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I've figured that it wasn't a translation. :P
I guess I miss-spoke. I meant that I'm surprised that the English version of the song has so different lyrics.

But I didn't know the origins, so thanks for the info.



Interesting! I'll go watch the entire clip a little bit later. It seems a very interesting analysis.

Record your own playing, at a slow tempo. It's much easier to hear uneven playing in a recording, than when you're busy playing.

Slow down the piece, until you can play it all -- hard parts and easy parts -- at the same tempo. A metronome might be useful for that.

Then, _gradually_ (over many repetitions) speed it up:

. . . You shoud give the "hard parts" extra practice.

Identify the hardest section -- the one where you want to slow down the most. _Gradually_ work on speeding it up.

The tempo of the piece, when you perform it, shouldn't be any faster than you can play the hardest section.

Haha, funny you should say that. I suddenly realised only last week as I was in the kitchen preparing tea that Twinkle twinkle and Baa Baa black sheep have the same tune!!!

Also the ABCDEFG song

Aaaarrrggghhh!!! I hadn't realised that one either
Hope there aren't any more!!

Not in my versions they don't. They are similar but

In C Major Twinkle = C C G G A A G F F E E D D C
Baa Baa = C C G G A B C(oct) A G F F E E D D C

Haha!!
That's well near enough for an amateur like me to be called the same
would you settle for 'a variation on'?

What I would recommened is that you slow down the tempo until you can play the notes evenly, both in terms of tempo and volume. If that means playing half speed then that's fine. The worst thing you can do is to practice inaccuracies because they become intrenched. Much better to practice slowly and accurately and gradually increase the metronome tempo. Keep recording yourself and slow down again if you hear too much uneveness creaping back in. Don't worry if there is some small amount of uneveness, it's a challenge with Mozart that is very difficult to master.
Finger exercises are useful for playing Mozart, Hanon and suchlike.

@hyena
I think that the main problem is one I and most other new pianists share with you - you play the easy bits fast and the harder bits slow.
It really is a pain to slow everything down to the pace of your slowest/hardest bit (well I find it very very very hard) but the experts do say that is what we have to do and I'm trying my best.

I've just got a copy of the sheet music and your effort has inspired me to have a go myself.
It's ranked grade 5, from what I can tell, and I'm nowhere near that, but heigh ho, nothing ventured.....

Hyena, after reading the initial comments I expected to hear a mess, but then after a few hours I went back, read some more comments, and listened myself. I wasn't familiar with the title but of course I am familiar with the basic tune. While I am nowhere near qualified to give technical feedback but felt I would post a positive comment. I enjoyed it and was pleasantly surprised but the music. Yes, a little steadier tempo will help; that is something which I struggle with at times, particularly in fast runs or (relatively) complex pieces. By and large, though, it seems like you're notes are accurate and the phrasing is decent. I think it's well on it's way. Keep it up!

Btw I just began Mozart's K545. The truth is I really don't like this era at all; I greatly prefer the Romantic era, with it's dynamics, rubato, and expression. However, my teacher felt it would be important to develop the skill to play faster runs at a steady pace, and that it would help me advance in the era that I do prefer, rounding out my limited skill set. I'm not excited about this undertaking; it feels more like work than fun. Point is, it seems to me these pieces have a unique technical challenge to them, rapidity and evenness that takes a lot of work.

Hyena, thank you for answering - I'm a big delayed in responding.

When you first appeared on PW, you gave an example of your earlier playing and I watched it then. Being self-taught, you had the same kind of "spontaneous flow" that I had when I self-taught as a kid, your own way ofc, and thus missing other bits that are more in the fundamentals side, which I also relate to. I learned very late that there is such a thing as approach and such. It's a vast topic. "effective practice" yields some tidbits in this forum. Dr. Mortensen's videos may not be ideal, and tedious, because they're aimed at his own students, but there may be clues there as well.

There are a lot of things you can do, and I don't know if they can be set out in one swoop here. For the playthrough - that may be good if you do it, pencil in hand (do you read, or are you going from recordings?), marking out things as you go along. After that, the practice in sections, building it. That is a topic that I can't flesh out here. I learned an approach that has two aspects: chunking and layers. The "chunk" means the sections that you are working on. The "layer" means the element that you are working on. Timing is an element, dynamics and touch are two other elements, pedal for pieces that have pedal can be another element. For those of us who are by nature "spontaneous", work that is un-spontaneous and in a sense un-musical, after which we pull in some of the musical feeling again, this seems to build a kind of scaffolding or backbone to our work. For me the jump in quality and effectiveness was audible, and it also took me less time to reach things. I'm still learning.

while pruning the roses, I spotted a lovely female ghost moth on my wall
I also remembered a little nursery song to the same tune :

Little Arabella Miller
Found a furry caterpillar
First it crawled upon her mother
Then upon her baby brother
Oh said Arabella Miller
Take away that caterpillar.

No doubt the length and breadth of Europe, there are countless little songs set to that same tune

I read! Though, I'm not very good at reading yet, only been reading for 1.5 year. But I'm making some progress, I can finally sightread some of the Tchaikovsky Jugend album! But because of that, my teacher doesn't recommend me playing pieces I know. But I remember all pieces I can play by heart. So I hope to come to a point where I can just read a piece, without actually remembering the notes.

As for practice methods, I've been learning a lot due to the Bach inventions. I don't think I don't know how to practice well, it's more about getting it into my habits, applying that knowledge.

---

Anyway, thanks a lot for all replies!

To summarize. I will put the metronome on about 150BPM, though play the 16th notes as 4ths. I suppose playing them staccato will help with the rhythm too? As for musicality, making sure the accent is in 2/2 time.

When I'm finished I'll record all of the 12 variations to show the result.