Achievement of the Day or Week

JB_PT · 2024-06-25T18:07:48+00:00

There was a similar thread on That Other Forum...it was started in 2010 and has almost 11k posts! I thought it would be nice to have something like that here, where you can share something as simple as "I finally nailed that tough measure," or a feat truly amazing like "I managed to record an entire piece without my cat jumping on the piano." 😺 I'm at work so my only achievement today will be "I survived my Friday and now I have 4 days of piano to look forward to." Someone please kick this off with a more interesting achievement than that!

ShiroKuro

tszulc90 I just finished listening! Bravo!! And after only a short time learning, truly well done! That’s a great selection of pieces you’ve chosen. Also, what a nice space to have a concert!

tszulc90

ShiroKuro Thank you! Much appreciated. This recital is a big thing for me. The place is very nice, it is called Willa Lentza, named after famous and very successful person who build it (as a status for his achievements) for himself and lived in there.

pianoloverus

tszulc90 Excellent musically and technically!

thepianoplayer416

I've been putting off this Chopin Prelude at an intermediate level for a while. Got "The Big Book of Classical Music" a while ago with many interesting pieces including this. Decided to work on it for 2 weeks. Played on Piano de Voyage keyboard & Pianoteq 8.

JustinVG

lautreamont oh no! I hoop it will heal fast!

I was just reading this book about music practice with neuroscience proof about what works and why.

Book: Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician's Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing by Molly Gebrian

This week I read a chapter about the effectiveness of “Mental Practice”. It had a passage of someone that practiced a Concerto mentally when she was injured and couldn’t play.

See a quick photo of that part:

Get well soon!

JustinVG

tszulc90 one listener added! Very nice playing and well done! A recital is no small thing and a few faults are (almost) always going to happen with so much focus on you. The important thing is how you handle them.

I enjoyed listening and again, nice job!

thepianoplayer416

JustinVG
Guess a lot of people underestimate the power of visualization & mental practice. Beginners & lower intermediate learners generally are not able to read sheet music and know what is going on in his head without actually playing.

lautreamont

Thanks everybody. At my lesson, I decided to stay on, one handed, for the time being. My teacher said that we can use this time to level up my right hand. At the moment I'm back doing a little Hanon, this time with a lot more perspective on how to approach them, making sure I"m not just zooming through them but playing with good technique and with an ideal sound, doing a little Czerny op. 299, and I'm learning Chopin's Minute Waltz. My teacher also gave me the green light to work on a Chopin Etude (just the right hand) as well. But I'm thinking of alternatives to a Chopin Etude for moto perpetuo like allegro figurations, simply because everything I'm practicing is a bit repetitive, so I'm thinking of Bach's D major Prelude from the WTC or Bach-Busoni Nun Freut Euch Chorale Prelude. I was working hard on polishing a Bach piece before I got hurt, so it might be nice to incorporate his work in my speed studies. Chopin one day extemporaneously played several fugues by Bach for a pupil without a score, and he remarked that one doesn't forget Bach.

Since I was self-taught for so long, the real work is doing things the right way, and gradually ramping up the speed while leaning on all the tricks I know for relaxation and articulation. I'm focused first on proper technique and achieving the sound I envision, and once I get comfortable with a figuration to test out playing faster while trying to maintain form, noting what works and what I think needs improvement, then going back to slower playing to focus on those. There's a kind of heaviness when I play very fast that doesn't sound or feel particularly good, but with everything I've learned in the last few months, I feel like I know a lot more on how to fix that, with the goal being real fluidity and sensitivity.

lautreamont

This week has gone pretty well. I've learned the first section of the Minute Waltz. There's a tricky part on the descent after the primary figure, fingering wise with a mordent on a repeated note that I think I figured out how to finger today after trying out a lot of solutions. My speed isn't there yet, when I really go for it there are some unfortunate accents some of the time, but it sounds ok at a slower tempo, and I have a feel for the dynamics of the entire section. On the Hanon, I'm really working on articulation and dynamics, doing 2 a day a couple times for a warmup. For the Czerny I'm doing the right hand of a study for arpeggios with rotation and really intentional key placement, and it's starting to get up to speed and to feel good. I'm also doing the 1st Study of Op. 299, a little slowly as I'm counting to not lose place. The ascending scales, which have always been a week spot, have really improved in the space of a week, but they're still nowhere as fast or smooth as my descending rh scales.

