Category: ABRSM

20240204 Practice Diaries

It appears I missed last week. I don’t think last week was a good week anyway. I missed a few days but I still got myself into the silver league on Tonic.

This week hasn’t been the worst. I missed two days – the first two days of a new job. There was measurable progress. I’m working four pieces this week, with some snipping time on one other piece. There was nothing from the 40 pieces challenge.

So: Bach, my nemesis 2 part invention in E major. Light of my life, dark of my soul. This week, bar 7 is severely weakened and I am very slowly gaining ascendency. It’s far from perfect but in slow practice it is rarely wrong. At speed, it is always wrong. But that’s okay. I’ve started working on the second part and while the same rhythm pattern is to be found, it is not causing the same trouble so far. I have a way to go. What is likely to be more of an issue is the fingering on black keys. I have a lot of work to do there. I estimate it will take about a month at the current practice rate.

The Mendelssohn is more or less under control and in that zone where it’s being practice not to make mistakes in it. This will also reduce the amount of time going to it so next week I will start back at Elissa Milne’s piece.

Rebikov is heading the same way. There are occasional memory and fingering hick ups and I honestly hope my neighbours like it because they heard it a lot yesterday. I must say I like the piece a lot more than I expected when I started learning it first – it has some unusual fingering shapes but I know it has freed up the lack of flexibility in my fingers a lot. I expected that more from the Bach but it isn’t really happening. Anyway, over the next week or so, I expect the practice focus to move from getting it right to not getting it wrong. I will keep this and the Mendelssohn in regular repertoire afterwards.

For non-exam pieces, the main work is on one of Bach’s preludes – the famous one, basically. I like the way it sounds and it forces me to address how I practice – I practice to memorise, this is clear. Anyway, I’d like to finish that and add it to repertoire as well.

The open question, of course, is what I move to as the time taken by these pieces reduces and I work towards the exam rather than the learning. An obvious answer is to start looking at the exam pieces for Grade 8 which I’ve targeted before end of 2025. The one I would like to start most is Rameau’s Cyclops but I also have a map in my mind about what needs to be finished to feed into the next grade and for the Rameau I would like to be on top of the Bach. I am not on top of the Bach. For the Rebikov, the choice is either the Rachmaninoff or Debussy. The fixed pieces are:

  • Rameau – Les Cyclopes
  • Tchaikovsky June from the Seasons
  • Debussy Reverie
  • Rachmaninov, Moment Musical Opus 16/5

The obvious ones to start with are the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. I will map the Debussy to Milne and the Rachmaninov to Rebikov. Tchaik builds on Mendelssohn.

I don’t want to constantly say we’ll see and depending on where they go, I might revise my planning. Grade 6 is currently pencilled in for April which, Bach pending is now realistic provided the practice schedule does not fall apart.

For January, it feel apart on the days I was travelling. I find that okay.

20240127 Practice Diary

This week was not the most productive on the question of practice. According to my practice tracker, I did three days this week and that includes this morning’s one hour session. I was travelling this week and I did have a few out of the ordinary commitments.

On the plus side I will league up on Tonic more than likely later tonight, so there is that, I suppose. Last week I didn’t come close but then there were some seriously dedicated people practising last week.

So, this week, the focus is on two- three main things. Currently I am working on fault free run throughs of the Mendelssohn – it is Tantalisingly close. Some of the trips are much more secure now but the piece as it whole doesn’t run cleanly. I’m also polishing up some of the musicality. I like the way it sounds.

The other main target is this Rebikov piece that I landed on for the self selection. I’m starting to really like it and also it is almost close to Ready For Polishing.

But it’s an odd one. Some days, the first half of it is so solid you could build a forty storey apartment block on top of it. This morning, you’d hesitate to place a feather on it. I love elements of the melody patterns in it, and the flow of the voices. I spent some of this morning’s practice on the last 12 bars. These are not secure yet but as I will do a second practice after lunch, I have strong hopes for it to be ready to polish. If I can successfully film some of it later, I might do an entry on it. We’ll see.

I also did some work on the Bach. It is breaking my heart. I didn’t find a tutorial for it on either Josh Wright or Tonebase for that specific Invention yet. Although I see tutorials for other inventions and am wondering about listening into them.

For the fourth piece, the Milne, I didn’t touch it this week.

