I have a lot to learn about video editing. But it’s the start of the journey.
Month: January 2024
Practice plans on ToneBase
I haven’t had a lot of time there later but I see there is a new tutorial on trills (this is good news) and I answered the questions for a practice plan. This resulted in a list of 8 courses to follow:
- How to sightread with both hands
- How to play repeated notes
- How to play arpeggions in inversions
- How to use the left pedal
- Playing Short Trills, Mordents and Trills
- Pavane pour une infante defunte
- Controlling the 6 Primary Dynamics
- Illuminating Beethoven.
That last one is with Seymour Bernstein and I really like his delivery.
Anyway, it’s not a bad set of recommendations. I’m not saying I can’t sight read with both hands (I can) but if there are useful tips, this would be good. Repeated notes I need to practice, and the arpeggios in inversions I used to do as a teenager. One thing I have found is what I did as a teenager is often described differently by the American teachers (which is basically ToneBase, from my point of view). For the pedals, yeah, I use the sustain a lot because I love the echoing sound it produces. I typically used the left pedal on my acoustic to shut myself up as a teenager so probably that lecture is going to be illuminating.
The surprising one is the Pavane. I honestly thought that was probably beyond my level. It is on my to be learned list although not on my Learning List playlist on my phone – I must rectify that – but it was for later. I’ll give a listen to that lesson as well later on.
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.
New Sheet Music: Brahms 79 – 2 Rhapsodies
I listen to Brahms while working and discovered Radu Lupu’s recording of assorted opuses including Opus 79. I really like the second rhapsody from Op 79 so I bought it lately, Henle (so blue edition), nothing spectacular photowise.
It’s on the syllabus for the ARSM which is on my radar, although I was also targetting 118/2 for that (no work done on it this week). I’ll think about it. I had a look at it briefly yesterday at the end of a practice session. It was challenging to say the least.
If you ask me who my favourite composer is, I would still say Rachmaninoff. But I seem to own more music by Chopin and Brahms for some strange reason.
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.
40 Pieces Challenge
After writing this, and having done some daily practice this morning, I turned to the question of music to use for this challenge.
In the end, because I have Pianist Magazine membership and access to everything going back to around 2010, I went through their scores and picked out 40 pieces, mostly beginner pieces, and I dropped them into a spreadsheet. If I already had the sheet music (there are a couple of pieces from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, for example), I noted that instead of the magazine as a source. Most of the pieces are beginner pieces, there are a couple of Beginner/Intermediate and a couple of Intermediate pieces. Most are not rearrangements and the vast majority are one pagers.
What does all this mean? Well on the days I get to practice, fifteen minutes are going to this challenge. I may occasionally vlog these things but I am not sure yet and there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of prepping the vlog anyway.
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:
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.
Record Releases of Note: Igor Levit – Mendelssohn
Igor Levit has released an album of Mendelssohn, a collection of the Songs without Words.
It’s a beautiful album but then how could it not be.
On the gap analysis: Sight reading
Having written two rants on organisational stuff, I want to touch on where I see skills gaps that I want to resolve over the coming year that support the fluffy “I wanna play anything I want” aspiration we all have when we listen to Chopin.
As noted elsewhere, I have some sight reading fluency gaps. That is to say, the ledger lines still have to be counted and although I drilled them a lot last year, it’s different in actual sheet music rather than on an app while you are getting the bus to work. The other thing I want to fix are ornaments.
There are plenty of resources around for that and one of the things I intend to do is put them into my sheet music sketchbook. It’s a solvable problem and then once that is done, they will need some practice. I expect one of the practice goals to be achieved sometime in the next few days so will put that into the rotation of what I do.
Sight reading demands a bit more effort. I’ve watched enough videos to know that the issue is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of fluency. In short, I need to read more by sight. There are no tricks beyond that other than how to achieve this. Given I’ve just written a rant on the question of excessively devoting time to planning and pussying around with journals and the like, what comes out of this entry might be unexpected.
One of the things I need to make some decisions around is how much time to devote to this. I like to hope that soon, I will not be devoting 45 minutes to Bar 7 of a Bach invention (it’s frustrating given how fast the rest of it will go). I’ve seen some people talk about 10 minutes on sight reading a day, or 30 minutes a week. I’m not sure which one goes faster.
I came across something via reddit this morning: some user pointed at the 40 pieces challenge on Piano World. I dug a little deeper and came up with this blog entry by Elissa Milne. I know this name. She wrote one of my Grade 6 pieces, the jazz piece, Indigo Moon. It’s a lovely piece which will be getting much more of my attention after the dreaded Bar 7 of Bach.
The general idea is to learn at least a piece a week. I liked the underlying thought here because basically, I lived it.
The more students progressed in degrees of difficulty the more their sight-reading skills lagged behind.
Elissa Milne
You should read the piece. It’s an eye opener to know that this has been an issue for about 170 years. It’s one of the week points of the music grade systems in the Anglo Saxon world, I think. That aside.
Where I run into problems – and have done with 100 Days of Practice – is that real life can very often be a great obstacle to dealing with my dreams of playing more Chopin. I get a bit sad when I see people talking about how everyone has the same 24 hours a day. Honestly, the quality of those 24 hours vary dependent on how many of them you have to spend getting money to live on or washing dishes. There’s a reason that there’s a saying Behind every great man, there’s a great woman. Someone had to do the laundry and it wasn’t the man.
So, in reflection over breakfast, I muse on this, and here is one place where planning is truly an investment. It’s not an investment in individual practice sessions but in a series of them. Sure, teachers who engage in this with the kids they are teaching will have a well of resources but for an adult Who Is An Amateur, it’s worth planning this in some way.
There are a couple of useful sources here (and they can be built into a forScore setlist I believe).
- Anna Maria Bach’s little notebook
- Bach: Little Preludes and Fugues
- r/piano piano challenges probably up to level 4 or 5
- The ABRSM lists for grades up to Grade 4
- The TCM lists for grades up to Grade 4
- The RCM lists for grades up to Grade 6
There are books of pieces knocking around. Hal Leonard does one. But I might want to choose freely and there is IMSLP.
Here’s where my inner project manager comes out: pick 40, not including the two easy ones you know already such as the Petzold, and list them in an Excel Spreadsheet. And then tick them off. Put them on the YouTube Channel on a playlist.
We will see how it goes.