Encouraged by my teacher, I'm trying out some Chopin Etudes, just the rh while I nurse my left. I'm using the Cortot editions that have a lot of preparatory exercises for each study. My focus is mostly on 25 no. 1 and 10 no. 5, playing mostly without the pedal to be assured of my articulation and dynamics. My teacher underlined the fact that choosing works like this, they'll always be the sorts of pieces I'd like to play, so they're a good choice to grow with, and the speed will come in time. My method is to practice at a moderate tempo, probably 1/2 or 2/3 of virtuoso tempo cleanly, then to try it out at tempo, diagnose it there in terms of sounds rhythms and hand feel, take it down really slow and focus on grouping, articulation, and hand choreography, and go back to moderate tempo. Nothing feels unplayable, which feels great. I've been so in a routine for the past week that I've ignored the Mazurka I had been working on before my injury returned. Because the left hand is just bass and chords I tried it out today and played it better than I ever have, way crisper with some of the more filigree figurations and more decisive with dynamics.

pianoloverus

lautreamont There's a tricky part on the descent after the primary figure, fingering wise with a mordent on a repeated note that I think I figured out how to finger today after trying out a lot of solutions.

I remember trying out a million different fingerings at that place also. I don't think I remember what I finally chose.

lautreamont

pianoloverus
It's such an innocuous moment but maybe the trickiest part of the piece to me, especially because it's just a part of a transition back down to the main figure, so you don't really want to bring too much attention to it.

The one I had been using the most up to yesterday was 4 on F, then 2 on Eb, then 3-4-3 for the mordent, but it felt iffy doing the grace note with a weaker finger at tempo, one of those things where 7 out of 10 times it works fine but I'm always a little stressed about it. Now I'm doing 4 on f, 3 on Eb, then moving my hand slightly deeper on the keys, and then 2-3-2 which is more fluid. Without moving my hand a little in it feels too awkward and cramped. There are other ways, like having 2 for F, which allows for some experimenting (like 1 on Eb, 2-3-2 for mordent), but I try to avoid overcomplicated fingering or things that would require a lot of fine tuning for relatively simple music.

lautreamont

This week was fairly good, with work on Chopin's Minute Waltz and Bach's D Major Prelude from WTC 1, and a little supplemental practice on Chopin's Black Keys Etude. The Minute Waltz is coming along fine. The hard part is not pressing speed. I'm trying to get it absolutely smooth and controlled, and then I'll gradually ramp up the speed so I'm not contending with sloppiness down the line. The Bach feels like an etude for fingers 4 and 5 to me, which are probably the things I'm most self-conscious about at the piano even after putting a lot of work into them, and before my lesson I had no clue how to phrase the constant flow of sixteenths. I had been phrasing practically beat by beat, which was maddening and inappropriate-sounding, but my teacher said that aiming for the first and third beats would allow me to have more of a sense of direction, so I'm excited to try that.

These are my first moto perpetuo type works, so there's a lot to learn on sustaining speed and remaining smooth, a lot of trial and error and observing my physical movements in problem areas and detecting what's not optimal when something goes wrong, then finding a solution. My eureka moment last month has been of great help, but I'm still in the acquaintance stage of utilizing all of the motions available to me, where I need to work less effective technique out from the physical states that repetitive use of less than adequate technique has done to my hands to get a truer sense of fluidity, even though I now have more of a glimpse of what that would look and feel like.

lautreamont

This has been a steady weak. For my pieces, I'm playing through the entire Minute Waltz now, and the Bach Prelude is improving a little every day, although nowhere near the blazing blurs many virtuosi play the work at. For a diversion, this week I opened the Bach-Busoni Chorale Preludes. The fifth one, "Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Christ" is a transcendent melody that I've wanted to play since I first touched a keyboard. To my surprise I can play it now (a full circle moment for me as I remember keenly how impossible it seemed when I had first tried to play it). I also did a little playing of the 2nd, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" which has become a favorite. I had had these pieces in my head as potential next pieces to work on with my teacher, but I think they're the sort of thing I can do on my own okay enough and just pick them up when I need a break from the work of trying to improve my primary pieces.

