Practicing Chopin Like It's Stride Piano

In my quest to build muscle memory as well as ear/mind memory in the Transcendence, I'm engaging in fast-practice techniques. Friday morning I worked with the metronome and found myself focusing so hard on the notes that I forgot the pedal ... and realized I was playing Chopin like it was stride piano.

Readers, it was fun.

As I increase the tempo on the metronome, I continued to play stride-style. There is a time and a place, certainly, for working on dynamics, rubato, pedaling, and such ... but there's also a time and place to simply get the hands used to playing the right notes, regardless of all those other things.

And it was fun. Here's the video, in case you ever wondered what Chopin sounds like as a stride piano piece!

(If Chopin in stride style makes you cringe, be comforted in the fact that I play it properly at the end of the video!)

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Picking Up the Pieces

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