Preparing for Graduation

Today I graduate ... from Maple Leaf Rag and Chopin's F Minor Nocturne, that is!

Can I play them perfectly? No. Do I still have more to learn? Of course.

Truthfully, I could work on these for the next year and still probably feel like I don't quite have them. But I need to move on to more things for now. My goal was to graduate from these two pieces by the end of April, and it's the end of April.

Part of that goal is to post two final videos on YouTube. I worked on that this morning. Mainly, I was practicing to make the videos tonight, but I was open to the idea of maybe, just maybe, playing one of the two pieces through without a hitch and being able to publish that.

That didn't happen, but that's OK. I still have a few small glitches I'm trying to work out -- the trills in Chopin, as well as that exasperating Transcendence; the end of the C section of Scott Joplin; also, keeping a consistent tempo in the Joplin.

My goal in this video was to play Maple Leaf Rag at a consistent tempo throughout. I think I achieved that goal, though I do hear a bit of speeding up and slowing down at times, maybe. This version has a few mistakes that crept into the piece the two or three times I played it this morning, so I'll need to attend to those before making the final video.

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Picking Up the Pieces

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