Scales. Lovely, lovely scales in 3rds...

Still working on Debussy Toccata. It has taken seven weeks to learn seven pages- it feels really hard-won, and that's playing it at half speed at that. I tried just for fun to get through those 7 pagest a something approximating full speed and while I keep crashing, I can tell that at that speed, a totally different melody jumps out.

Still umming and ahhhing over whether to offer up Bach's C minor Toccata next Saturday at the Baroque Day; I might instead fall back on the P&F from my diploma preparation - it would be interesting to feel the difference between piano and harpsichord.

Spent the last hour and a half on two Liszt pieces: Canzonetta del Salvator Rosa and Au lac de Wallenstadt - both from his Annees de pelerinage.

Getting used to the LH fingering in Au lac ..., contrary to what I would use if sight-reading!

Maybe a few Liszt pieces will be on the cards for next year's Prize Giving Evening.

Ligeti Automne a Varsovie.

Decided DipABRSM preparation has become more of a hinderance than anything else so I'm putting it on hold for a while and learning some fresh stuff.

So far all I have is that one Ligeti piece, which is amazing. Taken me just over a month to get a hang of the rhythmic flow through the first 2 and a half pages, so the rest of it should come slightly easier (hopefully).

Mozart's Lacrymosa, properly this time and Dreams by Van Halen, just for fun

Well Beethoven Op.119 #2 is making more sense to my brain now. 3 against 2 with hands crossed was *really* confusing at first, but getting there.

I have just made a start on The Reaper's Song by Schumman. It's in 6/8, my favourite.

Fugue 5 in D major from WTC book 1.
Slow-ish, but very difficult (at least for me!). Still, it will be impressive if I can learn it properly.

6/8 is my favourite too.

Random thoughts on this weekend's piano..

- After playing almost nothing but the Debussy Toccata for two weeks, I played a bunch of other stuff today and found improvement in all areas. So it was useful, but now I'm bored! Amongst the things I seem to have learnt are how to control my arm movement to give me enough speed for the wide-spanning arpeggios without flailing all over the place. Shame I can't control it for more than two bars at a time.

- Related to the above, I've also realised how much body movement is actually needed to remain balanced while playing more demanding stuff. I had previously thought that movement was to be avoided and that was actually harmful, because I was becoming very tense while trying to keep totally still.

- Practicing the Toccata, with its great deal of fast semiquavers (or they will be fast ,when I can play them) has helped my RSI a great deal. I've noticed that I pound the keyboard (both piano and computer) much less now.

- I recorded myself and I am doing awful things with tempo. I'll post more about this in the recording thread at some point, but suffice to say most of the usual culprits are there. Expressiveness does not equal dragging, and I keep crashing at the same places and need more slow practice. On the plus side, there were some nice things I heard where what was in my head matched what was recorded, so that's a start.

- I took a trip down memory lane and played through all of the Songs Without Words that I'd done years ago, and I'm both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised; the former by how well-written they are and the latter by how many of them have been (mis?)used in cartoons and suchlike because they are such character pieces. Unfortunately I have a mental cartoon track running through my head now when playing some of them.

- I really like John Ireland. I played one piece of his years ago for grade 8 ("The Darkened Valley") and while I find it depressing, it's a good sort of depressing - it's depressing because it's well written to be depressing, if you know what I mean. I want to listen to and play more John Ireland. Now hunting down the sheet music.

I love 6/8, particularly on the violin

Glad the Debussy's coming along. Beyond me, at the moment, but many pieces look that way until you get down to learning them properly. Pleasing also, how certain elements of technique practised along the way are immediately transferable to other repertoire.

I have a somewhat opposite problem of not being able to give sufficient time to what I ought to be improving for my Dip', having to prepare accompaniments and other repertoire for events inbetween.



Have you tried his Sonatina? Well worth a look.

