Instrument Players - Come and chat (Part II)

[CoteDAzur]

Previous thread is here.

We filled one thread, so here’s another

NameChange I definitely agree with your recommendation of the Bach dance suites, great variety in styles between the movements and beautiful. The sarabandes are always lovely.

Never Ever the C minor partita is always on my list to learn properly, love the Capriccioso.

I'm concentrating on my grade 5 piano pieces - Slow Air from the Charterhouse Suite by Vaughan Williams, Summertime and a Scarlatti sonata. Practising Handel's Messiah for a performance in 2019. I had a rehearsal today for Messiah - which was fabulous. Great to be playing in an orchestra again.

Tintini we have the big Henle book of inventions and sinfonia and there are a lot that look relatively approachable - even if just playing the notes is only half the battle. My daughter played sinfonia no 15 a couple of years ago and it was very quick to learn.

I learnt prelude and fugue no 2 (c minor) last year. The prelude isn't hard (unless you want to play it very very fast which is how most professional pianists seem to do it) but there are a lot of notes and it's hard to learn by heart because of all the alterations. The fugue is lovely and not difficult as fugues go (only three parts). They are both quite a lot harder than prelude in C, but probably among the easiest prelude/fugue combinations.

My teacher is moving in December  and round here it's going to be complicated to find someone else. I am not too worried for me but my 15 year old also has lessons and I really have to sort something out for him (he has been playing for less than 6 months and is already making me look like an amateur ... he's playing Chopin and Liszt and Debussy )

I'm polishing off some pieces from Mendelssohn's songs without words and the plan is to start on a complete Mozart piano sonata next (not sure which one yet, but definitely one of the easier ones).

Thanks for all the Bach suggestions - very helpful.

Fluke I always found music exams the most terrifying of all exams, so I'm not sure I'd want to do one again, but perhaps it's easier as an adult? Anyway, I'm impressed!

Mistigri how will go about finding a good teacher? I think it would be a good idea to find one myself soon if my enthusiasm continues, but I feel quite nervous about it, and I'm not really sure why. Perhaps I need to take a bit more time playing around and work out what I want to get out of it... Anyway, appreciate any thoughts on how how you would approach finding the right person...

Does anyone incorporate transposing as part of regular practice? I feel very drawn to this (now I actually know what chords are ). At the moment I can only do it with very simple songs with 3-4 chords but I go round the circle of fifths playing the song in every key and find it very satisfying indeed if I can crack the 'puzzle'. I can't do it fluently yet even with the simple songs but feel like I'm getting better and it's a way to try to ingrain some of the relationships between the keys.

I routinely transpose piano exercises and find that I can "read" the music in C while playing in another key. But I don't do any proper transposition (what I do is to play the relevant scale once or twice and then just apply the exercise "pattern" to that scale).

My son is a big theory buff - taught himself all about chord structure and progressions on guitar. He knows a lot more than I do. Obviously transposing on guitar is extremely simple but he can apply the same knowledge to the piano, albeit less fluently.

Finding a new teacher will be complicated I suspect especially for my son who has the ability to do something worthwhile on piano. May have to wait for the next round of conservatoire auditions. DD's old teacher will snap him up, she has a history of taking on adolescent beginners (one of her ex-students who started piano at the same time/age as my DD only three years ago is now getting very respectable results in international piano competitions).

I'm disoriented if what I hear and what I read/expect are different. I don't have perfect pitch, but find myself playing a lot of wrong notes when the piano is due for tuning.

And I need to know the harmony when I play Bach or my brain refuses to tell my fingers to go to the right place at the right time. I find that rather odd, because I don't really care ...

"I'm disoriented if what I hear and what I read/expect are different."

This happens to me, and I don't have perfect pitch either.

The other day, we were singing a piece that went "Fa, la, la, la, Fa, la" and it confused the hell out of me to the point where I couldn't actually read Fa and La from the paper because the notes were not Fa or La.

By the way, I have been working on Bach's which has two Fugues. The first one starts at 0:56 and it's a Fugue written in 4 voices (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) so it is very much like playing a choir with your two hands. It's brilliant ~~and took me ages to learn~~.

I am now working on the second Fugue that starts at 2:32. This is also taking me a long time to learn. I'm at about 4:30 now and have another 2 pages to go It's very satisfying to play!

