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Well I am totally discusted. I spent days on this one piece for my teacher hoping to impress him and played it with the exact rhythms that Maddy Prior sings it.
I played it once and he said that was good and then had me replay it in bits and pieces. The rhythms noted on the sheet music and the way Maddy sings it are 2 different beings and of course I did not recognize that.
He was trying to get me to play the written rhythm and after 30 minuits of trying gave up./ I just could not play the given rhythm he was wanting me to. I could do a bar or 2 as he wanted them but not the piece. The time sig changes every other bar.

Am I the only one who has had this problem I was at the point of just saying forget this whole darn thing....UGHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By the way the song is Gaudette. Its a medievel xmas carol and processional. Steeeye Span does it.

The obvious solution is to simply shave your head.

I don't have much to say about your whole time sig and tempo issues but I will add that while I was trying to learn the right hand notes for a piece last night I hit upon a three note pattern that led me astray while I figured out the melody of a completely different song based on those notes. My sheet music practice sort of turned into play by ear practice which I suppose isn't all that bad.

Hi Silky,

As usual, I trust that the experts' advises will come along, but in the mean time, this is just one beginner's advise.

I suggest that you have your instructor break each phrases down and demonstrate while recording each subsequent ones as to how he feel that they should sound or be played, so that you can have something to go back and listen to as a source of reference point while practicing.

Try to listen to his recorded versions and work on just one phrase at a time.

You can do it. Good luck to you!

Key Notes

Days?

Dude, I spend at least 2 months on every piece, often 3 months, and even 4-5 for some more difficult pieces.

There's a piece I've been working on for a year, on and off.

It's likely to be another year or two before I get it up to my decidedly non-perfectionist standards to record it.

Tricky rhythms take me many hours of practice before they start to feel right.

I suspect I'm not alone in this.


Mel

HI Key,

He decided to kill it off. Its a xmas carol kind of thing and he was ready to kill my happy azz over it.
I would love to sneak in a tape recorder in...
This was a one time thing.
The rhytems are real simple for most folk. 8th and quarter notes mostly. A few dotted 8th notes for variety.

Well, everything is a learning experience. And sometimes we learn the hard way. It is difficult to relearn something on the spot in front of you teacher.

You might just want to learn the song as if it was a brand new song and not as trying to relearn it a different way. Look at the rhythm/melody first and clap it of tap it or whatever and memorize that first and then go back and play it.

I don't think that imitating a given performance would work for me, especially if I was also trying to be true to the sheet music. A bit of a take-off on what Kymber is saying: For me there is a definite order in which I learn new music. 1. Make sure I understand the rhythms, chanting or clapping them out if need be. 2. Study the notes, determine hand placement, fingering (if it isn't written in). 3. Begin playing measure by measure or phrase by phrase HS and then HT. This might happen over several day. Then 4. When it starts being secure, bring in the interpretation without losing the underlying skeleton. It sounds like you are starting with what would be my step 4.

Not everyone works the same way, but that is what seems to work for me (in case it helps)

That lesson made me decide to go back to real basics.
I realize your right. It just really discoraged me. I am just doing scales and real simple technical exercises that are quarter and eighth notes right now with the metronome set at 40bpm because that is the slowest setting I have on mine.
I am using the Alfred's book 1 on just the simpler songs on the 40 bpm as well. My current plan is to just try to pretend that I just started last week and start out all over again from the begginning so I am not even doing our lesson pieces now. (the lesson stuff is more advanced than the alfred's stuff)that way I can concentrate on 2 things,metronome as a am I hitting the notes WHEN I am supposed to,and trying not to look at the keyboard so I can learn not not watch my hands. There are 2 pages of Hanon stuff that is useful for that.

I hear it costs a lot more to put them back in ^^