Sloppy Octaves in Maple Leaf Rag

Maple Leaf Rag has now been a maintenance piece for several months. I've played it in public a few times, and it's gone well. So why am I still struggling with it?

It's sloppy. Not enough to detract from its being a crowd-pleaser, but it's sloppy. Specifically, my octaves are sloppy. My hands are small, and it's not unusual for me to accidentally clip the edge of an inner note with the side of my thumb, particularly when I'm playing fast.

In this video, I exaggerate the problem. More realistically, my fingers tend to be a little farther away from the black keys, and the edge of my thumb grabs just the corner of the note to the right of the one I'm supposed to be playing.

I've worked to counteract this by moving my hands even farther from the black keys and letting them flatten a little, which allows for a greater stretch. This sometimes helps, but the downside is that I often either (a) still catch the neighboring note because of the flattened hand, or (b) miss the target note completely because I've moved too far to the edge of the keys.

I'm going to do some research on this problem. Most of the resources I'm finding relate to playing fast octaves without fatigue, but I'll see if I can find something on improving octave accuracy. If I do, I'll post something on it.

Until then, I'm practicing Maple Leaf in sections at the fastest tempo at which I can play each section perfectly, without any sloppy octaves. I can get through Sections A and D pretty easily at 90, but I have to move down to 70 for Sections B and C. I'm hoping that the slow practice (with many, many repetitions) will help to train my hands to strike the keys at just the right angle, and in just the right spot, that I can play the octaves faster, without grabbing any extra keys.

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