Is Clair de Lune too hard for me?
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As soon as I could see it better, it became much easier to read-play and that made a huge difference in subjective feeling of “difficulty.”
I also decided not to work in the part that starts in measure 27 (where the LH from chords to 16th notes).
As I have become less young I've noticed that having good light and a good manuscript is more important than ever.
The nice thing about the chords at measure 27 is that they are easily recognizable.
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Hay SK, This should get you going.
Link to video
Thought I had seen Hugh Sung was doing something like this.@CHAS Oh nice, thanks for the link! I've seen other Huge Sung videos, he's quite at explaining things!
@bernard I think he is or was a partner or employee with Cunningham? Maybe someone else here remembers...
Ok, I was mostly right, I checked Wiki, it says:
Sung became the Director of Institutional Solutions at Cunningham Piano Company in 2016, and then became its Vice President in 2018.
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Here's the second video:
Link to video
The video is something of a trip back in time.
There are at least three in this series, maybe more?I wonder if these videos were made back when there were more time limits on what you could upload to YT...
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Holy cow, it looks like there's one video for each measure?? Wow.
Also, watching him work in whatever program he's using is kind of nostalgic (I wonder if this is the precursor to Newzik, the app that he promotes)
Anyway, @andyd Andy, his approach to the LH part for measure 27 is interesting, instead of only taking the top two notes with the RH, he takes the top 3 with RH, which means the LH only plays octaves. Interesting... Probably not what I'll do though...
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oops, here's the video, measure 27 part 1
Link to video
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I haven't watched this one yet, but I'll post it here so it's easy to find.
Piano Lesson with French pianist, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet on How to Play 'Clair de lune'
Link to video
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I haven't watched this one yet, but I'll post it here so it's easy to find.
Piano Lesson with French pianist, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet on How to Play 'Clair de lune'
Link to video
@ShiroKuro Oh, that was wonderful! He reminds me a little of the teacher of our group class (except our teacher is Polish or German, I'm not sure which).
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@ShiroKuro Oh, that was wonderful! He reminds me a little of the teacher of our group class (except our teacher is Polish or German, I'm not sure which).
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@shirokuro
I'd add that in bar 27 the second arpeggio in the right hand may be better played fast using 2/1/2 then 3with5 rather than slipping over 1/2/4 then 3with5. I'll choose what feels better when its up to speed. Such is the learning process. -
Bars 27 & 28
Bars 29 &30
I'm playing as the score as written, bars 27 and 28 both start with 4 notes left hand, then 3 and 3 in the LH.
@AndyD I worked on those bits a little bit yesterday, and my fingering is the same as yours. Of course I’m only just getting into this part, so it might change, or maybe my teacher will suggest a change. But this fingering is also in line with how the score is written, and I’d prefer to play it that way.
In his video, Hugh Sung says he tries to make fingering choices that avoid over-stretching the hand. This is a good idea as a general rule, and I usually do the same. But those LH notes are not held notes and you don’t need to keep your pinkie on that Db (for example) so I don’t think playing those first four notes with the LH will necessarily cause an over-stretch.
Actually, maybe it’s just as important to work on bringing the LH over (to the right) as you play those notes… I’m trying to remember which video it was, but I was watching someone play CdL with a nice overhead video shot and really noticing the horizontal movement of their hands.
Anyway, I’m not saying I’m in a position to question an accomplished pianist like Hugh Sung, but for now, I’m going with the standard fingering.
Also, as an aside, I seem to keep wanting to type this name as Huge Sung…. And the famous actor as Huge Grant…
(Sometimes you can’t blame it on autocorrect…)
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Ugh. Yesterday’s practice didn’t go so well. I’m back to wondering if this is just too hard.
OTOH, it seems clear that the degree of difficulty I feel from CdL is inversely proportional to how tired I am. I need to stick it out until my lesson (Monday) and see if my new teacher can get over a few specific challenges — currently the section starting in measure 27 and the one starting in m37…
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Ugh. Yesterday’s practice didn’t go so well. I’m back to wondering if this is just too hard.
OTOH, it seems clear that the degree of difficulty I feel from CdL is inversely proportional to how tired I am. I need to stick it out until my lesson (Monday) and see if my new teacher can get over a few specific challenges — currently the section starting in measure 27 and the one starting in m37…
ShiroKuro said:
the degree of difficulty I feel from CdL is inversely proportional to how tired I am.
Or just proportional, depending on how you read that…
The less tired I am, the easier it feels. The more tired I am, the harder it feels.
Whatever. That’s why I only do qualitative research.
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So thanks to @kluurs I had a very productive practice session last night, with much less frustration! I was working from a Henle edition score, which was fairly high quality. The nice thing about the Henle app is that you can adjust the size, but on the CdL score, the only thing you can change is the number of staves per page. This helps, but you can’t change the number of measures per staff line.
The score I had has five measures in the first line. The score Kluurs shared with me has three. All the notes are the same of course, but this score is just so much easier to read.
Then of course his score has tons of info, fingerings and more, so that is very much appreciated.
Yesterday I focused my practice on the first 26 measures, and it just felt like I made so much more progress.
Yay!
My next lesson is Monday and I’m hoping to have looked at some of the @kluurs !!
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