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i'm gonna save this in my post history for future reference.

Hopefully you will get there quicker than that. I was taught to work on the left hand first before trying to learn the right hand and that makes sense because the left hand holds the key to playing at a steady tempo.

I'm excited with this rag, things are working so far, it is so difficult to me, I'm spending all me avaiable playing time to study this piece for a week by now! The octaves, the 5th finger "landing" on the black keys... I'm almost done with the first part (the first repetition), but now that I'm learning the second one I can see I'm still far away...

Cebukid, there are so many nice rags that are not from Joplin, find in youtube a guy called BachScholar, he recorded a lot of nice rags from other composers.

Check it out (Egel too, and all fans of ragtime):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-u3nja4OGE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys3Sc8CEacM

cheers

al-mahed, yes I'm familiar with the works of James Lamb and other ragtime composers. I haven't been playing (as a grownup) too long, so I haven't had a chance to tackle others' works yet, although I enjoy listening to other rags very much!

..and yes, I'm familiar with B-Scholar's playing. He's a very good, classically trained player of ragtime.

Also, I've started Maple Leaf Rag! It'll be my fourth Joplin piece. I don't find the first strain difficult at all actually. I'm just dabbling with it for now, because I'll be taking on Chopin Op. 9/2 pretty soon.

Good luck with Swipsey. You'll find that each Joplin piece is a different learning experience, and once you've played one, you won't be afraid to take on others.

Swipesy is a great rag and it's one of the 8 or so rags that I play. The parts which were hardest for me to learn were the last four measures of the third section and to a lesser extent measures 7 and 8 of the first section.

The first measure of the second section requires threading your fingers between the black keys to hit white keys. My fingers can squeeze through on my piano but if I play it on other pianos I sometimes find my fingers have a hard time fitting between two black keys.

Maple Leaf rag is a tough one, I work on it from time to time as a background project but I still have a long way to go till it sounds good.

In Oct. 2009 we had a wonderful Piano Forums Piano Party on Cape Cod. 5 houses, 5 pianos, over 3 days.

One of our new guests was Sue Keller, a well known and respected ragtime pianist and entertainer.

You can view some pictures of the party here...
http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1221179/5.html

The next page has a list of MP3 recordings compiled by Sue's husband while we all took turns playing the pianos.

Pretty much anything that says Sue Keller will be ragtime, and very well done.

I enjoy ragtime myself, but I'm pretty much limited to Billy Joel's Root Beer Rag.

Hi Chris, this is exactly how I feel. The 7-8 measures of the first section gave me more trouble, but the most difficult part until now is the second section because of what you already said and specialy because measures 5 and 6, have to fly the hand and land the 5th finger at F# at measure 5 and do the octaves.

Oh, the 15th and 16th measures of the first section are giving me a hard time too.

The thing is difficult, and I hope the other section go more easly

cheers

Cheers Frank, thank you for let us know about it!

I'm a huge Joplin fan. I've tried to listen to other of Joplin's contemporaries, but they dont compare to Joplin. William Bolcom composed a few really good ragtime pieces also.

Playing ragtime is a whole different story though.

As to the first question. Since easy ragtime is difficult to find. I would work on things like Strauss waltzes and polkas since you can find easier versions of those and the playing style is kind of similar.

I also love ragtime and that is how i worked my way up to it.

My main issue with ragtime is joplin is actually not my favorite even though his music got me into it.

Because of this my favorite site for rags is at the university of colorado.

http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/sheetmusic.pl?Rag&titlepages&1

this collection is extremely large but it is all in the public domain which means that the collection ends at 1914 (so many years before they posted it all) and the pieces that would have had their copyrights renewed because they are popular (most of Joplin's stuff) will not be found there.

The other nice thing is that a lot of the less popular rags are easier so you can eventually work up to the really hard eubie blake and joplin stuff

SpencerF - thanks for the link!

Cathy

Yeh, thanks for that. I'll have to play through some when I've the time.

Yeah you are welcome! just keep in mind that a lot of that stuff is pretty offensive. Gives you a real taste as to what the culture was actually like. No reason to censor history from sensible adults though.

But it is an amazing collection. I am working on printing every piece out. It's taking me a while...mostly just finding the time to download and save each picture takes forever.

I hope your library will be open to the public! I tend to turn my screen sideways and sightread from there. You can get through lots.

Wow that sounds...hard and awkward.

I also turn the image sideways!

lol, still it seems like it would be awkward to play from a computer screen. Maybe not though, i have never tried it. Though i don't think it's possible with an upright grand.

I use this reading through method on my DP or clavichord. Balancing a screen on an upright could have its difficulties.

What the heck, I'm not doing a lot, I'll start now. Suggestions?

Aggravation Rag is quite professional. I'm not sure you need so many Ab's in A minor. Surely G#'s make more sense?

Bit of a pain they're single images and not pdf's.

The "Trio" (3rd strain) is the toughest part. I want to take on this next after I finish the 1st strain.

Like you, Maple Leaf is my "side project." The notes are easy to learn but bringing it up to performance tempo is the tough part. This is one that sounds very nice around 96 BPM.

Yes that third section is really hard. The other sections aren't so easy either, the first is the only one I can play at > 40bpm. I find Maple Leaf a lot harder to remember than other Joplin rags, it seems to be full of unusual harmonic movement.

The first two measures of the fourth section are my favorite of the whole song, they just seem to totally capture the genius of Scott Joplin.