Help with this rolled chord in Clair de Lune?
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Sudden thought, is your body far enough right to make the fingers feel natural? Maybe move up the stool, or try the chord two octaves lower to find what works?
@AndyD thanks! I'll try to see where I'm sitting, and if I can lean more to the right. That's very helpful!!
@bernard omg! doing the mirror thing is brilliant!! I'm also going to try to do the LH rolled chords an octave (or two!) lower and just see how it feels, because I haven't tried that at all yet.
These two things (mirroring and moving lower on the keyboard) might also help me decide whether to use the thumb on the top two notes.
My current teacher has very small hands, like, to my eye, dramatically small. I'm 5'4" and have probably a slightly larger than average reach for a woman. She is quite petite, maybe only 5' tall, and her hands are very small and her fingers look short to me. But of course, she can get her hands to do all kinds of things that I can't. So I think the thumb on two keys things is probably something she has to do. And it sounds fab when she does it.
But I'm not sure I "have" to do it this way.
So I will try all these ideas -- leaning to the right more, mirroring to see how I'm using my body when the roll is in the RH, and then also playing lower on the keyboard to see what fingering feels natural -- and then go from there.
To your (@bernard point about making up exercises -- I was trying to play just the top three, 3-2-1 and it's really getting over "c" that is the problem. (also I think my 3-2-1 spread is stiff)
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BTW, I like my new teacher but she's no where near as dynamic and creative an instructor as my previous teacher was.
That's the way the system here works (uni music school), I don't have much choice, and my teacher last year is graduating in Dec (with a doctorate in piano performance) so she's not teaching this semester anyway.
It's fine, but it really underscores 1) how good my last teacher was, and 2) how inexperienced my current teacher is as a teacher.
All the ideas in this thread are things I don't think she would come up with, but I bet my previous teacher would. She had a trick or a solution to anything I threw at her.
/threaddrift
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I’m not near my piano (in Miami for a conference) but will chime in in a few days. I play that last chord real slow. I like how the C hits before the A, breaking the ‘trebleward’ roll a bit.
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5-4-3-2-1, but I have big paws. And a thumb that bends outward more than usual (don’t know what that’s called).
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I think I am going to leave out that Gb. If I do that, I can roll the chord in one motion.
It seems almost blasphemous to drop a note when this whole is all about tone colors, but it’s one nanosecond across the whole piece, and trying to get those five notes in was making my wrist hurt. Four notes seems much more doable.
We’ll see what my teacher thinks at tomorrow’s lesson.
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I think I am going to leave out that Gb. If I do that, I can roll the chord in one motion.
It seems almost blasphemous to drop a note when this whole is all about tone colors, but it’s one nanosecond across the whole piece, and trying to get those five notes in was making my wrist hurt. Four notes seems much more doable.
We’ll see what my teacher thinks at tomorrow’s lesson.
@ShiroKuro If it were me I'd leave out the Db in the left hand as it will be far less noticeable and a Db appears in the right hand as well so it won't be entirely missing from the chord. The Gb seems pretty important to the harmonic movement and it's the only Gb in the chord so it's elimination would make a big difference.
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@ShiroKuro If it were me I'd leave out the Db in the left hand as it will be far less noticeable and a Db appears in the right hand as well so it won't be entirely missing from the chord. The Gb seems pretty important to the harmonic movement and it's the only Gb in the chord so it's elimination would make a big difference.
If it were me I'd leave out the Db in the left hand as it will be far less noticeable and a Db appears in the right hand as well so it won't be entirely missing from the chord. The Gb seems pretty important to the harmonic movement and it's the only Gb in the chord so it's elimination would make a big difference.
Thanks so much for this suggestion!! I wasn't tracking that Db in the RH, but of course, there it is!
I played it w/o the Gb and thought it sounded fine, and it was sooo much easier to play, so I thought I'd go with that. But finger-wise, if I don't have to get 2 on that Db, doing 5-4-3 on Eb-Gb-Ab and then 1 on Eb ought to be relatively easy.
I will try this tonight when I practice.
Thank you!!!
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If it were me I'd leave out the Db in the left hand as it will be far less noticeable and a Db appears in the right hand as well so it won't be entirely missing from the chord. The Gb seems pretty important to the harmonic movement and it's the only Gb in the chord so it's elimination would make a big difference.
Thanks so much for this suggestion!! I wasn't tracking that Db in the RH, but of course, there it is!
I played it w/o the Gb and thought it sounded fine, and it was sooo much easier to play, so I thought I'd go with that. But finger-wise, if I don't have to get 2 on that Db, doing 5-4-3 on Eb-Gb-Ab and then 1 on Eb ought to be relatively easy.
I will try this tonight when I practice.
Thank you!!!
@ShiroKuro I barely notice it if the Db is dropped from the left hand. Think of it as changing the voicing (dropping the LH Db) versus changing the harmony (dropping the Gb).
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@ShiroKuro I barely notice it if the Db is dropped from the left hand. Think of it as changing the voicing (dropping the LH Db) versus changing the harmony (dropping the Gb).
I barely notice it if the Db is dropped from the left hand. Think of it as changing the voicing (dropping the LH Db) versus changing the harmony (dropping the Gb).
Yes, it makes total sense! I'm looking forward to trying it this evening. The big question is how it feels under my fingers. I will report back!
And thank you for this suggestion, now I won't look like an idiot in my lesson tomorrow for not having noticed this!
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