DVD "too Sophisticated" - New Piano Book Will Addr

We just received this in the mail: My craft of piano has finally arrived. I count it a priviledge to view the new insights that come from Alan frasier' teachings. We never stop learning. I will only suggest that Alan will try to give consideration to the fact that we live in a world full of barriers and one great that hinders such a sincere teaching is that of language and communication. Communication in itself may be deficient or too sophisiticated and I will classify Alan with the latter. To be honest, I am still struggling for clrification of certain things he was helping to solve in that video. Not all of us are professors, many of us are of very low pedigree and our hope of rising is through our talent. And because of our background, we started playing piano with little or no information. Now having grown we are guilty of many bad piano habits which this video serves right to correct but Alan with due respect need to break down his facts in simple terms and language so that even someone academically deficient can understand and put the tricks into practise. That way we dont need to waste money seeking for someone else who has the same thing to offer but in a simple language rendition. This is my sincere contribution. As you can see, I am not asking for a return or refund because maybe with continuous study of the video I might begin to understand but as of now I am in a dilemma of having got a good video but I am always tensed when i have to listen to it because his picture of audience does not cut across enough but to the elites. If you have any help for my condition, I will be happy to embrace it. Thanks! I was touched by Obinna's obviously really sincere dedication and so we came up with this answer for him: Dear Obinna, Thank you so much for your sincere comments. We care very much about customer satisfaction and are actually at present working on exactly the project you mention. It is a new book whose working title is "Kiddie Craft," aimed at breaking Alan Fraser's ideas down into simple language even a beginner can understand. We understand your problem and are working hard to address it. As a Craft of Piano customer you are in our email database and will be notified when this new book appears. In the meatime I suggest visiting our forum () where many people write in questions about aspects of the DVD that they don't entirely understand, and Alan Fraser takes the time to answer and clarify. Also, try to do the exercises even if you don't understand entirely. Just look at the screen and try to imitate what you see there. Let Alan's voice seep into your subconscious as you do the movements. You may find that on some level you possess more understanding than you thought. I suggest this because your sincere dedication indicates that this may well be true. Thanks once again! Milosh Yankovitch

Hi I understand Obinna's point and I beleive it's more a general pedagogical issue than an issue of Alan's dvd beeing to "sophisticated". Piano technique is a subject worthy of nuclear physics in complexity and of all the methods on dvd I watched I think Alan's is the most clear and "customer-friendly". And it covers pretty much everything.Together with the books and the masterclasses on youtube anybody regardless of level should get a very good introduction in playing the piano.In the end every student has to find out what works for him/her and this dvd is a great help in that quest. Generally speaking there is a misconception that learning is like ordering a meal in a restaurant the only effort beeing handling over a creditcard.It's not. The effort is entirely on the student in a learning process there is no learning without a considerable effort. The french freudian Jacques Lacan excelled in making this process particulary difficult he tried to construct his sentences in a way that anybody reading his texts had to spend considerable time to decipher every single sentence. Alan's dvd is far from that! This dvd and the books contributed to a giant step in my own pianoplaying I owe a lot to Alan and his effort to explain a subject that is still tabu in many fancy masterclasses.

Thank you Eric for your kind words. I was thinking more about it and came up with the following extra bit of advice for Obinna: When you feel the tension as you try to grapple with the ideas, this is an important moment. Perhaps only after many repetitions will things start to come into focus. Be easy on yourself, don't expect yourself to "get it all" on the first time. If you make even a little bit of progress, notice some small change, this is already very good. Learning sometimes happens "all at once," but more often it happens in little chunks, small bits of progress that take time to integrate... Good luck to you! AFF