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.

Comments

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...

The Tyranny of the Dots

In the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes , Billy talks about "reading the dots." He didn't want—or need—to "read the dots," meaning the music notes on the page. He had developed his own rock 'n' roll piano style and, after a few years of classical training, he left the dots behind. I didn't want to read the dots, either, once upon a time. As a little kid, I had a good ear and could quickly figure out just about any tune on the piano. But in first grade, I finally started piano lessons, thus beginning my life with the dots. The Wall of Dots Between Me and Music I hated the dots! I wanted to learn them, sure, but it was so hard. If my teacher played what was written, I could play it right back for him. But if he asked me to play it from the dots, I felt like I would pop a blood vessel in my brain. It was so frustrating for my six-year-old self to have the code to a simple tune sitting silently before my eyes and not be able to crack it and bring th...

Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Search This Blog