13. Arkansas Traveler

I employed Arkansas Traveler in service of my reading, and I must say this was a good challenge: it became readable at the right speed, that is, if I slowed down enough. It's a bit on longer side, spanning three full pages, so it would always be kind of a marathon reading session. Thankfully, the opening is familiar and simple enough to soothe my anxious  soul. Anxiety is my default reaction to the prospect of reading, so it's always a relief to be confronted with two simple left-hand chords and an easy right-hand progression to begin this piece. It reminds me of the way H. M. S. Pinafore begins for some reason. That song is, freakily, also the 13th piece, but in the Third Grade Book! The connection is not a far stretch, though, since the both are in F Major, begin on F (different octaves), and if you check out the opening of H. M. S., you'll find a similar arc in the direction of the right hand notes. Anyway, I soon got used to reading the left hand chords and kind of moving my hands around in the "home base" of the F clef. I think that's something of a victory, however small, and deserves note. My future self would be interested in a fact like that. 

I encountered quite a bit of these 7th chords (built on C) and got used to them, too. We'll see these in variation coming up. I still need to think a bit about the way these move to the third that follows in the left hand, but it's coming along. That kind of manoeuvre occurs a lot throughout as well--moving to a third just below after playing an initial wide(r) chord. 

Top left pic shows a passage that was kind of a difficult to read through, but still more to coordinate the fingers. I remember forgetting to repeat the higher notes in the right hand, and it's pretty much always a hardship to read chords in two hands. I managed, but slowly. Reading--or, rather, anticipating the intervals helped. Note that tenth in the left hand at the end of the second measure. Not sure I anticipated that! These alternating left- to right- hand chords pictured bottom left came nearer the end and were a bit easier and satisfying, although did have to concentrate to get the interval shifts correct, as I tend to dyslexify stuff in a way that sends the shifts in the wrong direction. 

I had enormous trouble reading this passage. Not only were double-handed the rule chords throughout, but they're all pretty much slathered with accidentals. Only memorisation could have saved me. I wasn't memorising this piece, but at this point I almost started. The pattern is interesting though, with a kind of slant to the dyads that places first one finger (of each two-note chord) and then another on a high black note. The progression leads you out of and then back into the key. 

Below are two variations on that seventh chord I mentioned much earlier. The picture to the left shows an added C in octave that gives my fingers a stretch. It's weirdly a stretch I noticed only on the second or third playthrough, though. I'm hoping my fingers didn't become shorter. Or, worse yet, that I didn't regress!

These semiquavers mess with the rhythm enough to trip me up... or maybe it's the reading that trips. I can see how these are similar to section that gave me some finger coordination trouble, but with a lot of shifting back and forth between staves. (Also a reading hazard.) But I'm getting more comfortable even with that, believe it or not. 

The ending is a familiar kind of broken-chord-melding-into-chord progression. But there's a cool section in the second half of the first bar where the melody from the very first measure of the song is now shared between hands. I guess it's a lesson in style. It must have been done for aesthetic purposes, since the right hand had managed it quite well on its own earlier. Overall, a fun piece, reading notwithstanding.

Alan Chan's rendition