OTJ Day 5, Part 2: Scales and Arps and 13ths, Oh My!

This evening I reviewed the B section from this morning and considered changing it from yellow to red (after changing it from green to yellow this morning). I kept it yellow, but it has definitely given me more of a challenge than I expected.

Working on the Solo A Section

After that, I moved on to the solo A section. The two passages in this batch are four measures each, and the smaller sections definitely made my practice sessions more manageable. I spent 15 minutes on each passage, using the following techniques:

Practicing in tiny chunks/rhythms: Because this section has some scale and arpeggio work, it made sense to practice in small chunks, or rhythms as I call it. This is very similar to one of the techniques Rebecca recommends for speed. I'm not going for speed right now so much as muscle memory, and this technique is good for that.

Memory: Because we're looking at scales and arpeggios, this section has been easier to memorize. I can't say I can play the whole thing from memory, but I've memorized the scale and arpeggio sections.

Mental practice: There are three measures in a row where the left hand does not do the standard 1-to-5 motion (jumping up and down the keyboard) but instead stays more or less stationary while still playing the oom-pah rhythm. Because I'm so used to leaping back and forth, I had to deliberately not do that. It should be easier to play these measures, but I found it harder because I had to fight the tendency to leap back down into the bass. To address this, I pictured my left hand staying in the same place as I audiated the melody in my mind. This seemed to help.

Humming: There are a couple of rhythmic "hiccups" (16th notes) among what is mostly eighth notes, and I hummed the melody to myself a few times to prevent my tendency to play all hiccups (common in the previous sections) or none of them.

Theory: As always, it helped for me to understand the theory behind what I was playing. The left hand is not hard at all because the chords are the same as in the other A sections, though sometimes in different inversions. And I play a 13th chord and recognized it as a 13th chord! Yay!

Tomorrow will be more of the same, but tomorrow is also maintenance day. Normally I wouldn't work on my active projects at all, but I'll be working on this one for the challenge!

Meanwhile, here is my Part 2 video, starring Buddy the Cat.

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 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 ...

Ode to Joy Day 3: Patterns, Shapes, and Short Breaks

As I work through Rebecca Bogart's Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge , I'll be posting more extended updates here on my blog. Days 1–3 Day 1 was analysis, listening, and generally scoping out the territory of the music . The road trip to Florida last week turned out to be Day 1, even if I didn't label it that way at the time. Day 2 was fingering and the start of my first "batch": measures 0-7 (intro), 8-15 (Section A), and 16-23 (Section A'). Day 3 (today) was about recognizing patterns and continuing work on Batch 1. Batch 1: Intro, A, A' The intro isn't difficult, and it will likely be one of the two easiest sections in this piece. Still, the syncopation is a little tricky, so I took some extra time with it. I've already memorized it, as the chord progression is pretty straightforward and the melody is just a single line (no harmony notes). There is one big augmented chord at the end that required some focused work. Sections A and A' ar...

Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Search This Blog