Ode to Joy, Day 7: Deliberate Listening, Deliberate Practice

It's Day 7 of the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge in the Piano with Rebecca B community! I'm working on Jonny May's stride arrangement of Ode to Joy.

Day 7 Assignments

Our assignments for today included:

Revisit Batch 1 to see how it's doing
Listen to other recordings and note what works (and what doesn't) for me
Review deliberate practice concepts and apply them to Batch 2

Revisiting Batch 1

Batch 1 is holding up! I played through it a couple of times with no real issues. Some measures are more solid than others, and I can feel the urge to speed up creeping in. Tomorrow I'll return to it (along with starting Batch 3) and will start using the metronome to avoid the speed-up-where-it's-easy, slow-down-where-it's-hard pattern.

Listening to Other Recordings

I found three YouTube performances (besides Jonny's). More detailed thoughts are in the video, but here are my key takeaways:

If I don't deliberately bring out the melody in the A section, it will just sound like a bunch of notes.
If melody is king, tempo is queen. There is no real room for rubato in this piece. I need to work from the start at keeping a solid, steady tempo.
I don't need to match Jonny's tempo. If it's a little slower, that won't be a bad thing; in fact, it might even be a good thing.

Practicing Deliberately

The "red" section A solo has turned out to be less challenging than the "yellow" B section. I spent 15 minutes on A and 30 on B this morning.

I started by playing each section, noting where things slowed down or where my mind went blank. Then I worked on small chunks—two to four eighth notes at a time—using a technique I call "fanning."

I learned this years ago from an oboist I connected with through blogging. You start in the middle of the problem spot, repeat just those few notes until they feel secure, then gradually add one note before and one after. You expand outward until the entire passage connects smoothly.

By the end, the once-problematic spot is often the most reliable part of the phrase.

I did this with several sections of both A and B today. There were lots of "sounds-okay-but-not-truly-solid" half-measures, so I laser-focused on each of those.

This video shows the process:

Where I Am Now

Batch 2 is noticeably stronger than it was a few days ago, and I'm happy with my slow, focused work on them today. I may try to play through them at $100 tempo a little later today, as tomorrow I both return to Batch 1 and start Batch 3, giving Batch 2 a two-day break. I feel the need to cement things in Batch 2 just a little more before I take the time off.

I also nearly have both sections from memory. We'll see what sticks after the break, but I won't be surprised if I retain a lot of it.

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