21. The Skaters

I like this song very much. It seems strangely reminiscent (or is it merely redolent?) of "piano lessons," and I think it's because the basic waltz rhythm just feels like a learning piece. Getting the dynamics quite right is tricky, though.
It relies on alternating the staccato and legato in each hand, so that once you practise rapidly lifting the right hand (for instance) while keeping the left down, you immediately have to switch to doing the opposite (bottom left). I like that though, because even though it requires a lot of concentration and repetition, it's helping me do what I set out to do in the first place: discipline my fingers.

    

The melody conspicuously rides the top of the staves, almost surfing the waves of harmony beneath it. You look at the score and the melody immediately jumps out at you. (Pic below.)

Nevertheless, I remember having a tiny bit of trouble coaxing it out at the beginning. I couldn't quite  get something to work right, but listening to a recording of that first bit put me right back on track—didn't even have to listen to the whole thing. I don't really remember what the problem was. A combination of everything probably: reading, rhythm... melody. I guess translating sight to sound is not automatic.

The main melody (refrain) repeats twice, and then come those lilting, alternating eighths that are definitively waltz-like. I like the way J.T. phrases his directions on the dynamics: the two-note slurs, he says we should "toss off ... rather sharply." I actually found it difficult to slur all the way from E up to the C-E dyad, and only after a long time was I able to "toss" anything off with any degree of ease. My fingers and mind also protested a tiny bit to the fact that the order of the trill couplets (treble clef: E-A, F#-A, E-A) switch every other bar. So while the right hand plays E-A on the first beat and F#-A on the second, it reverses for the second bar, starting on F#-A and then switching to E-A. The idea is simply that the right hand just keeps the alternation going without regard for bar lines, but for the sake of rhythm and the need to emphasize (or remain cognizant of) the first beat of the bar, my mind does make a distinction between the bars. It therefore wants to do the same thing at the beginning of each, and it (to its chagrin) finds that impossible for this part of the song. But it learns; it has no choice. Several variations on this theme follow hard upon this. Even a reversed version shows up near the end of the song! Therefore, it takes some effort to get the fingers to do it the right way when that "right" way is different every time. So I'm still working on this. (Sigh... Ain't it always the way? I think I make some version that statement in every post.)

Here's an interesting variation of the above. It's  the culmination of the pattern that begins in the previous picture, and I really like it. It's a true trill, so it is the harmonies that really make the difference, as the right hand just plays the same two adjacent notes (G# and A) for a few bars. These harmonies consist of a diminished F# chord and broken C# minor and E7 chords, and it sounds amazing! I play it over and over sometimes under the guise of practising it (which I really need to do anyway), but it's really just to hear it. The fingering is a little odd because notice how it requires that you switch from 3-4 to 2-3 once the trill really starts. I think J. T. might have suggested that fingering because 2 and 3 perform the trill easier than if we bring that lazy 4th finger into it. But I find that using 2-3 on the trill makes it harder for me to get back to the original position when the regular alternating (E-A /  F#-A) patterns starts up again. So I just keep the 3-4 going and it all works out.

Yeah, the text switches from A to D major around halfway through. Can't say I miss the G#. Check out how both staves are in the treble clef. I wonder what happens when the bass clef comes in and there was no indication of naturalizing all the G#s down there. Mayhem!
 

This song has a lot of different sections. This pic (left) is a barred group of semiquavers shared between the hands and the staves. It introduces a section with lots of staccatos and even acciaccaturas that make it seem very whimsical. (See picture right.) It provides me with some new disciplinary material, too. John Thompson's books boast the existence of "something new in every lesson," and for this song it seems to be octave-width grace notes. It takes work to get the hands not to simply play the notes together rather than in fast succession. The first (grace) note is to be crushed into the time of the main note, but I think it should still sound somewhat distinct, so I've been working on that. After this, the song goes on to another alternating / trill section that sort of reverses the direction of the notes in the original trill section. Whereas before they went from low to high (G#-A, etc.), this time they go A-G#. (Of course, the difference is all in the emphasis: ...A-G#-A-G#-A-G#-A... depends pretty heavily on the left hand to emphasise the down beat, otherwise... tomayto, tomahto.)

Finally, the song returns to the beginning refrain and ends with a bunch of five-finger scales in A. Pretty fun. It's a long song, and I was surprised to have learned it as quickly as I did. But now, of course, comes the work teaching it to my fingers and then relaxing enough to play it with the prescribed dynamics.