TulipAcid

Summertime heat is upon us in Minnesota. Windows are closed to hold in the air conditioning, which rumbles constantly (heat pump AC, someday we’ll have solar panels to feed it…)

Time to put on the headphones and fire up the Roland.

I’ll summarize my activities since getting my music room set up after many years of sporadic playing, generally interrupted by adult responsibilities and discovering the mandolin, a nicely portable instrument. Alas, I moved up to the mandocello, less portable and still fun. Yet, piano called to me.

Begin Summary:

Since I returned to the keyboard in October and more assiduously since the first of the year, my warm up go to is Fantasia from Bach’s Partita No 3. I run the right and left hand separately then together. Under tempo still, but improving. It’s not a race, it’s a warm up! If I’m in the mood, I’ll spin through the other movements. I also like the English Suite in A minor.

Mendelsohn is at the root of my enjoyment of post classical works. Particularly the Songs Without Words. Op. 38 No. 6, Op. 67 No. 1, No. 2, Op. 85 No. 4. Those are works from my teenaged years, when I stumbled across the book at the local music store and saw within it a handful of works I might approach when I wasn’t working on repertoire assigned by my teacher.

I have a ways to go in getting these back under my fingers. I need to choose one and stick with it for a few weeks!

An earlier victory was grasping Ólafur Arnalds' We Contain Multitudes. After seeing him perform it on youtube, I realized he wasn’t performing it in G major (as is available) but in F# major. So I transposed it (don’t ask me how … something something convert PDF to .mscz, import in to MuseScore, then fiddle with it.) I will have to say it’s much easier to play in the heavily sharped version. A 80% ready piece. Also, it pleases me to realize that I need not fear sharp/flat heavy key signatures.

This week, I’ve spent much time on Moccio’s The Wanderer, which has some in common with Mendelsohn. Intricate accompaniment with countermelodies. More rhythmically challenging given its modern sensibilities. I would say I’m 80% of the way to being able to let other humans hear me attempt it. 😉

I got out the page turn foot pedal and have that working.

Next on the plan: Get Lionheart to 80% and pick a Mendelsohn and do the same. Figure out how to handle page turns more effectively.

TulipAcid

Oh, I forgot! On the tech side, I decided to look at MainStage again. Since this sparking of activity around digital keyboard, I’d continued with prior episodes of relying on Logic Pro to handle my virtual instruments.

I got into Logic Pro as a part of my expanding Apple ecosystem back in the early 2000’s. It was out before MainStage, and, as I spent over $100, I stuck with Logic Pro.

There’s some carry over between the two products. Particularly around channel strips and how they link to ‘software instruments’ and then all the other Apple things one can do to those.

I now have a ‘concert’ set up with a patches named VSL, Synthogy and Native Instruments which harbor channel strips dedicated to each instrument I have from that source.

In the ‘other place,’ someone mentioned that the composer of White Lotus opening theme for season 2 used a Alicia’s Keys and Noire together. (I already had Noire. Will consider Alicia’s Keys as I have a fascination with Yamahas at the moment and, while Noire is nice, VSL’s Yamaha CFX Synchron Essentials has my usual concern about the recording source environment (I prefer studio samples to concert halls,) I don’t have a C3 … yet.

I digress. The notion that interested me was playing both instruments at the same time. Someone mentioned MainStage, so I figured I’d look into it.

I like it, turns out. As with Logic Pro, it's more than I’ll ever need, but as I already know how to deal with channel strips and muting/enabling/adjusting, an easy transition. I will need to investigate the recording feature of MainStage. (I know VSL does it automatically. I’d rather do it on my own terms.)

I could do the same thing with Logic Pro, but I like the idea of Concerts/Patches encompassing channel strips. Supposedly you can set up the channel strips at the concert level, then share them across patches.

There are a couple of Beethoven piano/mandolin duos …hmm, I could record the mandolin, then play with it...

lautreamont

This week, I'm in a really good place in the Minute Waltz, playing through the entire piece daily and starting to shape it more. For the Bach prelude, I've only memorized about twelve bars so far, and my playing of it is well under the tempi of many recordings, but the choreography feels more natural now, if still difficult. I've also put a little supplemental work on the fugue, just working on the 32nd note clusters in the left hand, which are sometimes awkward, especially when the left hand also sounds and holds a longer note.