Oh, it's TOTALLY beyond me- it's taken me seven weeks to learn seven pages, and I still have another nine to go. I call that beyond me. Then again, I also remember that there's some famous piano teacher (can anyone remember who?) who said that no piece is too difficult if you're willing to learn it slowly enough.



That is actually why I have put my diploma aspirations on hold. I started working up some pieces with a view to doing ATCL- that's how I got started on the Debussy Menuet from Suite Bergamasque. But then I realised that i was enjoying learning music just for the sake of it, and practicing more "exam pieces" would feel too much like studying. I may yet do it, I'd just like to wallow in the luxury of learning what I want to rather than what I have to. I think I'm still approaching it with a "serious student" mindset, just with no immediate goal in mind.



I have not, but I have tracked down a performance of it on Youtube and it is definitely worth a look. I may wander off to Chappells at lunch tomorrow. Good thing I got paid last week...

No it was the opposite - don't be tempted to try and play them with the RH (thumb). You might get away with it in the first page, but you'll come seriously unstuck in the later sections!

Good luck

I've concluded that the Toccata is waaaaaaaaaay beyond me too. I started off with the Sarabande last year and then on to the Prelude; both I managed fine so I thought I should attempt the Toccata. Teacher warned me it would be "too challenging" (he's too nice to say I won't manage it ), but I thought I'd give it a go and well, it quickly went back on the shelf

And so I started to learn Mendelssohn's Song Without Words Op.19 No.1 instead.

Maybe I'll play the Toccata at a forum event in, oh, fifteen years' time?!?! I can play about a quarter of it at half speed, and about eight bars at full speed.

I'm used to working on pieces that are beyond me... I was obsessed with the Gliere horn concerto when I was a horn student and spent five years learning it. When I started there were notes in it that I could not physically produce. I did perform it in the end... playing the piano accompaniment for another horn student

Come on guys. It is not THAT difficult. Compared to Debussy's Etudes, or some of the more difficult preludes it is a piece of cake. (There is a slightly tricky 4 v 3 section in the middle, but apart from that there is nothing very frightening here - and even that is not very frightening). But there is a lot of work to do to get it all into the fingers. Lots of slow patient repetition. (And it is rather long).

Forget about speed for now. Learn the notes, a few bars at a time, then repeat the whole thing a few hundred times, accurately, smoothly and fluently, at a comfortable speed. Then put it away for three months. You might have a nice surprise when you try it again.

having a look at 1st and 3rd movements of mozart sonata k330 having fallen in love with the 2nd movement

The difficulty for me is not in the comprehension; it is in physically being able to play the notes. That is why it has taken me seven weeks to learn seven pages. Musically it is not near the top end of difficult for me.

And indeed, I am not trying for speed- I'm trying for continuity. I haven't got really bored yet, which is the real indication that I should put it away. I'm still eager to play it every day when I come home. If I'm lucky, I'll get obsessed with a different piece in a few weeks which will train different things, and then I will indeed get a nice surprise when I try it again.

OK, maybe fifteen years was an exaggeration

picked some stuff to spend the summer on (no piano lesson until September so lots of time)

Beethoven- Sonata op 57 'Appassionata'- starting with 1st and 3rd mvts as the 2nd seems like something I could probably learn well (by my reckoning) in a couple of weeks then my teacher would have infinite amounts to say on it.

Chopin- Ballade nr 3- can already play this but never worked on it seriously so learning it properly; it's an amazing piece.

Ligeti- Etude nr 6 Automne a Varsovie- not gotten the score yet but looks an absolute nightmare, sounds beautiful though so I'm sure I'll have fun with it.

I'm learning only a few things at the moment as my Grade 6 exam is coming up on June 25th (!!) but the Gigue in Bach's French Suite No 5 is taking up lots of time and attention and I'm loving it.
I'm also learning some studies by Ettore Pozzoli, an author of many books of studies which I am finding rather hard but useful and quite musical. I wonder if this Italian composer is well-known abroad ... He's got various books of studies at different levels and they are often used as Conservatoire set books for the different grades.

