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I would be interested in getting the group's opinion as to the difficulty level on the original version of Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag on a scale of 1-10 10, being most difficult.

Thanks

3.7

3.7??? I was thinking more 3.675 to 3.68 actually

I give it a 4.

Yep, it's pretty easy-- lots of repeats. If you've never played syncopation that will take some getting used to, but once you've got it, shouldn't be any problems.

It's fun, and almost everyone likes to hear it.

Nina

I'll give the "Maple Leaf Rag" a 5, however I am going to give "The Cascades" a 6.

Yes, I'd say it was a 4 or 5. As the last poster mentioned, once you've got used to syncopation, most of the rags will be easy'ish.

Although I play quite a few rags, one of my favourites is actually "Solace" - try this one first to get used to the rhythms involved(technically any intermediate pianist could sight read it) before going on to the others.

Also agree with PerfectPitch on Cascades, it takes a little more effort to make it sound good.

Regards,

Gary.

If it's just a matter of playing all the notes correctly and up to speed, about 2. If it's a matter of imparting the special feeling of the piece, then about 6 for a jazz pianist and about 8 for a purely classically trained pianist - until he gets used to ragtime, which in my experience takes quite a long time - some never get it. This piece, indeed all ragtime, is played thousands of times by thousands of people and so very rarely achieves that serendipitous effect it can produce in the right hands.

If you need an example, listen to Scott Kirby or David Thomas Roberts.

For the first half of it, about 3 to 4 but for the end, maybe a 5 or 6??? But then again, thats just me, and I never really was any good at rag!

BTW, Bond, I love your grand piano signature!

Ted has it exactly right.

That's a cop-out...the stipulation that imparting musicality is a requirement tends to make every piece a 10 for those who don't "get it" and a 1 for those who do.

It can't be that hard if I'm learning it one year into lessons.

It is possible that someone would rate a piece lower (on the 1-10 scale) to give the impression that they are a better player (or not rate higher in fear of giving the impression of being a poor player) in a survey such as this.

I really liked poster Praetorian_AD's qualifier from the Topic: Chopin "Heroic" Polonaise in Ab Major thread - "on a scale of every significant work in the solo piano repertoire from Mozart's Bagatelles to Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano"

PerfectPitch's comments about the Cascades were quite informitive - I had always assumed that the Maple Leaf was Joplin's hardest

That's a cop-out...the stipulation that imparting musicality is a requirement tends to make every piece a 10 for those who don't "get it" and a 1 for those who do.

Kreisler is right, but then the whole notion of ascribing a number on a linear scale of difficulty is at best no more than a crude general indication.

The maple leaf rag is quite a grand song. The simpsons use that song alot along with the old charlie chaplin movies.(but I guess you guys know that by now)

Are you learning the original or a simplified version? It would be almost unheard of to be able to play this piece in the original version after only one year of lessons. In fact, I would say that more than 90% of people who play piano will never have the chops to play the Maple Leaf in tempo.

And I agree with the poster who said that assigning pieces a numerical ranking on a 1-10 scale is silly. It makes more sense to use words like Beginner. Intermediate etc. although these are also somewhat vague. It makes even more sense to rate the difficulty level of a piece by comparing it to a well known works (this is the method used in Clavier Magazine).

I have just started to play the piano and I guess this maple leaf rag is rather difficult and so at my view it would be around 6 or 7.

"only I may poop on my own lawn"

Well, Oookaay...Ted has it exactly wrong.

Seriously, I hear a lot of people play ragtime. They get the notes right but they really just don't "get it". That is where Ted has it exactly right. Ragtime is fairly simple. Deceptively so. But then again so is, say, Mozart.

I think the optimal speed for a given piece of ragtime exists within quite a narrow range. The more common fault is playing too quickly, giving the listener nothing but a cascade of notes and losing the syncopation altogether. Playing too slowly does happen but much less often. Some of Rifkin's playing of Joplin is too slow for me but at least his effect is always musical.

Perhaps it's something to do with how the player approaches the music. If he goes in thinking, "Ah, this is very simple", then the musical effect he'll produce will also be very simple. If he looks more deeply and experiments with phrasing, dynamics and accents then the listener will be given correspondingly more to think about.