Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Joplin-themed ABF recital signup thread

"Accuracy improves slowly but I’m still short of even 95%."

With respect - this is a rag! Not only are wrong notes to be accommodated cheerfully, but - you piano MUST be out of tune . . .

heheh, I've decided to play it on our sad, neglected spinet AP so the tuning should be suitably sub-par.

For your DP you could get hold of this:-

I can easily knock mine out of tune. Sounds better then, less clinical. So the setting I have specially for rags is now what I use across the board. . . crazy isn`t it?

lol! I was actually thinking of recording this on the digital, so I could use some weird piano samples

My problem right now is that I can't play the third section at the same brisk tempo as the other two. And I wonder if I will be able to play it all from start to end without horrible mistakes (a few small ones are okay, but not too many!). Well there's still time.

Here's a suggestion - I haven't had time to really practice this to my satisfaction, either - how about playing the sections you can play at a brisk tempo at a brisk tempo, and playing the others at whatever tempo you can play them? This is for fun, no? I simplify where I have to, why not play slower where you have to?

A thought -

Cathy

The trick is - Brazen it out! Crash through the mistakes and come out o` the other side still fighting . . . .! Pugilistics on the Piano; What fun! Really looking forward to this recital . .

Thank you Cathy... and Peter

This will be fun, indeed!

I am amused by all the recent comments. Because I am having the same problems! The Joplin pieces are very challenging!

I'm already doing "the simplified version" of The Easy Money and have reduced that to just AABBA instead of AABBA-X-CCDD.

I am playing part A with two hands at around 50% speed with a fair number of errors. And B is a two handed struggle - still putting it together.

If B doesn't start coming around soon, my simplified version might turn out to be:

A-A- ... A.

Not quite what I had hoped...

(sigh).

I'm starting to hate the "Fig Leaf", which means I have reached that critical point in the learning curve where it seems I will never get over the hump. But don't worry, experience shows that things will start to turn around soon.

Its the last two sections that are the problem - I have to play them at an agonizingly slow pace hands together. While I am doing that I am forgetting the first two sections. Hopefully the tempo will pick up soon and I'll recover my spirits!

Sam

FWIW, I can't get "Rose Leaf" to settle down either!

Anytime! I'm glad to hear you've made some progress with it!

Tension is a nasty beast. Even in my own playing, it creeps in and infests my hands. Over the years, I've been able to eliminate nearly all of it, but there is one particularly nasty bit that lingers and causes uneven playing and sometimes additional notes. I decided after the Chopin Mazurka recital to go all the way back to the beginning and eliminate it, but since I don't have much time at the keys, it will probably take me a few months to feel much of a difference. Never playing wrong in the first place is much easier than correcting decades of mistakes!

For the octave 16ths, if you want to try it, do it with a metronome. I think you'll find Tom is playing it much slower than you think you need to. (I tend to do this all the time with something I "think" is supposed to be very fast.) But if there's still an issue, then I'd say to hold off. Wish we could sit down at the keys and talk octaves.. would be much easier to show than type.

Thanks so much regarding the Bethena, Cathy, and for your thoughts about my mum. Looking forward to listening to the recital!

Hey!
Just checking in.. I've not been consistent in posting lately. Started a new job a while back, while still working one day week at my old job, so any free time goes to piano!

First- happy birthday Cathy!!

Too bad that Dipsey and Valencia have to drop out.. I'll miss you both! I hope your mother feels like herself soon, Valencia, and don't forget to take care of you!

Solace is slowly kicking in.. It looks like I will have it in some shape or form for the recital. At first I thought I'd made some horrible mistake, but it's starting to click. I'm not as far along as I'd hoped, but it's starting to come together faster now.
Strangely enough, I'm finding that this has helped me with tension. For the last 6 months or so, I've noticed tension building more and more in my right arm and haven't been able to pinpoint it. The big chords have really made me realize that I am alway straining to hold a certain shape in my hand, even when it's not necessary. It looked natural, so my teacher couldn't really pinpoint it either. Slow practice with the big chords really helped me understand this. Can't for the life for me figure out why I was doing it in the first place.

Anyway - I'm relaxing more when I play, which has helped me in my playing in general. So even if I bomb this I've already gotten more out of it than I thought! Thanks for making this recital, Whizbang!

Thanks, Aimee O. I still have 40 minutes to go by my time

This is either going to be the most fun recital of all time, or the funniest. Or both. I'll be thru a spate of gigs after this Sunday and then maybe I can move Orig. Rags to first priority. I can play all the parts, and I have some interpretations worked out, but I don't have it as a whole, or at the same tempo for all of it.

Maybe I'll pretend it's the wild west and I'm trying to play while the rest of the saloon is concentrating on shooting each other and not the piano player.

Cathy

Happy birthday Cathy! It should be right now.

Yesterday I recorded myself playing the first two sections. I found that I start section A steady and finish it rushing as heck, so that section B becomes way too fast for me to keep up. Plus I kept messing up an RH arpeggio that I used to do right. My pinky was sticking up and not collaborating at all. I'm afraid the half hour I spent squeezing pliers while working on my bike didn't help. Will try again in a couple of days, and with a metronome. I like it when I let myself go, but these tempo changes are just ugly. How useful it is to record oneself, but how strangely stressful for me!

The piano player is usually the first to get shot . . .

Thanks, sinophilia!

Hm, peterws. Guess I'd have to hide behind the piano.

Cathy

Sam's post reminded me: TWO months till the Joplin recital. March 15.

I don't know why but I thought we only had one month left before the deadline! Nice

Today I managed to play sections AA+B all in a row, with the metronome on to force myself not to rush the parts I know better. To finish my arrangement I only need to add DD, but I might get out on a limb and try to play AA BB A DD, so it resembles the original version a bit more. I will to have to change the ending of some measures.

I tell you all now, this won't be fast. I was all proud that I had gotten it up to 140 bpm, when I realised that the original score is 2/4 and mine is 4/4, so I'm actually playing it at 70 bpm! This will be one relaxing rag...

Now this is a deadline to panic over. Somehow I think playing a rag at eighth note = 50 doesn't make it sound like a rag...

Sam