Juan Carlos - all the best for your exam!!

Meanwhile.. the Debussy Toccata should take less than 15 years =D Over the last two weeks, the piece has become slowly more playable. It actually sits nicely under the fingers and is quite well crafted- I really appreciate this aspect of it as I have small-ish hands. I am struggling a little bit with the last page which is quite chromatic in terms of harmony, but I also remember when I felt that way about the second page (the edition I have is 16 pages), so I live in hope.

I realise it's the first thing I've ever learnt that is all fast notes from start to finish. The practice of this aspect has started to pay dividends in the Chopin Fantasie-Impromptu.

Am also trying to read through the Well-Tempered Clavier. I am finding some of the more chromatic pieces hard to digest- some of the Fugues have so many leading notes / suspensions that it is hard to find the harmony underneath. The last time I tried this (15 years ago), they were utterly incomprehensible. They are now barely comprehensible so that is progress. I'm working up the first two prelude and fugues in book 1 - C major and C minor. C major prelude is one of those overplayed "light classics" but I haven't played it properly before, and I'm rediscovering how lovely it is.

I'm learning 2 Chopin Nocturnes at the moment, Eb major and E minor. I love them both, and it's taking a lot of self control to stop me from learning all of the other pieces in my two big books of Chopin!

Going over arpeggios, contrary-motion chromatic scales and scales in 3rds for fast-approaching exam!
Keeping pieces ticking over.

My teacher's lent me the Fitzwilliam Virginal Books to have a look at - I'm supposed to be getting to grips with the general style of Renaissance/Tudor music. It's surprisingly hard, though, as they often start deceptively with minims, then become semiquavers over the page!

Did you decide to go for grade 7, madbassoonist? What pieces are you playing?

This week we put the Chopin Ballade aside and revised Mozart's sonata K576. In his book on Mozart's sonatas Michael Davidson described this as "possibly one of the most difficult in the entire repertoire".

Of course that is complete nonsense, as you can confirm by a glance at Listz's B minor sonata, Prokofiev's later sonatas, or Beethoven Op. 101, to name just three.

But you can see his point. The 2-part counterpoint is not the simple stuff for beginners that Mozart thought he was writing, and the texture is so sparse that there is nowhere for mistakes to hide, so great precision and control in every aspect of performance is needed.

I fondly imagined that my deliveryapproached that of Klara Wurtz, but a few minutes of objective criticism (confirmed by recording at home) showed that the gap is huge between a fluent, memorized performance, and a performance worth listening to ... and the gap remains to be bridged.

There are disturbing micro-variations in rhythm and tempo of which I am quite unaware when playing. And the basic sound is cold and uninviting - a problem to be remedied by much more control over the ends of phrases, avoiding premature release of harmony notes, and adding just a touch of pedal to enrich the tone, but without blurring the harmonies or the melodic line. A very difficult skill.

Then there are the notes intended to have a slight accent - but that leap out at you in a harsh sforzando, and those that are meant to be pp in a dying phrase, but sometimes fail to sound at all.

And ... under stress there are the problems associated with excess tension, and old bad habits that resurface, like playing a note with the thumb by dropping the wrist rather than articulating the thumb from its base, or attacking fast turns from high above the note, so limiting the potential speed, and losing alot of control. ... and of course "smudging" (holding notes down for too long)

And then ... of course ... were the numerous misunderstandings of musical details ... false accents, emphasizing the wrong voices, or playing a line that is meant to emulate a voice as though it were something from a Kraftwerk creation.

You really do need to be tough (able to take criticism without wilting), persistent, and dedicated to make progress in playing this horribly difficult instrument.

Still - at least there will be plenty to work on at the Chetham's master class. It won't be like some master classes you see where the student is brilliant, performs the piece immaculately, and leaves the "master" (who we all know can no longer play it so well as the student) struggling to find anything to with which to entertain the audience.