 Alan Chan's rendition

Sonatina in G, Op. 36 No. 2 (Clementi) First Movement

The opening theme is written in G, but it is effectively in D major since all the C's are sharpened. I wonder why Clementi did that. It's a little disorienting to look at the key signature now and then and know that it prescribes a formal context that's totally different from the one you're in when you're playing it. (Well, maybe not totally different. After all, G and D majors do share that F#.) But still, the section starts and ends on D, with all the appropriate accidentals to support the context. Even the scales and arpeggios are in D! Weird. 

I've had the piece memorized for a while now... perhaps about a week and a half. Now I'm working on muscle memory, and in that regard, I really have the piece only half-memorized. I find the problem sections to include a tiny leap my left hand has to perform just before it plays the first scale. The distance isn't so much the problem, as it isn't great at all. What happens is that my fingers snag on one of the black keys (C# I guess) after the second finger plays B and then my hand has to quickly expand to hold A and F#. It doesn't sound complicated, and it isn't. I'm just clumsy with it and require extra practice (compared to the other sections) to get it right. It's coming along though. 

Ah, the scales sections... I've learned them properly now and have begun trying to play the first of them at tempo. That's actually working out, but it is pretty taxing on my left hand. I actually feel it in my forearm muscles, and it's amazing how much more relaxed my right hand is while doing it. I've actually been working on my left hand's dexterity actively for a while... and in a C Major descending scale, it's fast enough to train my right hand for those thumb-under portions that it (the LH) doesn't have to do. But in D Major, it's back to its old clumsy self. It is getting better though. (I'm always surprised when I can actually detect improvement in my abilities. I usually expect the change to be so incredibly graduated that I won't be able to detect it at all. But I do, if only in my hand's increased relaxation while it plays.)

I'm still slow with the arpeggios, though. Gotta take it one day (thing?) at a time. I think part of the difficulty I have with arpeggios is the variability of the fingering. These require 1-2-3-5, as can be seen below. But sometimes it's 1-2-4-5, and my fingers just get confused. The first arpeggio in the right hand (not pictured) is actually backwards: 5-3-2-1 and requires a mental shift, since it immediately follows an ascending arpeggio in the left hand. So, I haven't actually exited the awkward-hands stage with those yet. It'll happen though. I've overcome much more awkward situations. And it certainly helps that one of the songs I learned recently (Bach's Prelude in C) is chok-full of arpeggios—though (again) the fingering was different.

[Incidentally, the next song in my John Thompson book, Grieg's Watchman's Song, has me playing arpeggios 7 notes to a beat! It's actually not as bad as it sounds... or perhaps "not as bad as it looks" might be a better phrase to use here. In music, things are always as bad as they sound. Unless atonal. But I digress...]

Perhaps I will update this post once I've improved my playing of this Clementi sonatina. I do like it very much, so I will work on it.

20. La Cucaracha

This adaptation of the song sounds a little different from the version I grew up always hearing sung. The rhythm is in 3/4, but the version I remember hearing was in 4/4 time. So it's never really sounded quite right to me. It functions as a study in crossing the thumb under the other fingers (third mostly). That part's kind of easy though because most of the crossing occurs while the middle finger is on D#, so that gives the thumb a lot of space for going under. More difficult would be a crossing while the "bridge" finger is on a white key.

The song also involves a lot of semiquavers and requires switching them from right to left hand. This means that the melody and harmonic accompaniment also has to switch from hand to hand. It's good for developing the dexterity of the left hand, and heaven knows I need work in that area. Note that the text also requires staccato in one hand while the other hand plays legato. Thus, it builds hand independence, too. It's weird how hard that is to do at first. Overall, a fun Mexican folk tune, but my prior knowledge of a different rhythm made it difficult to really (want to) catch this one. 

Alan Chan's rendition

19. Dona Nobis Pacem

This is an interesting song because it is a round. It begins with just the right hand drumming out the melody and then adding a layer of harmony. Soon, the left hand comes in with another layer. So it works much as would any round being sung by a group: the harmonies come in one by one after one or more periods of the song's repetition. 

Technically, the song is not very complicated because it is mostly filled with chords, but the chords themselves are rather demanding. Many of them are an octave in width, and the reading gets a little daunting when the chords straddle octaves, as they do below. (Great preparation for Chopin's Prelude in C Minor coming up later.) So it requires big hands.

It also requires octave-length jumps. Notice that in the above passage the right hand pretty much zigzags through the measures, playing the same chords three times each, but an octave apart. It's great for sight-reading practice because it provides a study in intervals, especially octaves and sixths. (The dyads in the left hand are in sixths.) Great for working on those areas. I plan to read through it a few more times.

