In a Rondo Rut?

Last week, I wrote about how I feel stuck with Rondo alla Turca. I learned it easily; after just two or three weeks of moderate attention, I knew all the notes and could play the whole thing by memory. But Mozart being Mozart, it's not enough just to know the notes. It's not enough to be able to play them. Everything needs to be even. Everything needs to be elegant and smooth. Articulation is king. It needs to be ... something other than what I'm doing.

Progress Video #1

I hesitated to share this video because it's so bad. The left hand sounds too loud, but that may be due to the placement of my phone. Still, the repeated notes in the big octave sections sound thudding rather than brisk. And in the scale passages, I keep hearing moments where I hold one note a little too long and the next one a little too short, or vice versa. In other words, the runs lack evenness. And I don't even want to talk about the dynamics, which are virtually absent.

Now that I can play the darn piece, I need to focus on really playing it.

Therein lies the problem. Here is where I need a teacher. Because I don't know what to do beyond (1) continue with slow practice, inching the metronome up when I feel absolutely ready, and (2) listen to favorite recordings for dynamics, phrasing, and articulation, and copy what I like.

Oh, and (3) - do separate drills on scales and octaves--which I have been doing. The octave drills, in particular, have helped. It may be hard to believe, the but broken-octave section before the coda sounds eons better than it did a couple of weeks ago.

The coda, too, sounds a lot better. It's still a mess, but it's less of a mess than it was before. So many this is just a matter of needing more time, more slow practice, and more repetition.

I have a piano lesson tomorrow, and I'm really hoping Eric can suggest some drills that maybe I haven't thought of, because I do feel rather stuck.

Progress Video #2

Here is Progress Video #2 (recorded just a few minutes after Progress Video #1), where I decided to play it fast, just for fun. It felt good after weeks of slow practice, but I still slip up here and there. And, for some reason not known to me, I stopped in the middle of the second scale section. Sorry.

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,

March Goals Recap/Looking Ahead to April

It's April 1, and time to revisit the goals I set for last month. I practiced a total of 50.45 hours in March, averaging 1.62 hours (or just over an hour and a half) per day. Realistically, I practice about 45 minutes to an hour a day on weekdays, and I usually get at least one longer practice (or multiple shorter practices) in on one or both days of the weekend to bring the average up. CLASSICAL GOALS Chopin, F Minor Nocturne March Goal: Have entire piece by memory and performance-ready. I have about 90% of the piece by memory, but I still have some work to do before it's performance-ready. The only two sections that I don't quite have are "The Agitation" and the "stretto" section with the seventh chords. I'll work on both this week and will have them both memorized before the weekend. April Goal: Finish memorizing, and polish, polish, polish! My focus now is really on phrasing and dynamics. I have the notes down, even in the difficult passages. Fro

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

Picking Up the Pieces

Search This Blog