A3 - Scarlatti Sonata in F minor
B2 - Grovlez La sarabande
C2 - Ravel Menuet sur le nom de Haydn

I'm really worried about the aurals (especially identifying modulations - I just can't tell whether it's gone to the dominant or subdominant ) but will probably/hopefully make up the marks in sightreading and scales...

Are you thinking of doing an exam (grade 6/7?) any time soon?

I love the Scarlatti Sonata, it's lovely I'm not planning on doing any piano exams any time soon-I can't do aural or sight-read to save my life, so no chance of any of that just yet!

What I do is try to sing the tonic note when the examiner plays it and then keep that in my head while the examiner plays the modulation and then sing up the notes at the end. The annoying part is that I think the examiner only plays it once, so you don't get another chance to check. If that doesn't work, I was taught that if it modulates to the dominant it is a much brighter sound than to the subdominant. It'll probably help to listen to lots of modulations until you pick up what a modulation to the dominant and the subdominant generally sound like.

You've reminded me, I need to remember how to do grade 7 aural too this term!

Yes, this is the case. Typically in baroque suites, for example Bach's French Suites, English Suites, Partitas, movements are in binary form in that they consist of two 'halves'. The first usually modulates to the dominant, the second 'takes over' as it were, in the dominant key and returns to the tonic at the end.

So baroque movements are a good source of modulations to the dominant.

I think it is much easier to 'hear' this change, having listened to examples, than to hold a note in your head.

Modulation to the subdominant is more subdued, less bright - a good pointer.

I be learnin': Echo from the French Overture by Bach - beautiful piece, pretty much nailed now

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata: 1st movt is done, 2nd & 3rd are in the process now. Good God the 3rd movt is hard...

memorising chopin raindrop prelude (op28 no15). For imminent performance *unfamiliarity of focused work*

I love the Moonlight, I can do the 1st movt, but the 3rd is definitely on my "learn to play before I die" list

Likewise... Id better get a move on cos im going to need the next 57 years of my uk life expectancy to learn it.

my music teacher frequently tells me "It's not that tricky, it's just very fast is all!" easy for him to say with his LRSM in piano

I had thought of playing this (as a demo) at a recent forum 'Baroque Day', but when it turned out that the harpsichord had only one manual, I decided to leave it at home - I couldn't have switched pedals fast enough for the desired 'Echo' effect .... the desired echo effect .... the desired echo effect .... the desired echo effect ....




(Despite the rather cliched ending to my response, it is a most effective movement, played on either piano or harpsichord.)

I don't have a LRSM in piano but I'm trying to learn something with similar characteristics (Debussy "Toccata" from Pour Le Piano), and I really remember feeling the same way. That was a couple months ago. I thought it was going to take me ages to learn it. I do understand what your teacher means - if played slowly, it is not tricky. I've had to be really patient and play it through at half or a third speed to learn it.

Good luck!

A most interesting practice session last night... My silent system has broken :-( so I practiced on the keys but with no sound!

And an interesting thing occurred... without hearing any sound I could really concentrate on what my fingers were doing and also found that I could really focus on the rhythm too.

I suppose its like playing away from the piano but with a little bit of help (I find it hard to do this as I am unable to visualise the keyboard).

The only drawback I can see is making a mistake and being tonally unaware of it. Obviously its no good for tonal work either!

Interesting indeed Mini_mo! This system entails hearing the full feedback from what you choose to play with full sound and it has sometimes been used by my teacher to help me get used to listening to one hand and not the other (as much). She calls this 'method' the "ghost RH" or "ghost LH" accordingly. It consists in playing one hand with its full sound while the other merely strokes the key, so to speak. This helped me a lot with contrary motion scales, as my Lh was always very weak and it can also be applied when one hand sings out the melody and the other one should only 'accompany'.

I meant "... while the other merely strokes the keyS".