Alan Chan's rendition

18. Sonatina

The opening of Clementi's Sonatina (Op. 36, No. 1)  is, I think, familiar to many piano students. I like it well enough, but because it's a little on the peppy side (which is less to my taste), I opted to learn (i.e. memorise) another sonatina by Clementi (Op. 36, No. 2). Still, I played through this one twice (so far). I think sonatinas are in general a good area for me to try my abilities now and to gain experience using some of the technique developed by playing scales. After doing some internet research, it seems that sonatinas are given at late-beginner / early-intermediate stages of piano development, so I figure I'm somewhere in there and should start working on them.

Theoretically, the "hard" parts of this sonatina are the quavers. However, since they are basically scales in C major, they're actually not hard at all. The trick is to get them up to a considerably higher speed than I'm used to playing in songs proper. The trick, actually, is to balance the speed at which I can play scales in isolation (fast) with the speed at which I can play the other stuff (not fast). I'm getting better at that, but not so much in this song. This passage on the right begins with an interesting set of descending dyads played staccato and ends with an ascending C major scale played legato. It's pretty cool. 

More on sonatinas in the one I actually learned.

Alan Chan's rendition

Just Play the Damn Scales!

January 23, 2015
  C Major
  D Major 

January 24, 2015
  C Major
  C# Major (eyes open & closed)

January 25, 2015
  C Major
  E-flat Major
  C Minor (natural)

January 26, 2015
  C# Minor (natural)
  E Major

January 27, 2015
  C# Minor (natural)
  E Major

January 28, 2015
  C# Minor (natural)
  E Major

January 29, 2015
  F# Major
  D# Minor (natural)
  C Major

January 30, 2015
  F# Major
  D# Minor (natural)
  C Major
 
January 31, 2015
  F# Major
  D# Minor (natural)
  C Major

February 1, 2015
  F# Major
  C# Major
  C Major

February 2, 2015
  C Major (speed, evenness, and synchrony between hands)

February 3, 2015
  F# Major
  D# Minor (natural)

February 4, 2015
  D Major
  B Minor (natural)

February 5, 2015
  C Major

February 6, 2015
  C Minor (natural)
  E-flat Major

February 7, 2015
  C Major

February 8, 2015
  A Major
  E-flat Major

February 9, 2015
  C Major
  A/E Major

February 10, 2015
  C Major

February 11, 2015
  C Major
  A-flat Major

February 12, 2015
  C Minor (natural)

February 13, 2015
  B Minor (natural)
  D Major

February 14, 2015
  C Major

February 15, 2015
  C Minor (natural)

February 16, 2015
  C Major
  A Minor (natural)
  C Minor (natural)
  D Minor (natural)

February 17, 2015
   D Major
   A Major

February 18, 2015
  C Major
  D Major
  A Major

February 20, 2015
  E Minor (natural)

February 21, 2015
  C Minor (natural)

February 22, 2015
  C Minor (natural)
  E flat Major
  C Major
  A Minor (natural)

February 23, 2015
  C Minor (natural)
  E flat Major


February 24, 2015
  C Minor (natural)
  C Major

February 25-28, 2015
  C Major
  
March 1, 2015
  D Major
  A Major

March 2, 2015
  A Minor
  C Major

March 3, 2015
  D Major
  A Major

March 4, 2015
  C Major
  G Major

March 5, 2015
  D Minor
  F Major

March 6, 2015
  C Major
  G Major

March 7, 2015
  C Major
  G Major

March 8, 2015
  C Minor
  E-flat Major

March 9-22, 2015 (Sporadically)
  C Minor
  C Major
  E-flat Major

March 23, 2015
  Ab Major
  D Major (LH)

March 24-31, 2015 (Sporadically)
  C Minor
  C Major
  E-flat Major
  G Major
  A-flat Major

April 1, 2015
  C Major
  A Minor (RH)
 
April 6, 2015
  C Major (hand-intensity differential)
  
April 7, 2015
  C Major Arpeggios (HoH)
  D Major Arpeggios (HoH)

April 8-12, 2015
  C Major (hand-intensity differential)

April 12-18, 2015
  G Major (5-finger hand-intensity differential)
  D Major Arpeggios (HoH)

April 19-20, 2015
  G Major (5-finger slow / evenness)
  D Major Arpeggios (HoH)
  E Major Arpeggios (HoH)

 May 2015
  B-flat Major
  G Minor (natural)
  G Major Arpeggios (LH, RH & HoH)
  C Major Arpeggios (HoH)
  B-flat Major Arpeggios (LH, RH)
  G Major (speed)
  A Major (speed, staccato)
  D Major (speed)
  C Major (speed, hand synchrony)

