If you've been following my Bare Necessities posts, you'll know that I spent the first two months of this piece dilly-dallying. I'd put in a good practice, and then I'd take a few days or even a week or two off, and then I'd return to it for another practice, and then I'd take a few more days off.
In short, I wasn't taking it seriously. I was viewing it as "fun side project" while focusing primarily on Maple Leaf Rag and the nocturne). Not surprisingly, I was stalled for most of March and April.
Putting In the Work
As May approached, along with my graduation from Joplin and Chopin, I was determined to give Bare Necessities the time and effort it needed.
And I've done it. I've been ... well, "obsessive" may be too strong of a word. But I was focused. Very focused. Other than when I was in piano-less in North Carolina, I worked on it every day. And for the past week or so, I've worked on it twice a day: the outro in the morning, and the crossed-hands section, plus a general review of the other sections, in the evening.
The work is paying off. Today, for the first time, I played through the entire piece. I'm still in the sight-reading phase of the kiddie section, but I played through the whole piece, from start to finish!
Sadly, I don't have video. Now that school is out, I'm having to use the headphones for my morning practices, and mornings are when I generally do my videos. But take my word for it: I can play Bare Necessities!
And now the real work begins. I'm going to make a list here of the various items I need to work on. It will be a lot of work, and I'll need to continue to be borderline-obsessive with it if I'd like to graduate from it by the end of June. But I think I can do it.
What Work Remains
Stride Section
Dynamics, articulation, and phrasing. I'm playing all the notes, and I'm able to play through (most of the time) without having to pause ... but I really haven't been thinking about dynamics, articulation, and phrasing. It's just all loud. So this is an area where I want to spend some time and thought over the next few weeks.
Ragtime Section
Parts of this are still a little sloppy, and there are still parts where I have to pause because I can't remember what's next. (Translation: The ragtime section is neither clean nor smooth at this point.) I am also struggling with the octaves. Specifically, I'm not playing them cleanly, and I'm letting my hands get too tense (which also causes messy octaves). I feel like I need to have one long, intense practice session where I really work on the octaves in the right hand, similar to what I did with the LH octaves in Maple Leaf Rag. I'm also going to start doing the Hanon floppy-hands exercises again.
Crossed-hands Section
This is the one section of the piece (so far) that is as fun to play as it is to listen to. I've memorized it (I think), but I still need to work on smoothness and keeping the chords light and nimble while the bass booms out the melody. Most of the remaining work on this section will be fun work involving playing and re-playing, listening to the sound, and getting the notes and fingering cemented into my muscle memory.
Kiddie Section
I hate the kiddie section.
OK, "hate" is a strong word. I don't really hate it. But I can't hear it! I'm deaf to the top couple of octaves of the piano, and most of this section is in those two octaves. As I sight-read it this morning, I would look down to see that my fingers were, yet again, on the wrong keys, and I didn't know it because all I hear when I play them is the dull, barely audible "tap, tap, taptaptap" of my fingers striking the keys. The one comfort is knowing that my beloved Beethoven dealt with the same thing.
Anyway, I've decided to learn it a couple of octaves down first. Thankfully, it's not hard to play (it's about the same level as the crossed-hands section), and it's not very long. I expect to have this memorized and sounding good (provided I'm hitting the right notes!) with just a couple of focused practice sessions.
Outro
Oh, this outro! I return to it every morning, and it's just as hairy as it was the first day I learned it! Not really ... but it is a challenge. No, I'm not even going to use that tired old "challenge" euphemism. This section is downright hard! It may be one of the most difficult passages of anything that I've ever learned.
The outro isn't fugue-like, but I feel like I'm having to use my fugue brain because the left hand and the right hand seem to be on two different tracks. Left hand is doing simple, basic stride chords while the right hand is doing this crazy chromatic climb in octaves, with inner notes that don't always match the chords (or the octaves). At one point I'm playing a kind of B diminished (B natural with F natural) in the right hand while accompanying it with a D major 7th in the left hand. It's just weird and my brain is really struggling to make sense of it. So I still have mental, as well as physical, work to do here.
And then there's the tempo ...
Did I happen to mention that this whole is supposed to be played at a blistering pace? No? Yes? I can't remember. But the beginning stride section is supposed to be fast and bouncy, and then the rest of the piece it supposed be played at warp speed. I'm playing most of the piece at a plod, more or less--about the same tempo I have the stride section and crossed-hands sections to a little faster than what's in this video. The ragtime section is currently a little slower, and the outro is a lot slower. So, in addition to everything listed above, I'll eventually need to bring it all up to speed. This will mean grouping/fast-twitch exercises (never an easy thing to do with ragtime), as well as simply playing it through at increasing tempi (which, I'll admit, I'm looking forward to doing).
As with the stride section, I also need to think about what I'll do with the dynamics, articulation, and phrasing. Much of it is just loud and fun, and there are some dynamics choices that are obvious (e.g., the soft chords in the crossed-hands, or playing the kiddie section more quietly), but I also want to really think through how I want to play each section with respect to the various choices I can make.
So, there is still a lot of work to be done. A month may not be enough ... but June is looking to be wide-open for long practice sessions, so I just might get there.
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