Dear all,
I wonder if anybody is playing or has tried to learn the Minuet from Bach's French Suite 3. The Graded pieces file says it's Grade 4 but I wonder ... I keep having trouble with the constant changes in hand position (esp in Section 2, where the opening bars have semiquavers almost all the time in both hands) at a failry fast speed.
While I managed to learn the Beethoven Adagio for Grade 6 (List B) quite easily in a relatively short time even with dynamics, phrasing etc. I still cannot find my way around that Minuet!
Any views?

It's on the TG grade 5 list.
My copies don't have any semiquavers (well, only the occasional couple).
Probably one of those things that needs lots of slow, careful practice.

Kudos on having mastered the G6 B1 quickly. Probably you are one of those who take to Beethoven!

My soft-copy doesn't have running semiquavers either. I tried one run through the minuet, and I think fingering is very important here, and must be worked out in advance. Notes are fine, few ornaments, no rubato required, but I am not yet sure where the melody alternates between the hands. (G6 B1 also alternates between two hands at a few places)

I think you would want to take the hands-separate approach to getting the notes and fingering right first, before trying to increase speed.

Sounds like a nice piece. Just wondering if the crotchets could be played slightly detached.

I have a TG Grade 5 pupil learning this at the minute, and I must say that it's the piece that's making the slowest progress of the three. I suppose there's nothing particularly demanding in it with regard to articulation, dynamics and expression, but notewise it's tricky enough! I find the Baroque pieces are almost always the hardest for pupils to learn because of their contrapuntal nature. Others might disagree but I think it's best to just go really slowly in something like this, hands together, a bit at a time, after just one or two attempts at it separately to get a feel for it.

Sorry! I meant running quavers! The two opening bars of Section 2 pose some difficulty ... nothing that does not come with practice but this innocent-looking little piece is giving me quite enough trouble ... and I find it even more difficult than some Grade 6 stuff, don't you? I think it's mainly the jumps and the speed my Ricordi edition has: crotchet = 160! A little bit too fast for a Minuet, perhaps?

My teacher likes Bach but I've not been having much success. A 2 part invention or two was not too bad. £ part... sort of got there .... Fugue.... abandoned ship. French Suite number 1 Allemande kind of got the first page eventually and decided it's not worth the months of slog to do the rest.
Currently on hold...

As Teoani says it really does need good consistent fingering working out.

The problem with putting grades on things is that it can sometimes be depressing as the ease or difficulty of a piece is not that black and white and we all have our own preferences and strengths.

I can't say whether it is suitable for Grade 4 or not - as I can sight read most Grade 7 and Grade 8 stuff, but I suspect it is okay. It is mostly bits of scale and arpeggios, minuets are taken at a modest tempo, there are no nasty rhythms, and it is in two parts the whole way through.

I agree about the disadvantage of using the grading system on all pieces.

I guess I must be Grade 6 on pieces below tempo X, and Grade 3 on those above tempo X (have not determined what X is) ... and so on. And probably also Grade 6 on classical pieces, but Grade 4 on baroque ones. Ah, the story about grades never ends It's just like being good at algebra but bad at geometry, and yet still pass the O Levels

But I believe that with sufficient practice, most pieces marked Grade 5 and 6 are attainable for myself now. (But I guess examiners listen to our general proficiency when playing the pieces, instead of how difficult the pieces are. Even if Horowitz and I both play "Mary Had A Little Lamb", he would sound so many hundreds of times better than me. )

I am sure the same is true for you, Juan Carlos. If you've passed Grade X, I think you can say that you could play at least 3 pieces of different styles up to the proficiency level of a Grade X student. All the best with the Bach piece! Here is a harpsichord version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIjZJvbeOnc...feature=related


Tom, being able to sight-read such complex pieces is really impressive! I am wondering if consistent attempts at playing pieces at first sight can help me improve. I have been taking some random pieces from old books and murdering them by playing through slowly (with mistakes). Not sure if I am going in the right direction though. Currently the difference I feel is that I can look at the piece given during the sight-reading component of the exam, and think,"Ah, this doesn't look as scary as the one I played last night. Maybe I can manage" But the increased confidence hasn't been translated into increased accuracy yet.

Teoani - I recently bought a book of hymns to practise my sight reading and I really think it is helping! (Someone on this forum suggested hymns as you get a lot for your money and they are not too long!) I have also found that doing the sightreading I DON'T want to do helps too - for example, there are some pieces that I always ignore in the sightreading books as they are pieces I know I won't like playing - of course, these are just the sort of pieces I should be playing.