June 2015
  G Minor
  C Minor (Harmonic, Natural)
  B-flat Major
  C Major
  A Minor
  F# Major
  C# Major
  E Major
  G Major Arpeggios
  C# Major Arpeggios

La Styrienne

The opening

I worked on this song after selecting three must-play pieces from Friedrich Burgmuller's Twenty-five Easy and Progressive Etudes. (The other two are La Reunion and La Babillarde.) The opening explicitly introduces the song as a waltz, not just by the phrase "Mouvement di Valse" but also by the 3/4 time signature and the accents (>) on the first notes of each bar. (Note that minuets, which are also dances and written in 3/4 time, don't have such heavily accented first beats.) Of course, the second and third beats are also heavily accented in waltz rhythms, so it's really the left hand that sustains the form throughout the rest of the song, as the second and third notes of each bar are always identical and that adds a certain amount of natural accentuation. (I'm actually learning a waltz in John Thompson that doesn't do this all the time, but still maintains more than enough of that motif to participate in the form.) 

The melody is naturally what drew me to the song. It has this carefree feel to it, emphasised (if not created) by the frequent note-bending effected by the grace notes. The acciaccaturas introduced in the opening (pictured above) are echoed in the appoggiaturas sprinkled throughout the rest of the piece. I made a mistake while playing these (right) at first because I overlooked the tie between the first of the semiquavers and the main note. So I had to correct that once I recognised it. Wasn't fun... and I'm still working on it. 

The rest of the main section is characterised by its continuous rhythm. It almost completely fills the semiquaver slots so your right hand is in motion all the time.

The phrase that closes this section strikes me as starlike because a constant back-and-forth of the fingers in the right hand hints at that pattern.

 
The other note-worthy section is the ending, which is pretty much a variation on the opening theme. It involves some pretty significant jumps and gave me a bit of trouble to articulate, but it was also quite fun. Overall, I think the piece was a good selection for me because it presented a challenge to my abilities, but one that was nevertheless within reach: an appropriate stepping stone. Glad I learned it.

17. Prelude in C

This "little prelude" by J. S. Bach is filled with arpeggios. I'm not very good with those. Still, I seem to be doing alright articulating them for now, while I'm simply getting a feel for the song under my fingers. I can only imagine they'll improve once I really start practising. The pattern for each bar (for about the first half of the song) goes sonething like: broken chord, dominant seventh to fifth, broken subdominant chord, broken dominant. Repeat. More or less. Of course, since the text is just one arpeggio after another, they all start running together after a while. It takes effort to disentangle them and get them in the right order. It'll happen though; it usually does.

[Incidentally, this Prelude in C isn't the one I thought it was going to be. For almost all my life I've known (and loved) another tune—which, in my teens, I'd discovered was composed by Bach. Apparently the one I really love is the first piece in The Well-Tempered Clavier. I heard it this past week on the companion CD for the Sonatina Album and will definitely be playing it soon.]

This section (left) is basically the biggest deviation from playing straight arpeggios, and it's more of a variation on than a deviation from. The sporadic staccatos begin here too, and basically culminate in the section with the mordents, each of which is punctuated by a staccatoed G.

The mordents come in at the second half, and luckily J.T. gives us a clue on what to do with them.

I practised them a tiny bit beforehand, but even though the mordents are difficult on their own (demisemiquavers!), putting them together with those right hand arpeggios and getting the timing just right was still harder. I spent a couple sessions practising just that section. So much so that as it stands, I now play the mordent section much better than the rest. Not because the rest is hard, but because I simply haven't practised those parts as much. But still, there is something to be said for practising the difficult parts first and hard. It builds your confidence since you know that if you can play the harder part, then you'll be able to do the whole thing soon enough.

The section below is actually my first longish run of semiquavers. This tripped me up quite a bit where the second and third groups overlap that A in the middle of the pic below. I kept messing it up because it required deviation from the regular scale fingering I was used to, and it was hard to unlearn the automatic motion from third to second finger while descending the scale. The text requires 3-2-3-1, and that last 3-1 was murder to do without the second finger slipping in. I'm still working on it. I can do it pretty well slow now. (Before, even that was impossible.) But fast? Forget about it!

Well, I can't quite forget about it. Gotta keep workin'...

Alan Chan's rendition

16 (B). Evening Prayer

Evening Prayer opens in a pretty low register, and I remember sight reading it for the first time and wondering why so many ledger lines! Like Sarabande, this one's not a difficult one to play, so it was pretty useful for sight-reading practice. I like the measured pace of the text, and as a prayer, it's very quiet. Note it begins with pp and ends even more quietly with ppp--with some intensities along the way, of course. It gets up to mp at one point. 

