Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical What grade would you say this piece is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcsocDHUb1k

If you were to rate this on a 1-8 grade scale, how difficult would you say this? I'm playing this piece atm.. but it seems it needs so much constant practise to perfect I'm actually going nuts!!!!!!

That depends what's on both ends of your grade scale.

I think it's ridiculous to do this kind of scaling in non-classical music (even in classical music it raises many discussions).

Nevertheless, here's a try:
harmonically grade 1, rhythmically grade 2 and technical wise grade 3.

These are my 5 cents of thought.
Now throw them away

Ps. are you learning this from a score?

No, I learnt this by ear!

Technical wise - grade 3?! are you sure?

Okay then, maybe four
Seriously, it depends what your benchmark is. What are you comparing this to? Please define an 8 for me?

After all: the boogie woogie is technically not one of the most demanding styles, but you need to feel it, have a high level of endurance and strength in both your arms and fingers.

Just look at the impressive bodies in this video:

Level depends on what's being assessed, as well as the ends of the scale. If this were a written-out piece of music in the ABRSM syllabus I'm pretty sure it would not appear before grade 8. In fact, there's a Fats Waller piece similar in character to this in last years grade 8.

But that's for 'classical' piano performers, where what is expected is note-perfect performance from a score. In the jazz syllabus it might possibly be graded somewhat lower, because the assessment criteria are different.

If you're trying to reproduce this by ear exactly as he's playing it, that would be very difficult to do, and in any case, unnecessary. Instead, you simply dig in with both hands and play the song by ear, and if you don't reproduce it exactly note for note as he's playing it, that's good, not bad. You want to play your own rendition of it, not simply try to be a second-rate carbon copy of him. In fact, every note in your rendition should be different from his version, even the rhythm should be different. You want to develop your own way of playing, not be a bad copy of someone else.