi all, Jorge here,
Checking in from the Sunny Southern California. I've always had a love for music as far back as I can remember. I've always wanted to play the piano. I could never afford an instrument but my dad found an old toy keyboard at the local trash dump. For some reason it worked. I loved that thing until a few years later our 19 foot trailer where my mom, dad, and 2 younger siblings lived in, was broken into. Needles to say, the keyboard was taken. I was 8 at the time. Now 41, I've come a long way and, without tooting my own horn, am proudly saying that I have finally reached a point where it feels good to have gone out and bought myself a Williams Allegro 2. This is my 1st full size keyboard. I'm here living out a childhood dream of one day playing the piano for my family. I want to wish everyone the best of luck in their "playground session."
Welcome, Jorge. I used to have a Williams Allegro 2. Great keyboard for the price!
Andrew Wegierski

Customer Support Representative
Music Arranger

support@playgroundsessions.com

clif9710
Posts: 47
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2018 4:01 pm

Re: Roll Call!

Post by clif9710 » Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:20 pm

I'm Clif Brown in Chicagoland and I challenge anyone to surpass me in age: a piano learner at 67. I don't care what people say about needing to be 5 years old to learn to play, the challenge is always there and progress can be made at any age. I'm about halfway through the intermediate bootcamp and my enthusiasm hasn't flagged. Thank goodness I don't have arthritis!

If you can meet my age challenge, I have a harder one...is there anyone else here who knows Morse code?

That may seem a strange skill to bring to piano but after all, sending Morse requires using a key (though only one!) with a tempo and a touch that can be a challenge to master. Also, I suspect piano playing will turn out to be like sending code in that once you get to a certain point, you stop thinking about the specifics and go with the flow just because it sounds right. All the dots and dashes end up being a language that doesn't need translation - you just hear the words coming in without thinking about each letter; that DOT-DASH is the letter A, for example. You don't hear the code, you hear "A". I suspect it will be the same with chords on the piano.

As for my musical background, it was all choral through high school, though due to parental pressure in grade school I gave clarinet a try and suffered with it until I gladly gave it up. All the fussing with a wet reed and swabbing out saliva, fuggedaboudit! You have to be motivated, nobody can tell you to do it, no matter what the task. Now with the piano I am happy to be putting in at least an hour a day, easy with retirement and kids long grown up.

I use a Yamaha P80 purchased 18 years ago but not put to good use until I retired. A newly purchased laptop sitting on the keyboard makes using Playground Sessions a dream. I don't have to drive a human teacher crazy with impatience even if I repeat a passage 100 times.

StuLast
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2017 10:40 am

Re: Roll Call!

Post by StuLast » Mon Jun 11, 2018 7:37 am

Hey Forum Fans!

Stu Last here. I've gone with being very obvious about who I am in my Forum Handle. Those who've visited the Facebook community probably know something of me, although I can't decide if that's a good or bad thing (hopefully a bit of both).

I have played music for as far back as I can remember (the number 50 is perilously close - much more than I would like). In my time I have played the violin, bass guitar, keyboards, guitar and, most recently piano. I've also done my fair share of "singing". I use quotation marks here because singing in a rock band for a few years is not everyone's idea of enjoyable and dulcet tones.

Over time I have picked up snippets of music theory and kind of muddled them together, but it's taken Playground Sessions to actually make some sense of it all. I have learned more in the last 12 months with Playground Sessions than I ever did before.

In my one or two of my other 'work' lives I have also been a coach, and being able to get involved with a community of musicians, helping out where I can and getting to help people acquire new skills is such a buzz for me.

Without question, I have become an utter Playground Session Fanboy (and proud) and I can count many of the new musicians I've met as friends. Perhaps that's the greatest achievement of the Playground Sessions Community. There are no borders here :)
Stu Last
Aspiring Musician and Social Media Botherer

"Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong (or until you get more beta testing in your email)" :D

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