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I just checked the list to make sure I had the rag right -- haha worse things have been known to happen!

I see you're down for the Country Club, which is the rag I thought was in question (except the arrangement I saw was in C).

I also see you're down for the Maple Leaf (my favorite), but bar 13 is a bdim7/D repeated chord if I remember correctly.

NO worries. If you can get a video up, I'll a) know the rag, and b) won't need the score to see what your hands are doing.

- you're playing it in A with the trio going into D, like Tom Brier...

How ignorant innocent naive I am. It never occurred to me that people might be playing rags in other than the original key. I certainly couldn't transpose them on my own! I'll try to stay awake here, and keep learning new things

Cathy

Ok, here's a clip.

http://youtu.be/KD2L3wolzpE

It's only at performance tempo that I have a problem so that's how I've done it here. It's actually not quite as painful today - maybe because I've made a conscious effort to 'relax' but you might still be able to spot something I could improve? Also, I don't know if this view is telling enough. Might it have been more useful overhead?

Nope, I'm playing it in Ab. And I'm guessing you are, too, and that the video clip isn't bar 13, but rather bars 9-16 of the Trio (which is in Db) with a little flip of the rhythm in bars 9-10.

The first thing I notice is that your hand, from this angle, appears to be nearly twice the size of mine! haha

Your hand looks pretty relaxed, wrist looks good, nothing really weird going on, which makes a video diagnosis tougher. But since you do say you have the pain, I've got two ideas for you that you might want to check out, and if it's not one of them, we can try something else. Diagnosis of something less- and/or non- visible is a little bit semi-educated trial-and-error.

First, when you play these octaves, are you thinking in your head of a particular hand shape you have to "hold" to get it right inbetween the chords? The reason I ask this is because the distance between your 4th and 5th fingers doesn't appear to change through the measures, so there's at least some change you might be artificially holding some/all of your fingers "open" and/or "up".

Second, in conjunction with the first answer, and because I saw the tendons flexing on the pinky side of your wrist, there is the possibility that your hand is turned out slightly too far towards your pinky. Not twisting, because it doesn't look like you're going back and forth from straight to bent, but that your wrist is turned out (literally just a hair) too far towards the pinky, and that you might relieve some of the tension by straightening out the wrist a tad. Finger length might make this difficult if your hand really is that big, but give it a shot. If you can't adjust at the hand, look at the elbow (it was off-camera for me), and maybe you can bring the elbow in a hair.

These are relatively minor issues, obviously, but when you combine them with the real pounding you said you like to give the keys while practicing, it could exacerbate the problem. Let me know if the problem persists and we can go to round 2, or if one of these does the trick.

WOW!

Yes, I thought I should put bar 13 in context but now you mention it I suppose I could have just looped, say, 13 and 14.


You’re right, 4 and 5 appear fixed but I’m not aware of holding a fixed position, only of necessary repositioning 1 and 5 to play the octave after playing the narrower intervening Bb7 chord where I’m using 5,3,1 (which felt more reliable than the 4,2,1 I tried). That said, I’ll make a point of consciously NOT holding a fixed position – that could help avoid tension.


I think my hand size is slightly below average for a male so lens distortion must be at work here, also making that wrist angle look worse than it is. But you have a point – though my elbow is fully in for the chords it’s out for the low octaves so I’ll try bringing it in a bit.

I wonder about the upper body movement during the Bb jumps. Newton’s third law is in evidence. When I swipe my arm in either direction, my torso is significantly doing the opposite - mostly because of the speed (momentum). Ideally I’d like an assistant to hold me steady during these few bars. Another solution would be to put on an extra 100 lbs. Are you aware of any evasive action you take to curb that effect when you play the piece or doesn’t it bother you?

Slightly off topic but not entirely; I really like what Tom Brier often does with his LH through Maple leaf - typically a group of 4 x 1/16 notes at the end of the even numbered bars. I can't do this at speed - in fact when I tried it seemed to leave me with a wrist pain similar to the one we're discussing here. Any tips for gaining speed for that kind of thing or is it something some of us just can't do?

Derulux, many thanks for broaching all this. I’m going to try what you’ve suggested and I'll report back.

Well it looks like I got that completely wrong!



Yeah but that's only 8 bars! Putting it together is another story!!

hahahahaha This cracked me up. I would say, though, for your health alone, to skip the 100 lbs! I don't really notice it that much, but actually I had to go back and sit down to see what the heck happens when I play. I do notice that I engage my core muscles quite a bit, but what I really notice is that I tend to use my legs as counter-balances. I never noticed that before, but I definitely do it. I can honestly say that everything from my toes all the way through my fingers is engaged when playing stride at that speed. Not actively tense, but definitely engaged.


First tip -- play it slower. Go back and check out the Tom Brier video. His tempo is slower than yours. After that, yes, there is a way to play octaves, but this one is really hard to describe by typing. I really wish I could sit down and show you, because octaves are my best technique. You really have to be engaged from the shoulder through the elbow to get fast octaves. There's a kind of a "bounce" that happens, but it actually happens in two places to avoid tension -- at the wrist, yes, but also at the elbow. Too often, people hold their elbow stiff and just bounce the wrist, but you have to move the elbow just as much, or you tire out quickly. But, I mean, you're playing plenty fast already, so let's see if the tempo change doesn't alleviate this first.