Hi Juan Carlos,

Crotchet= 160 is [/i]too fast. 120 is much better and some performers play it more slowly than that. It must not be so fast that the piece loses its grace and elegance.
Of the two sections, the second (which you say gives you most trouble) is the more difficult especially with the modulations through fsharp minor and e minor. Make sure you work out the fingering and play repeatedly in time at a slow pace until you cannot get it wrong. If your practising is concentrated and regular, it will pay dividends.
Bach is not an easy composer to play but in relation to most of his output this piece is 'easy'. However, ABRSM standards would, I suppose, place it around Grade 4 'ish', but as has already been mentioned some boards level it as Grade 5.
Do persevere with it; this is a delightful piece and is well worth the time and effort spent practising it.
Best wishes.
rovikered

It just takes time - a lot of time. I can sight read gr8 and above if they're not too "modern" (i.e. random timing etc.), but this comes from years of being a ballet pianist and accompanist and just having to play whatever was put in front of me for 3 or 4 hours a day - you sure learn to sight read quickly under that sort of regime...

It is not that big a deal. Rule of thumb is that you should be able to sight read 2 grades lower than your playing standard. My sight reading is not exceptional. It is about what you'd expect for a pianist of my standard, and probably inferior to many of the more modest contributors to this forum.


It is good point about not being "too modern". Familiarity with the style matters. I can sight read a lot of Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and their contemporaries tolerably well - including many pieces that are set for diplomas up to fellowship level. But outside the classical/early-romantic period I am all at sea and the more modern the piece the more I have to put in a lot of work to make anything of it.

For example, from this year's Grade 8 list I can play reasonably at sight much of list A and almost all of list B but not a lot of list C.

For overall improvement in pianistic skill I haven't found that sight reading through lots of stuff helps me not much at all. It is useful for exploring repertoire and for acting as an accompanist, but not as a significant way of increasing your skill.

I suspect that what maledictis used to do involved a lot of repetition of the same pieces. That is certainly the case when you are playing for ballet classes, or for singers rehearsing. Only the first run through is sight reading. The rest is practice. But it is practice in a situation wher you are very motivated to get the essentials right!

For me what improves my playing more than anything else is learning a single piece in excrutiating detail. Which means when you think you know it, can play it from memory with ease, can safely negotiate the tricky technical corners, and your friends think is sounds good enough to be worth listening to THEN you start to really work on it! I don't know how universal this is, but it is true for me, so it will be true for at least some others, and possibly many or most others.

What is strange - at least when you first think about it - is that this process improves my ability to sight read more than actually practicing sight reading.

[Aside:

You might be interested to know that there are simlarities in learning to play better chess. There is a form of chess, speed chess, where each player is allocated a relatively short amount of time on their clock"- most popular is 5 minutes each. If the game is not finished already on the board then the player who runs out of time first loses. It is quite analogous to sight reading a piece of music. You have no time to think deeply.

It has been proven in several pieces of research that playing lots of this 5 minute chess has very little effect on a player's skill level. The most effective way to increase skill at chess is to study a single game, or even a single position from one game, in great depth so as to understand it in minute and intimate detail. The first time you do this exercise it might take weeks, or even months.

And the perverse effect is that this slow in-depth form of study improves your ability to play 5-minute chess more than any amount of playing 5-minute chess.

end Aside]

In actual practice the most important thing for me is to master difficulties by practicing extremely short sections. It takes great discipline to avoid the temptation to bash through pages and pages, but it is worth the effort. Progress is at least 10 times faster. To master a difficulty requires focus, intensity, and repetition. So by repeating the difficult skill many times, in a short period of time, the mental patterns seem to be quickly "burned in" to the brain. In contrast if you play a large section, with many tricky parts, then the intensity and focus just is not there. Of course it is necessary to play whole pieces to establish balance and continuity, but that is a relatively small part of practice, especially in the early stages.

The next most useful thing I have discovered is the value of recording yourself and comparing what you really sound like with what you thought you were doing. All the books tell us that you must listen to yourself as you practice, but it is easier said than done. That is because for most of us, especially with a new piece, so much of the attention goes into the physical movements that little is left to listen intently. When a piece is so well known that playing it has become effortless THEN you can really listen to what you are doing.

In the interim a recorder comes to the rescue. And reveals huge numbers of inaccuracies that you did not notice while you were playing. For me it was at first very disheartening to hear just how awful I sounded - with uneven basic tempo, random and unintended hesitations, speed-ups, slow downs, exaggerated dynamics, misplaced accents, notes unintentionally loud or soft, notes held beyond their proper value, mistimed pedalling ... you name it. But by repeatedly recording, listening back, re-recording very quick progress can be made to establishing better control. This is one of the ways that modern technology replaces what used to be one of the teacher's main functions.

Yes, I wasn't suggesting it as a way to improve general piano ability, just as a way to improve sight-reading ability.


Not as much repetition as one would think - dancers get bored of the same pieces just like anyone else.
The result of it all is that I can now sight-read for England and that is my most saleable skill and I find it very much in demand (which is lucky because I'm too lazy to practise).