I have used that technique too especially for getting one hand much quieter than the other.

Being unable to do the aurals hasn't stopped me...

I tried to sing the tonic all the way through, but it didn't work because I couldn't keep the note in tune (and I can't hold it in my head) - it always turned into the new tonic! I now just try to listen out for the 'tell-tale note' which has been flattened or sharpened. It's hard though, especially if in the inner parts, but I'm getting better!

At least I can do cadences, except sometimes working out whether it's V or V7, but that's only a tiny part.
As for sight-singing, it's getting better, and playing back (I don't sing ) is... OKish. I'll be happy with 14 or 15 for aurals.

Grade 7 tenor sax... and you've been playing for how long?!


Oh this is a bit off topic so I will just say that I am learning the Chopin Raindrop Prelude (so I can show off when we come to study it for GCSE)

It really is useful to learn it. I started learning and gave up before I realised it was a set piece, and then relearned it. It helped when we came to study it because I knew a bit about it, and the chords etc already.

not to mention it being a great piece of repertoire . Just out of interest, what are the performing requirements for gcse and a level music? Being a scot i dont know but please relieve my curiosity

Burgmuller - La Chevalresque It's for fun, but when I bought the book, it was way beyond me - it's nice to see some progress

Still on the last bits of the Beethoven Pathetique 2nd movt - but almost there, I hope.
Slow practice on the middle section of Granados' Spanish Dance no.2. I need to lift my wrist to achieve the ornaments cleanly.
Chopin Prelude no.3 is on hold - possibly permanently....

I also need to adjust my posture (my teacher described me as looking if I was sitting waiting for a bus ) to try to counter some ongoing tension in wrists and forearms.

I have been threatened with Hanon and have to practise dominant seventh arpeggios to start building up speed.

On the plus side, some "easy"(ish) Debussy has been promised for next time.

Brilliant! The last page is home & dry, not very hard at all once you see what your hands are doing!



I was supposed to be learning it but I can't get my LH to work quickly enough I'll go back to it in a few months, I think!



Did he write anything easy? I got hold of a copy of Clair De Lune at the Leeds playday thanks to oldnotes and had a look through some of it last night. Despite the 5 flats, the first page doesn't seem that bad note-wise as long as I keep counting...

.... and don't forget that it starts on the second beat of a triplet!

You know, it's the only movement from his Suite Bergamasque that I haven't played*!



*Possibly due to the fact that my younger sister was learning it when I was a teenager!

So far as making the notes goes Clair de Lune is one of Debussy's easiest. Accurate timing and tonal balance are another matter.

If you want something easier then "The Little Shepherd" from Children's Corner, and "The Girl with Flaxen Hair" from the first book of Preludes are about as "easy" as he gets.

Cool, I've bought the Children's Corner and Preludes 1 books now I'm sure I'll want to tackle a few of these at some point!

Did he write anything easy? I got hold of a copy of Clair De Lune at the Leeds playday thanks to oldnotes and had a look through some of it last night. Despite the 5 flats, the first page doesn't seem that bad note-wise as long as I keep counting...
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Hmm, yep I can manage the first page - but then decided to leave it lol



I am doing Le Petit Negre, that isn't too bad once you get into the rhythm. What is quite nice about is that rather doing the usual counting you just have to go with the swing.

Well after being really ill for the past few days and not even being able to contemplate the piano, I am quite pleased with the practice that I have just spent for the last hour.

Stilll working on Mozart K545, Mozarts Fantasy in D Minor and Errinererung. There are a few others in the pipeline but this is what I spent my time on today. I spent a lot of time working out difficult phrases and in particular with the Fantasy the presto runs.


As I say I am quite happy as I tried to play on Saturday and it was a big mistake, I was just too poorly and couldn't play anything right, I just ended up feeling depressed and inadequate.

So a bit of a lift today, still not well but certainly a lot improved.

ET