My teacher thinks I'm a bit crazy to even attempt this Toccata. She says it's Cycle 3 (not sure what that corresponds to in UK's Grade system) and I'm in Cycle 2 so shouldn't even be trying. Ah well

Hello all. I'm back Bach
Agree with Inventions (and love the concept), dabble with #1 but haven't learned it properly.
Am doing grade 6 Trinity piano in exactly 3 weeks and 5 hours Aural will be fine as I did it for clarinet g6 in March and scored well, scales are getting there, I can stumble through the pieces so am working on them line by line.
Also enjoying some less challenging pieces aside from exam although will probably leave them now

G6 has been a learning curve to put it mildly, and I haven't been well. I might pull it out in the next 3 weeks or might have a total breakdown. I know I can always cancel, but wouldn't get my money back and it's the last session these pieces are accepted. I'm doing the Dussek Andantino Grazioso, Haydn Scherzando and Valse Lente.
Cote that sounds so difficult, a quick search reckons it's DipABRSM level

Also my digital cheapie piano isn't up to g5 and above level if I'm brutally honest, not much I can do except save up.

Broken- What is DipABRSM level?

It comes after grade 8.

That would be why it's taken me weeks to get through 2 pages, with 2 more to go

Cote D'azur thanks for sharing the toccata I've listened through and what a wonderful piece to be learning!

I've found this thread really inspirational and have returned to the Bach c minor partita (good for learning one hand at a time, patient baby in the other arm). I just wish I had an acoustic piano - my ten year old digital one is fine for what it is but just not the same!!

Good luck with the exam Broken.

I think perhaps it's a good idea to learn the things we love rather than worry too much about the levels - unless the difficulty gets too disheartening I suppose. You don't sound disheartened at all Cote - so no problem then!

I've learnt the first page of my Mozart Turkish March now, (which is not at my level). What I'm finding great now I'm playing so much (ie at least an hour a day right now - way more than I ever used to practice) is that I can feel myself memorizing parts of the piece and improving quite a lot in a single sitting. It always seemed to take much longer than that in the past. But it's probably because I wasn't playing for long enough to feel it, and I tended to play the whole piece a few times and just do a bit of work on a tricky bit. Now I just do say two bars till I've memorized it and only move on after that, so I can really feel a change.

Thanks Grey, I need it!
Cote A few weeks isn't bad, you sound like you can play it rather than struggling away with little progress, a challenge is good. Agree Tintini we shouldn't be hung up on levels.

I've got one more part of the Bach C minor partita to go. The most difficult one (apart from the last one I haven't started on), I thought, is the fugue in the prelude/sinfonia, if you want to play it speed. One hand practice doesn't help there...

Ladies I am drooling over acoustic pianos online...give me a kick, I don't have room and the neighbours would hate me.

I've never played Mozart's Turkish March! How is that possible??

Neighbours are overrated.

(Though our neighbours have been very good putting up with the millions of instruments being played in our house, including a kazoo...)

Which ones Broken?

At the minute I'm trying to learn to play Gershwin's first prelude on the piano but my hands feel too small, and Berio's Lied on the clarinet. I played in a musical a few weeks back (doubling clarinet and keys) and I've found my love of playing the clarinet again. I'm having to stop myself buying a tenor sax...

My teacher thinks I'm a bit crazy to even attempt this Toccata. She says it's Cycle 3 (not sure what that corresponds to in UK's Grade system) and I'm in Cycle 2 so shouldn't even be trying.

I'm surprised at this @CoteDAzur because my experience of French conservatoire teachers is that they will push students onto more ambitious pieces much earlier than a UK teacher would. Cycle 3 is equivalent to UK diploma and my DD's conservatoire teacher had her start cycle 3 repertoire in her second full year of piano.

I'm not practising enough at the moment due to work pressure, really need to polish off the harder of my Mendelssohn pieces - it's a bit like a fugue in some ways because it has a melody and bass line with two intermediate "voices" and having done a fugue makes it easier to know how to approach it. After that I'm going to go back to a Scarlatti sonata that got abandoned last year because I didn't seem to be making headway with it and I'm going to make a start on a Mozart piano sonata before my teacher moves away.

Mistigri - Cycle 3 repertoire in 2nd year of piano sounds exceptional to me. My DD was still on Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook in her 2nd year. Could it be that your DD's teacher recognized in her a great talent & willingness to work for long hours?

In my experience, French Conservatoire teachers stick to Cycle I pieces until you have passed the Cycle I exam. Even specific pieces for Cycle 1 2ème année if that's where a child is.

Having said that, piano teachers are a particularly pushy group in conservatoires. My teacher says that's due to the fact that there are +10 of them and they need to prove their students are doing well or better than other piano teachers'. She feels no such pressure herself, as our conservatoire's only harpsichord teacher.

"my hands feel too small"

Keep practicing and your hands will get used to it I thought the same last year when learning Rameau's heartbreakingly lovely Allemande from "Suite in A minor" (0:00 - 05:56). I actually thought Rameau can't have meant to demand keeping down the 5th finger of the left hand in bars 5, 6, 7 (see picture) while 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fingers of the same hand are expected to play a melody (with ornaments!) 5 keys away. But he did And I got used to it.