Your One Chance - Post Your First-Shot Recording

BartK · 2026-04-10T15:52:29+00:00

This idea comes from @ShiroKuro in this thread. I hope you're not mad at me for jumping so quickly on your idea but I really love it. 🙂 The idea is to do share your first take of the day of any piece you are working on to create pressure just like at a real live performance or audition. The Rules: You have ONE shot. You turn on the recording and start playing. Then you're done. No restarts. No second chances. It has to be the first attempt at playing the piece that day. No practicing it beforehand. You share your recording here in all its ugly glory so that we can all laugh at (just kidding 😉) encourage you. You can trim the ends of the recording so that we don't have to listen to you flipping pages, adjusting your seat, etc. But no sneaky twiddling before you start! So, who's game! Post your raw recordings and see if you can really play as well as you think!

Nightowl

BartK That was lovely! I kept thinking of the old phrase "tinkling the ivories" as I listened to some of those lovely delicate arpeggios. If that's how you play without warming up first, that's impressive.

For me there's nothing better than Chopin's music for the piano. I understand that he barely wrote anything for other instruments, he was the master of piano so didn't waste his time on lesser pursuits.

Sophia

BartK You should play it as cold as possible.

Ah now I see, you’re just a cool guy 😆 Ok I’ll abide by the rules, but it’s probably not going to be today just yet then 👍😊

Sophia

What the heck. I did it anyway. It's so bad that even Simba left in disgust. But... I didn't cheat. That was my first moment at the piano this morning. Obviously I need to practice that piece quite a bit more. And I never did a glissando before - still trying to figure out the best way to do it without leaving a trail of blood on the keys 😃 The sound is rough, because I didn't even record it to piano and mix the sound in later. It's as cold as it gets (but not in the "cool as Bart" sense) 🤣

pianoloverus

Sophia And I never did a glissando before - still trying to figure out the best way to do it without leaving a trail of blood on the keys

I think there are probably a lot of Youtube videos that would explain glissando technique better than I can, but basically I think you should use the side of your thumb near the fingernail more. Another way of saying that might be try to rotate your hand counterclockwise more than you are presently doing.

Nightowl

Sophia What the heck. I did it anyway. It's so bad that even Simba left in disgust... And I never did a glissando before - still trying to figure out the best way to do it without leaving a trail of blood on the keys 😃

You can't blame him - he's a cat with a very discerning taste. 🙃 It's a fun piece and I love the way you're happy to share your learning curve with us... even risking blood soaked keys! 😂 As always, you're going to nail this piece quite soon, but this early progress vid made me smile very much - thanks for posting!

Sophia

Haha yes it was quite the challenge to sit at the piano and start the piece cold turkey. It was sooo tempting to try again, but then would I be kidding, right? At least it was a good way to provide a healthy balance to all the smooth and polished recordings before me 😃 (don't think I'm not green with envy!)

pianoloverus Another way of saying that might be try to rotate your hand counterclockwise more than you are presently doing.

Thank you! I did watch a few videos and there are many opinions for sure. Many seem to recommend using the middle finger and I tried that too, but I guess you could see I immediately gave up on that after the first rooootsch - at least I managed not to yelp 😃 So from then on I used the thumb. If that is an acceptable way of doing a glissando I might stick to that, and try it the way you described.

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