The section that makes me love this song begins near the end. Throughout, each bar had been almost exclusively populated with even, semi-detatched crotchets. Here, the notes begin to shorten and lilt in to form a meandering chain, one that begins in bar 24 and continues for 5 bars until the final few measures pictured below. The melody descends from the height of that C (highest note in treble clef pictured above-right) and undulates to the bottom of the stave. It's almost like a handshake when, for two bars, both hands play the melody, and then left hand takes over complete control of that lilting rhythm and carries it (for the final couple measures) half way down the bass clef.  

Eventually near the very end, the gradient levels out, and the notes begin to repeat as they very slowly inch toward the final chords. Note the two minim groups in the second bar (left). I adore that shift from the first to the second. Flattening the A and adding that D bridges the gap between the F and C chords beautifully.  It's a progression I'd like to understand better so that someday I can make the transition from visceral to intellectual appreciation.

Alan Chan's rendition

16 (A). Come, Dance with Me

I really wasn't looking forward to learning this song because apparently there's another version of my book and the song used in place of this one is much, much more fun. Needless to say I was prejudiced against this one. But it does contain some technical lessons that are appropriate for my level and abilities. The semiquaver forced by the lengthening of the first note of the piece, for instance, requires a sort of twitchiness in the right hand that my digits have, perhaps, not yet developed a capacity for. Also, the syncopation of the left hand is something I could use practice with—notice the notes come in on the second and fourth beats (really the half and three-halves beats, since there are only two in each measure...) Needless to say I played it through a few times—to tempo, of course—but I didn't bother memorising it. Still, have a few more play throughs to go...

On my most recent play through,  I recalled that the song requires quite a bit of hand crossing, which livens it up even more. At one point, the right hand crosses down to the lower octaves of the keyboard and the left hand moves up. The dual crossing forced this notation.

It's a little surreal seeing the staves upside down like that. This must be what the universe looks like from the other side...

Alan Chan's rendition

15. Sarabande

The idea of a grave dance always strikes me as something of an oxymoron. Still, the D-minor key signature supports this mood. Handel's Sarabande is a good song for sight reading for me because it is not particularly complicated in its technical aspects. As a result, I spent several days distinctly not memorising but merely reading through while practising. I have always been a bad sight reader and, as a result, always relied primarily on memorisation to aid playing any piece I tackle. Therefore, I've never really understood why people had trouble memorising... until now. If you can sight read a song well, then it's actually easier to just do that than try to commit it to memory. The page gets really seductive whenever there's a hitch in your ability to recall your next move, and you don't even have to try if you can just pick it right off the page! (I first noticed this while learning Berceuse. There was one particular section I could read decently, and it took forever to memorise the notes because I didn't need to try.) I'd never really had that luxury before, since I've been basically bordering on illiteracy as it regards notes and staves. But now I get it. On the fourth straight day of this, I had to put my foot down. Otherwise, I don't think I would have had the song committed to memory even now, eight days after beginning it. 

Here (above) lies a variation on the opening theme. Handel's a contemporary of Bach (they were born in the same year). So the fact that change is reflected in the bass line's becoming more ornate is no surprise. That's pretty typical of the Baroque period. In fact, the bass line is far more agitated throughout the piece, in contrast to the gradual changes in pitch performed in the treble clef. I had some reading trouble with that section straddling the second and third bars in the picture above. I guess the patterns got a little less predictable and it tripped me up.

Here's the location of another snag in my reading. I'm not at all sure what kept on happening because the pattern of the bass line is pretty similar to previous ones. But somehow I remember getting lost at somewhere around the fourth note of the first bar and also at the second note of the second bar (bass clef). It might be the fingering, actually. I think I just kept failing to use the optimal fingering for anticipating the upcoming notes, and the book's indicated fingering was always impossible for me to execute since I was probably already using that finger. I think I kept messing up some of the intervals too. Can't blame it all on J.T.'s fingering choices...

This final section kind of mirrors the second one pictured above, and of course the right hand gave me as much reading trouble as that other! To be fair, it wasn't that I found the passage difficult to play. My reading simply slowed considerably at this point, forcing the pace of my playing to slacken, and letting me realise that reading the score while playing was probably not the best method of performance for me. At least when it comes to this song and/or at my current reading level. I remain forever in awe of persons who use the score while performing a piece at tempo. Maybe on day I'll get there though.

Alan Chan's rendition