9. The Skylark

This song is fun to play. I chose to use my 2nd finger on that F# just for the sake of bijection. No need to double up on the responsibility given my 3rd finger. Especially since the 3rd and 4th are responsible for the trilly triplets that characterise the piece. I'm most grateful for these because I think they have helped strengthen my 4th finger and infuse the nerves/tendons it shares with the 3rd with a considerable amount of dexterity. 

I have a special liking for this section where the left-hand fingers kind of trip over themselves and then land 1-3 on G-B. The right hand does a sort of gaping leap to compensate, but it's not so obvious with J.T.'s fingering. I switched it so that the first finger doesn't have to move from its position the second time around. It's less confusing for me. But to make up for it, I needed to skip a finger and go directly from thumb to middle finger. That's the gap I mentioned before. It took some practice to get it down, but now I like the coordination between the hands. It's pretty smooth. 

This is where it all goes down: right in these areas are triplets galore! I've had to slow the pace down quite a bit and discipline my fingers to play these triplets slowly because they seem to speed up unnecessarily and generally go out of control. That is, weirdly, the mark of my ineptitude seems not to be an inability to play fast, but an inability to keep a steady, slow tempo. My self-imposed sloth has been helping, though. I think I've shown marked improvement in my right-hand's evenness. 

Another way in which this piece disciplines my fingers is via these acciaccaturas. There are a million of them as well, played with 4-5 and 2-3 mostly. The first combo (4-5) was, of course, the more challenging and provided even more work for my 4th finger. One of the challenges is recalling which of the notes are in staccato and which aren't. They tend to alternate. The ones pictured here are dotted, but notice: those that sneak in at the right-end of the triplet photos above aren't. 

I just like the shape of the left-hand chords here. The four-note ones remind me of clubs. I call them beeswings because that's a name I remember using instead of clubs as a kid. Not a whole lot more to say about this section. Below it is the ending. It's a broken G chord going down the keyboard... but kinda feels a bit F#-ish because all the grace notes are a semitone above (and therefore spell an F chord). It makes for a pretty sizable (if not exactly a 'big') finish. 

Alan chan's rendition