Thoughts While Listening to a YAMS Dry Run

This morning, a few minutes before leaving for work, I sat down at the piano and played You Are My Sunshine start to finish without stopping (other than for a few minor flubs). It’s not perfect, but overall it sounds pretty solid. At this point the work is mostly polishing.

So now I’m going to listen back to the recording and jot down my observations as I prepare for recital week.

0:21 – Sounds pretty good so far. I should do more metronome work with the click on the off-beat. That will help tighten the rhythm.

0:34 – Those slides sound nice! I really love this section.

0:55 – Interlude 1 sounds good.

1:07 – The first ragtime section sounds muddy. I need to work on articulation and maybe ease up on the pedal.

1:30 – The stride section is sounding better but still needs work.

1:45 – The C9 in Interlude 2 sounds better than I expected. But I should vary the rhythm when switching back to the F6—right now it feels a bit repetitive.

2:00 – The first crossed-hands section feels ponderous. The left hand is too loud. It should feel light, bouncy, and playful, not heavy and plodding. It should contrast, not complete, with the deeper melody.

2:22 – I made it through the second crossed-hands section without mistakes! But each time I jump from bass to treble (or back again), I rush the last note before the jump. I know why I’m doing it—I’m buying myself time—but it makes this section sound hurried and unpolished.

2:34 – Stay with even time. Don’t rush.

2:46 – The transition into the solo section still needs work. The left hand is also much too heavy at the beginning of the solo, though it lightens up eventually.

3:11 – I need to work on the transition into the high ragtime section. I'm pausing before I start, and I don't think I realize I'm doing that.

3:24 – The right hand struggles to keep up when the octave walk-up comes in. That figure repeats several times, so it needs to sparkle and stay clean at tempo.

3:41 – The chromatic walk-ups could be more legato—almost slightly slurred, like a trombone slide.

Entire finale – It just sounds muddy to me. Maybe with so many notes (five-finger chords, octave walkups), I should lighten up more on the pedal?

So yes… still plenty of work to do.

I’ve also shared the video with the Piano With Rebecca B group, and I may share it with a few of the PWJ group musicians whose playing and opinions I respect. I hope people will offer some feedback on articulation, pedaling, and dynamics. More importantly, I’m hoping they’ll point out problems I’m not hearing myself. It’s surprisingly difficult to be objective when you’ve lived inside a piece for months.

Comments

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...

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...

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 ...

Picking Up the Pieces

Search This Blog