The sight reading piece was an E Flat Ecossaise by Beethoven. It really did not fit my fingers at all – very much the feeling it works for a child. I resented working on it. I will do some Burgmuller this week, I think. Meh.

On the place side, the Rebikov is coming along and I really like it – in fact, I like these pieces much more than I liked the exam pieces I did as a teenager.

20240121 Practice Diaries

It wasn’t a great week for practice and I only got a couple of slots in. Also, I didn’t progress up to the silver leave in Tonic so yeah, bit disappointing.

I am struggling with the Bach. So much so I think I will see if Josh Wright has a lesson specifically for that piece (he doesn’t, I have just checked).

For the Mendelssohn Gondola Song, this morning was frustrating. I am getting to the stage where I would like to record it for the youtube and instagram and despite knowing every note of it cleanly, I’m struggling to get it clean through. And there is no consistent mistake. If there was, I could clean it. I love it though, it doesn’t pain me to replay it repeatedly but it pains me not to get it right repeatedly.

What I did work on a lot this week is Autumn Leaves (3, con afflizione) by Vladimir Rébikov. This is one of two pieces by him on my radar. A year or two ago, Pianist pulled out his Christmas Tree waltz for one of their Christmas repertoire suggestions. I haven’t started that yet (maybe I should, together with another Christmas piece I’d like to have ready for next Christmas. Need to update the repertoire plan I guess).

This is a two page piece, in F sharp minor. I don’t remember learning anything in that key before but I know I have pulled stuff out by ear in that key when I was a teenager (and also C sharp minor, was a big achievement when I was 15). Anyway, without going into the details I had serious reservations about it at the beginning – fingers weren’t the right shape and I questioned the wisdom of doing it. At some point, when it is finished, I will disassemble it, video it, and do an entry on it. One of the interesting things about it though is that there are not a lot of recordings of it around – the one I have on my learning list on Apple Music is I think Anthony Goldstone. Bing Chat cannot find it but if you have an IMSLP subscription, it is there too from what I can see.

It’s a piece I have come to like a lot – there are some gorgeous progressions in them. But the fingering is unduly challenging for my left hand. On the plus side, it will feed into what I want to learn.

In both cases, I have struggled a lot with memory in playing this morning. It may be because I haven’t had enough sleep lately (I haven’t, this is true). My fingers are slipping a lot more easily than I ever remember being the case before since Christmas. I keep the piano keys covered and I dust but still. It’s like the ice I have enjoyed (not) this week in Brussels. That’s infuriating.

I have not [yet] today touched the Bach or the Hillne. I will probably do a second and third practice session later on today. I will need to work on the Bach and also analyse where those rhythmic figures turn up. At some point if I get through that (and do the exam) I should write/vlog that up too.

On the 40 pieces project, I started the second piece today. It’s an Ecossaise in E flat major by Beethoven. In many requests it is very easy; I just don’t like it very much. But I can see that it is instilling some reading discipline in me, this and the Haydn. You’ll find notes on the pieces when I feel like updating it on the relevant page.

In other crazy ideas, things which went wrong: La Jetée by Yann Tiersen, particularly late last night; and I bought some more sheet music because Brahms OP 79. Shout out to the sheet music shop who saved me the danger of browsing it. I need to do a read through with a recording because the initial sight read was a bit of a disaster.

In general, the weeks (there have been more than one) where I get to do daily practice of around 90 minutes are hugely piano productive for me. So I like that very much. It’s just this week again will be disrupted but at least there is only one day of business travel.

20240113 Piano Diaries

I was travelling for work this week and coincidentally, the Henle Challenge was running on Tonic. Not a good week for me not to be getting a lot of practice in. I’m also not super organised with the ToneBase live streams.

But I am listening to a stream on rejuvenating my practice…Some of it is quite interesting. Anyway, in light of all this, where do we stand on various things:

On the 40 pieces, the first pieces was a piece by Haydn, Minuet in F Hob IX:8 No 11. It’s the first piece of Haydn I remember learning and it’s rather pretty. I have more or less finished learning it, so I need to choose another piece and put it by the piano.

