Maple Leaf Rag Update

Maple Leaf Rag Update - 3/6/24

Maple Leaf Rag is coming together for me. It's been coming together for a while. I'm ready to graduate from "it's coming together" to "it's performance-ready." But I'm not there yet. I still have a few areas to attend to:

The D section (I have this section down pretty well, but I'm still stumbling a little at the very end.)
Sloppy left hand, particularly in the B and C sections.
Weakness in the 4th and 5th fingers in my right hand in one small part of Section A.
Transitions (I'm really close with these, but I'm not quite there yet.)
Consistent speed. (The C and D sections are new to me, so I tend to slow down when I get to them. I've also noticed that I'm speeding up in the B section without meaning to.)
Consistent tone. (Listening to this recording, I can hear that I don't press some of the keys down far enough, which results in a kind of spottiness of tone.)

For my most recent practice session (shown in the video below), I focused on the LH, working to get it cleaner and more even. I ended up playing through the whole piece at a slow pace, barely touching the notes in the RH and bringing out the LH. I think I get so focused on the RH that I kind of forget about the LH (which causes me to ignore it when bits of sloppiness creep in), and this exercise was a step toward remedying that.

If you listen, you will hear that stumble at the end of the D section, and you will probably hear my 4th and 5th fingers miss in the A section. And, while I'm doing better with the transitions between sections, you'll hear that they still need some work.

So, I'm getting there, but there is still work to do.

Comments

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...

The Tyranny of the Dots

In the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes , Billy talks about "reading the dots." He didn't want—or need—to "read the dots," meaning the music notes on the page. He had developed his own rock 'n' roll piano style and, after a few years of classical training, he left the dots behind. I didn't want to read the dots, either, once upon a time. As a little kid, I had a good ear and could quickly figure out just about any tune on the piano. But in first grade, I finally started piano lessons, thus beginning my life with the dots. The Wall of Dots Between Me and Music I hated the dots! I wanted to learn them, sure, but it was so hard. If my teacher played what was written, I could play it right back for him. But if he asked me to play it from the dots, I felt like I would pop a blood vessel in my brain. It was so frustrating for my six-year-old self to have the code to a simple tune sitting silently before my eyes and not be able to crack it and bring th...

Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Search This Blog