Did you get that little flip in mm 9-10 from Brier? It sounds very similar to a flip I've heard there before, but I really can't place it, nor which performer did it. Might just be reminding me of something completely different, too.. you never know!


No problem at all.. I hope some of it is helpful.

Played "Fig Leaf" for my teacher for the first time this week. She had an excellent suggestion for playing some of the left hand measures that had not occurred to me and was a real eye-opener.

Of course, all you excellent players will probably say I'm an idiot for not noticing this, but just in case, here it is:

The way I was fingering this measure:



I was just jumping my hand around each half beat, always with 5 on the bottom.

The way that LuAnn suggested I finger this measure:



This way, the hand doesn't move nearly as much. For instance, the second half of beat 2 in the first measure, the hand position doesn't change. The same thing for the second half of the first beat in the second measure.

In general, you can do this anywhere that the hand can reach both halves of a beat without moving, especially if it's just an octave.

It seems obvious now that someone has pointed it out to me. Of course, it doesn't look as cool without my hand jumping around everywhere - but I think it will be more accurate and help me get up to speed easier.

Sam

Not at all... and definitely give it at shot. I'm working on a piece where I'm trying all manners of fingerings to make things work.

But also watch the YouTube ragtime pianists. Stride is pretty much 5 on the octave and 5 on the chord.

Yeah, not an idiot at all, by any means. I happen to play 5 for pretty much all of it, and would in this case, too, but if you find 4 easier, there's nothing wrong with it. Just watch that you're not holding your hand open to make it work. If you start feeling fatigue, discomfort, pain, anything, that would be a good indicator.

PS- you're not really moving your hand "less" in this case, just differently. The thumb still has to go just as far, and in ragtime, is often your "landing point" mentally.

Hi folks,

I'm very likely to be moving house soon, with no guarantee of being able to play the piano regularly for quite a while, so I hope you won't mind the fact that I have handed over my piece - Leola - to Beric, who will do a good job of it, I know.

Good luck with getting your pieces ready, and I look forward to checking back in ere, once the recital goes live to see how its all going

Got it marked down. Thanks for the heads up and good luck with the move.

This is amazing and makes me so glad I did not pick Maple Leaf to do!

Hi Everyone,

Hope your recital practicing is going well. I'm sorry to do this, but I'm going to step down from the recital. My piece was Bethena and it's a great piece. I really hope someone else will be able to play it for the recital. I've hardly practiced it over the last month as my mother has been ill. It's not the only piece that has escaped me. I'm having trouble practicing all the pieces for which I have any expectations or hopes with respect to my own playing. This piece happens to be one of those and because of this the practice on it just isn't happening.

I'll definitely still participate in the recital as a listener.

Is anyone interested in taking up this piece?

for both Dipsy and Valencia. Sorry to hear of the time constraints, and Valencia's mother's illness, for both of you. Hope the move goes well, and your mother's illness abates.

I've played Bethena before, and I'll re-record for this recital unless someone else wants it. I think someone else was interested, but it was taken when they wanted to claim it, so I'll happily let them have it if they speak up!

As for how Original Rags is coming along - . That's the best I can say

It should be fun, though.

Cathy

Thank goodness for power outages ...

Feeling much better re: progress of late.

In hindsight, I'd have been much better off not starting from the top with my rag. Far greater progress to date would be likely, had I requested some coaching. Instead, I've fumbled along slowly, all the while being side tracked by other works, where reward was coming faster. I was really beginning to get stressed leading up to Christmas with very little progress.

Fast forward through a two day power outage, the Christmas holidays and VIOLA ... I am half way through now. Better yet, parts of it are actually beginning to have a rag flavour.

With two months to go, I'm feeling much better ... contrary to my stress leading up to Christmas.

It will definitely be fun, Cathy and glad to be in the show.

Took you off the list, Valencia. Will leave it blank for a while to see if someone else takes it and, if not, add jotur.

Derulux, many thanks again for your recent feedback. Definitely some progress. Probably a hang-over from the period before seeking advice, I went on to have a quite bad spasm of pain for a day or so but got stuck back in pretty quickly with the certain knowledge that continued tension would put rags permanently out of reach. I reflected further on the apparently fixed 4 and 5 you’d spotted. Although unable to sense any rigidity at the time of recording I set about trying to find a deeper level of un-tense, trying to ‘let go’ of the hand in the pitifully short break between the boom and the chuck. I think I had some measure of success by adopting an attitude of wanton neglect towards the fourth finger – aided by the fact that fourthy isn’t even playing any notes so WTF! It seems to have done the trick insofar as that particular pain hasn’t returned. Accuracy improves slowly but I’m still short of even 95%.

I’d been watching Tom for some flips and cribbed a couple but not at the beginning of that phrase – it was probably just a tic in the playing. I’d still like to be able to throw out some of those LH octave 16s he does but, as you say, it’s a technique that would require a visible demo, I think. The few times I’ve tried it I risk more wrist pain.