On the Grade 6 project, I’m working seriously on all four pieces now. This is what happens when you find 90 minutes to practice every day. It also sucks when you miss those 90 minutes(Tuesday, Wednesday I am looking at you this week). Here’s the current summary:

  • Bach Two part invention in E major: about 30% done, the famous bar 7 occasionally correct now and a couple of the errors rooted out. Need to take a look at the second part of it to identify other similar rhythm pitfalls
  • Mendelssohn Gondollied 19/6: This is being polished. It’s committed to memory and now it’s in the “practice until you can’t get it wrong” mode. There are a couple of places that are slightly more frequent problems but in general, I can play it through with only 1 or 2 errors. This is really good news
  • Rebikov’s afflicted autumn leaves: this is about 60% done much to my surprise – a lot of progress this week. I’m also starting to enjoy it and there are some progressions in it that I really love.
  • Milne: Indigo moon: this is about 50% done again. It’s not instinctive to memorise for me.

Mostly I try to touch all four pieces daily and once they are all memorised, I will be practising them as a performance.

A week in review

I probably should be asleep but instead I am here with the end of the Christmas chocolate and a mug of tea. This week, since Tuesday (I was travelling on Monday), I have averaged about 90 minutes a day practising the piano. The bulk of my effort has gone to Bach and Mendelssohn but I have a policy of “touching” the other two pieces at least once a day. Why I am I focusing on the first two? Because certain elements of them are tantalising close to a positive point of no return.

The Mendelssohn piece – one of the Songs without Words known as a Gondola song, 19b in G Minor (it’s mentioned all over the place and as I type I’m listening to Igor Levit’s rendition) – is the reason I did the Grade 6. I had toyed with skipping – after all, I just wanted the grade 8 so I could do the diplomas later if I wanted. I want very much to do them. Now that I am listening to Levit’s version, I realise I probably too often play it too fast. This is something I can fix relatively easily. I do slow practice anyway.

Anyway, I want to polish it but first, I would like for the fingering to be securely accurate. For me, this means playing it correctly more often than not. There isn’t a bar in the piece I can’t play accurately so the problems are lying in the glueing all of the pieces together. I love the voicing in it. I loathe the pieces I consider dragons, the pieces I struggle or struggled to play correctly. I’m incredibly close to it. So, so close. So I keep playing with a huge degree of focus and I’m so close to getting it right.

The other is the Bach dragon. There is a particular rhythm which turns up occasionally in the E major two part invention which I am I’m struggling to render correctly when one rhythm pattern is played on the left hand rather than the right. One example of it is in bar 7. I’ve written about it elsewhere but here’s the offending piece of music:

Bach777_FirstPart
Inventio number 6 in E Major, by that nice Mr JS Bach

I’m really, really close to getting it right. REALLY close.

but not quite there. The net outcome is currently Vladimir Rebikov’s afflicted autumn leaves and Elissa Milne’s Indigo Moon are not getting adequate love and attention.

I have averaged 94 minutes practising since Monday. About 90% of that went to Bach and Mendelssohn between then. I’ve also worked a little bit on Brahms 118/2, one of the bridges and it has some polyrhythms so I have worked on that too (hence the post the other day).

When I read/watch tuition on best ways of practice, there’s a point at which most say “blindly repeating things is a waste of time”. I get the need for a strategic approach to practice. But eventually if you haven’t played something right, because, for example, your fingers are slipping off the black notes (I feel like my keys are very slippery lately)m and you make an occasional mistake, well, you can’t not go through it again.

Ultimately, I’m going to be playing these pieces a lot – one of the next things will be to play them in the order in which I intend to present them for the Grade 6 exam which is Bach, Mendelssohn, Rebikov, Milne, ie, the order in which they were composed.

In the grand scheme of things, it was a productive week.

  • I can mostly get the Mendelssohn right
  • I can most get the Mendelssohn right
  • The Bach Bar 7 is moving in the right direction
  • I’m practising daily at the moment
  • I’ve picked up the Milne and the Rebikov again
  • I’ve started picking at the Brahms I want to learn
  • I’m planning a miniproject to improve the sight reading (need to select the 40 pieces and put them in a spreadsheet.

All told, better than last week, and in fact, better than most of November and December in which I barely touched the piano. I’ve probably doubled my 3 month practice total in just this week alone. Pretty much everything I touched is showing an improvement.

Oh and I also realised that my Soundbrenner app on my phone has some handy features on the metronome front that my Seiko does not have.

OBJ Bach Two Part Invention in E Major BMV777

If you check under my objectives, you’ll see I’m currently working Grade 6. I wonder sometimes how valid it is that I write a piano blog when I am stuck firmly in the intermediate box as far as classical repertoire is concerned.

