Skip to main content

Ode to Joy, Days 24 and 25: Ode to Anger

I had a great practice on Batch 3 yesterday and a good one on Batch 1 today.

To remind you where I am: it’s now Day 25 of the 28-day Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge at Piano with Rebecca B, where I’m learning Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy.

The challenge schedule currently has me on my third day revisiting Batch 3 after a seven-day break. At the same time, I’ve started my Phase 2 schedule, which overlaps with the challenge schedule for a few days. That’s OK. For Phase 2, today was Day 1 of Batch 1, which includes the intro and A section.

Whew. That sounds more complicated than it really is. I’m just glad I have spreadsheets to keep me organized.

Day 24, Batch 3

Yesterday I focused on Batch 3. One of the day’s suggestions was to play the passages with emotion: anger, sadness, joy, whatever. So naturally I picked anger, which seemed like an appropriately strange fit for a piece called Ode to Joy.

What surprised me was that channeling anger made me forget the notes entirely. I got completely lost the first couple of times through.

It improved after a while, and eventually I had a reasonably convincing “Ode to Anger,” but the exercise really drove home how much emotion—such as, oh, I don't know, maybe nervousness and anxiety—can disrupt performance. It's as if emotion changes cognitive access to the piece. If part of my brain is busy processing emotion, less of it is available for remembering notes.

This feels like a big discovery, even though, as with many piano "discoveries" I make, I wonder why I never realized it before. Needless to say, I’m going to start working more emotion practice into my routine.

Day 25, Batch 1

This morning was Batch 1’s first day in Phase 2. This is the section where the syncopated melody can easily disappear into the texture, so I practiced playing the left hand with only the melody notes from the right hand, using my pinky for every melody note just as I would in the full arrangement.

That was harder than expected and took several tries. It’s a little smoother in this video:

I’m realizing that bringing out the melody is ultimately going to come down to groove: feeling the music and leaning slightly into the melody notes as I play. The value of today’s exercise was getting the melody and syncopation fully into my ears. It’s easy to hear in Jonny’s recording. Much less easy when I’m the one playing it.

After the targeted work, I spent some time with the metronome. The plan was interleaved clicking up, and it worked well with the intro (which I can play smoothly at 120 bpm), but less well with the A section. There are still a few small spots that aren’t fully comfortable even at slower tempos, so I had to stop and drill those before returning to the metronome work.

I didn’t have a lot of practice time this morning, so I didn’t get especially far, but I’m happy to say I can now play through all three passages at 80 bpm.

Where I Am Now

Tomorrow I’ll set Batch 3 aside for a few days and pick up Batch 4 (including the Very Red section) after its seven-day break. I’ll also continue Phase 2 work on Batch 1 and introduce Batch 2 into the Phase 2 rotation.

It’ll be a lot, but tomorrow’s Friday and I’ll have time!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more