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A New Octave Drill

I've been doing some of the octave drills from Hanon, but I've also come up with a new octave drill on my own. It involves jumping various intervals repeatedly. I keep my hands two octaves apart, which I think will address at least three challenges:

  • Getting a feel for the distances between intervals
  • Playing ragtime, which often has the oom-pah in the deep bass (at least the "oom" part) while the right hand dances in the higher octaves
  • Training my eyes to have a "center-of-the-piano" focus so that I can focus (peripherally, at least) on both the right hand and the left hand.

I've been doing this exercise every day for the past few days, and I can already tell that I'm playing the octaves faster and more accurately, even when I get to the big jumps. I also think my octaves in songs like Bare Necessities and Maple Leaf Rag are sounding a little more solid. (Here is a recent post on my sloppy octaves in Maple Leaf. This was part of my incentive to work out some new octave drills.)

I haven't tried this exercise with the metronome yet, but I'll likely add it before long. That will add a whole new challenge, particularly for accuracy. It's much harder to be accurate when under the "pressure" of the metronome.

This video, unfortunately, got cut off before I finished it, but I think it's enough to give you an idea of what I'm doing.

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