About the only actual achievement this week was that, on a whim, I picked up Émile-Robert Blanchet's exercises and tried one that had stumped me early in the year, where, in the same hand (and alternating right and left) you play a 3 against 4 polyrhythm, with the sixteenths taken by fingers 345. When I tried to do it before, just playing the notes in the proper time was an accomplishment, but in terms of articulation and dynamics it was a mess, with unintended accents, ghost notes, and the like. Yesterday I didn't do it perfectly, but I projected the voice in sixteenths with the weaker fingers and did my best to keep the accompaniment steady and smooth. Far from an expert accomplishment, but it was evident that my weaker fingers have become "stronger," and that I have more control over the sound than just 6-7 months ago. I like the exercise's mixture of cognitive and physical difficulty.

lautreamont

It's been a busy last couple weeks, and I haven't made the progress I would wish for. I've very roughly learned about half of Bach's D major Prelude from WTC1, but very haltingly. Even though I've broken down the piece harmonically, I'm having trouble remembering the specifics of the piece, so my memorization of it is rife with inconsistency, and it feels ages away from something approaching concert tempo. I'm feeling stressed about it, since I'm putting in a lot of work, but the results of said labor are not very visible (or audible) yet. I've started maybe learning the second piece from Rodion Shchedrin's Polyphonic Notebook. It's a piece that is rhythmically and mentally hard for me, an endless canon that makes my head spin. My teacher gave me a lot of good suggestions on how to proceed, starting with consistent and thought-out fingering and dynamics. Right now I'm working mostly on it hands separate, playing it slowly and doing my best to keep in rhythm and well-articulated. That is beginning to show, in an extremely modest way. It's a piece I really vibe with, so it would feel good to progress with it.

lautreamont

This week felt better than the last. I'm playing through the Bach prelude and have it close to memorized. Where I'm confident in the notes it's fluid under my fingers, if not a rapid stream like one hears on recordings. My teacher gave me an easier Bach piece to use as metronome practice as well, which I've learned already and hopefully can bring it up to a metronome soon. Apart from that I'm keeping at Hanon, and I've replaced Czerny with Blanchet studies, which tend to be contrapuntal and also be brainteasers with polyrhythms, polytonality, and counterpoint, which is more my cup of tea. My fingerwork has really improved in the past month, as evidenced by the 32nd note figures in the 5th Fugue from WTC 1 which I've done a little light work on. Even if I really am in the weeds with a piece that is at the upper threshold of my abilities, I think I'm improving and mechanically more solid than I've been before.

lautreamont

This week hasn't been the most exciting, but it's had a little progress. I'm working on an easy Bach piece and a (for me) difficult one. For the difficult one, I'm playing through the entire piece now, but it's a moto perpetuo and hard to memorize entirely. It's a real workout for the 4th and 5th fingers, and I've got a moderate pace to it, so far, beyond which things tend to fall apart. But this is a piece that a year ago I couldn't have conceived working on at the level I'm currently playing it, even if it's not objectively impressive yet. The easy one is going well and is a lot easier to memorize--I might surprise my teacher next week by having gotten the entire piece down. The easy one is mainly for working on rhythm and the metronome. For the first time I'm learning the piece without grace notes at first and only adding them in later, which has helped the crispness of my rhythms a lot.

Apart from that, I'm still plugging away at exercises. I'm at the last two Hanon exercises of the first section right now, and I'm working on a few Blanchet contrapuntal exercises. Yesterday the 4:3 in one hand sounded more cleanly than ever--it's just, in typical Blanchet fashion, on the second page there are tremendous stretches where controlling the tone is a major labor (playing the melody with 345 and a subsidiary voice with 12). I'm also working a little on the next one, which features contrapuntal scalar passages where the right hand is playing standard and non-standard scales meant to be sounded by all five fingers, which takes some work to maintain evenness. But the Blanchet really works on hand independence; on a lark I ran through contrary motion major scales yesterday, not having done them in ages, and did far better than I thought I would. I'm also working on sight reading with slower works by Couperin and Cimarosa, very imperfectly.

thepianoplayer416

Last week I was playing a few pieces I already learned. Didn't learn new pieces.

The end of the week had a performance with a strings ensemble (free concert) at an outdoor amphitheatre at the back of a community center. Practiced violin music during the week. There was about 50 people in the audience. Everybody had an enjoyable evening.

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