I had trouble selecting the List A piece at the time. I was surprised; I thought the List C would be harder but I found recordings of some of them, liked the first one I heard, and off we went.

Out of the four pieces, the Bach is KILLING me. Well, some of it is incredibly easy. The rest of it is killing me. In part, this is a gap in my education. I don’t align so much with Bach as I do with Chopin and Rachmananinininininininoff or indeed Felix. This is not the kind of thing you admit out loud in the piano world. Bach is 42, the answer to life, the universe and everything.

The one piece of Bach that everyone knew (well I never played it but I could pull it out by ear if I really wanted to) turned out to be composed by someone else (Christian Petzold in this case, apparently). The only piece I truly liked was the Toccata and Fugue although Sky might have something to do with that.

It’s worth digging out an organ version too. But that’s not where we are right now.

I want to do the exam performance in February or March in 2024 so I need to get a move on with Bach. I don’t know the Rebikov but I can sight read it without too much difficulty. Learning it by heart is the challenge there and I’m already at a stage where I can deal with thinking about how I want it to sound. But the Bach had been a traincrash and more to the point, Apple’s music search meant I turned up very little when I went looking for a recording of it, at least initially. Once I discovered that looking for Angela Hewitt would be more productive, things got better. I’m now more motivated to learn the Bach because I’ve realised it is a stepping stone to the Rameau that I want to do for Grade 8. So back to Bach we went.

I’m stuck in the middle of the first part. Henle tells me this is easier than the Mendelssohn that while it was a swamp inhabited by dragons from a fingering point of view, it was also readable from day one. I won’t say it was easy to get right but it was easy to motivate myself to pick it apart and start putting it back together.

I don’t believe Henle. Maybe it’s easier if you started playing Petzold instead of a music hall version of the Rose of Tralee, aged 10 (god knows why we had it) but if you’ve somehow got to the age of 50 without doing any counterpoint at all, Bach is a big thick brick wall.

Bach777_FirstPart
Bach, Two Part Invention in E major

In particular, I’m struggling with the highlighted bars above. Well, the first of them is okay after a great deal of very slow work and repetition. Yes, I have been using a metronome, at length, much to the pity of my neighbours no doubt. But it is very very slow going. I’m operating under the fatal excess optimism that once I manage that, then much of the rest of it being easier than the Mendelssohn might materialise.

On the plus side, it’s a decent enough piece of Bach, and I’ve also spent some time with the C Major Prelude from WTC lately, and I’ve had a look at Aria from the Goldberg Variations. I bought a copy of Anna Maria Bach’s notebook as well (and it has the Petzold in it too which is handy and now I am wondering about getting CPE Bach’s notebook too). And I really, really hope it helps with the Rameau.

In other news, I will see the Goldbergs courtesy of Vikingur Olafsson next week. I am looking forward to it.

Rameau: Les Cyclopes

While I still have a way to go to finish the Grade 6 pieces, I wanted to finalize a selection from List A for Grade 8. It’s not a period of music I instinctively ever want to learn and I wasn’t enthusiastic about more Bach to be honest. So I had a look at the list and attempted to find a good reason to learn the Scarlatti that was on the list. I failed.

I’ve chosen this:

Les Cyclopes, Rameau as interpreted by Vikingur Olafsson

There is a really great version by Grigory Sokolov around too and what fascinates me is how how different the various interpretations are. I suspect in part it’s because it was written in the early half of the 18th century, at a time when the composers did not necessarily leave much on the way of instruction, given they were written for harpsichord and this allows today’s musicians some latitude in how they play the pieces. But there are elements of this that I absolutely love.

Rameau_Les Cyclopes Extract
Extract from IMSLP version of Les Cyclopes by Rameau

You can find the sheet music here. I congratulate myself on finding a particularly antique version of it. I think it’s the first edition. Currently, it looks like the best publisher to get this from is Barenreiter – it’s not on Henle’s digital library and Barenreiter appear to have a couple of options to get it in print. I don’t think it’s on their digital library yet. In theory I am not in a hurry to get this. But I will still try to buy it tomorrow. I’m not sure I want 43E worth of Rameau, on the other hand I am supposed to be upping my sightreading game too. We will see what is supposed to be there.

