Not-So-Scary Coda I: Mozart

I've reached a similar point in both of my main pieces (Bare Necessities and Rondo alla Turca): I'm ready to tackle the codas. The outros. The grand finales.

In the Mozart, I've learned everything up to the coda. In Bare Necessities, I've skipped ahead to the coda because it looks like it will be more challenging than the crossed-hands and kiddie sections.

In both cases, I was steeling myself for a challenge. I'd planned to wait until the weekend to work on these; I was even planning to write a blog post titled "Coda Weekend," where I wrote about how I was going to spend the whole weekend learning these grand finales.

I had some time this morning, so I decided to work on the Mozart coda a few days early, and ...

It's not bad. It's not hard. It's fun. I need to put some work into it, of course ... but it wasn't the big scary section that I imagined it would be.

I made this video of how it sounds now, starting with the broken-octaves section just before the coda.

Not bad, considering I'd just spent the past 20 minutes learning it, huh? This might still be classified as a "sight-read," and I know I still have a long way to go. But this section isn't going to be nearly as difficult as I'd imagined.

I'm so excited because I can now play this whole piece, all the way through, at a slow pace. I'm going to spend the next couple of days cementing it with slow practice, and I'll also begin to really think about the dynamics. I've been playing with some dynamics, but my main focus up to now has been getting the notes and having them feel natural and automatic.

I'm almost there, and ready to move to the next level with this piece.

Stay turned for Not-So-Scary Coda II: Bare Necessities.

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Picking Up the Pieces

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