Learning Solace, Section A

I started working on Section A of "Solace" last night, and I worked on it a little more this morning. It's not fully memorized yet (as you can tell from the video), but I'm close. Last night I learned the first page and the first few bars of the second (which is just repetition from the first), and this morning I worked on the ending/cadence part.

This has long been one of my favorite Scott Joplin pieces. It's so different from most of his other ragtime music: slow, melancholy, thoughtful. And it gives me the weirdest sense of nostalgia--not for the early 1900s, but for ... I can't even explain it. It just fills me with longing for something I can't name.

Challenges

This isn't a difficult piece to play. Harmonically, it's pretty simple--triads, dominant sevenths, a minor seventh, and a few diminished sevenths. The cadences are pretty basic. All of that makes it easier to memorize.

There are a couple of challenges, though. The fingering, for one, is a little tricky; a good part of my practice session last night was spent figuring that out. My biggest challenges (I think) will be with the phrasing; some of these lilting phrases include jumps in the left hand that could cause a break in the sound. The pedal helps here.

The rhythms are another challenge, but I'm finding that if I just write the rhythms in (1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a), they're not hard at all.

And Now, Without Further Ado ...

Here is my first real attempt at playing through the A section, roughly 30 minutes into learning it. It's not perfect, but I do improve the second time around!

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