ABRSM – Grade 5 Theory

Some time ago I looked into the lists for music exams with a view to eventually finishing off the grades. I had done a few few grades when I was a teenager (you can find the books here). I wasn’t in a hurry to go back to the RIAM (I’m never going to get over the Bartok, it seems) but I eventually after some research wound up on the ABRSM website. A couple of things cropped up around this: they had performance grades now (4 pieces instead of 3 and no sight/aural testing, plus they could be recorded and uploaded rather than scheduled).

Additionally, the grade 6 list had one piece that I already owned with a view to learning. However, there is some gamification involved and before you can do Grade 6, you need to do some grade 5 or other. ABRSM focused heavily on Grade 5 Theory although they acknowledged any other Grade 5 (including RIAM as it happens), I have very vague recollections of doing Grade 5 with the RIAM and it being problematic. But I could be discussing Grade 4, I don’t know.

Anyway, I had a look through the ABRSM online exam papers, did all of them and realised I was just shy of Grade 4 so some work was going to be required for Grade 5. Some study. Here’s what I did.

I bought all the material. Right now, that means a bunch of music theory papers, a book and some workbooks. In order of usefulness:

  • First Steps in Music Theory
  • Sample Exam papers
  • A long way back: the workbooks.

If I am honest, the workbooks are not so useful if you are an adult. But the First Steps in Music Theory by Eric Taylor is absolutely essential.

First Steps in Music Theory – Eric Taylor

This is a really useful book.

One of the most useful things you can do then is to work through exam papers.

Sample exam papers

The papers are organised in 7 sections:

  • Rhythm
  • Pitch
  • Keys and Scales
  • Intervals
  • Chords
  • Terms
  • Music in Context

Each section has 10 points except keys and scales which has 15.

I worked through a lot of exam papers: there are several books of them, with a new one issued most of the recent years, there is a test digital exam on the ABRSM’s website and they also have one sample to download and print.

What I did at the time, was work through a paper, and then note the scores I had to identify which parts were my weaker parts, what I had to learn/work on with more effort.

Tracking scores

You can see on one of the tables on the left hand side where I was dropping points on each paper. In theory, I just had to pass the exam so I can move on. But this is an ego thing for me – I didn’t just want to pass, I wanted to get a Distinction. So yeah, I needed to ensure I did not drop any more than 10 points. I did, several times, while going through the papers.

For me, the weaker points were generally, somehow, keys and scales, and intervals. I don’t know why because by ear, they work automatically for me.

In the end, I did the exam in August, and I got the distinction I want. If I was to give advice for anyone else doing this, buy the sample papers + model answers, and buy the First Steps in Music Theory book. And then, work through them. When you’re ready, sign up to to the exam and do it sooner rather than later.

Music of my childhood

RIAM Books of the mid1980s
Music books of my childhood

I was looking for a piece of music I learned to play when I was about 11 or 12 and I knew some of the exam books I used at the time were still at home. I even knew when where they were. The piece of music was a Sonatina and some research around exam organisations didn’t turn up anything when I searched IMSLP. So the piece was in the grade 2 book. It was a Sonatina in G by Thomas Attwood. You can find the music here (youtube sorry). I’m also interested in a Sonatine piece that was on the Grade III book.

Here’s what was in those books

Grade 2 List A
  • Sonatina in G – Attwood
  • A Little Song – Kabelevsky
  • Mazurka – Berkovich
Grade 2 List B
  • Sonatine (2nd movement) Haslinger
  • Dolly’s Complaint – Franck
  • Serenade Andalouse – Poot
Grade 3 List A
  • Sonatine (2nd movement) – Pleyel
  • Pentatonic Tune – Bartók
  • First Loss = Schumann
Grade 3 List B
  • Sonatina – Hook
  • A Little Song – Khachaturian
  • Gay Story – Shostakovich
Grade 4 List A
  • Sonatine – Dussek
  • Bagatelle – Beethoven (A flat)
  • Knight Errant – Furze
Grade 4 List B
  • Sonata in C – Mozart
  • Novelette – Khabalevsky
  • Tuesday’s Child – Bennett

Looking at the list, what strikes me is that Khabalevsky turned up a couple of times.

I’m reasonably sure that I did Grade 5 as well but the book was nowhere to be found, I don’t remember what colour the cover was but I am reasonably sure that Fur Elise was on the list. If anyone from the RIAM from nearly 40 years is still knocking around, I’d be interested to know.