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.

Comments

Rethinking Bare Necessities

Today's breakthrough moment (there are actually two of them) focuses on "Bare Necessities." As you'll remember, I discovered Jonny May's arrangement back in early March and immediately decided to learn it. I printed out the music, started the course, and proceeded to learn the stride section, posting a few videos of my progress. Ha. I bet those videos make it look like I was making progress. I guess I was ... but not really. And I realized something this weekend that I hadn't before: Because I was thinking of "Bare Necessities" as a "fun" piece, I wasn't practicing it seriously or diligently. I wasn't treating it as something I wanted to master. This mindset might work with an easier piece, but this arrangement isn't easy. The result: despite a little progress at the outset, I wasn't moving forward. I was stalled. Breakthrough #1 The first breakthrough was realizing that if I truly want to learn this piece and play it well,

Maple Leaf Rag Breakthrough

Oh, Maple Leaf. Where to begin? At the Beginning I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I learned the A and B sections of Maple Leaf Rag back in the 1990s. I can’t tell you if it was early, mid- or late 90s, but it was during those 10 years after I’d graduated college, when I was playing a good bit of piano but not taking regular lessons from anyone. I don’t remember teaching it to myself at all. I just know that, at some point, the first half of Maple Leaf Rag was part of my two- or three-song repertoire of pieces I’d be able to play by memory over the next 25 years. It was always sloppy and I knew it, but people loved it, and so I played it if there was ever a piano around. Back in January, I decided to properly re-learn those two sections, and to finally learn the C and D sections of this wonderful piece. I worked on these over the next month or two, learning (and-relearning) the notes pretty quickly ... but it took time to memorize, and also to get everything to tempo surpassing a

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, it's not going to open the lock. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little ro

Picking Up the Pieces

Search This Blog