Piano recording: jury prep
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I have a piano jury coming up in about two weeks. This will be the “final exam” for my piano class this semester. Since my biggest challenge now is perfomance anxiety, I’ve been trying to record myself as a way to add some pressure to my practice.
So here’s my recording from yesterday. I kind of fell apart at the end, but it’s otherwise not too bad.
Miracles, by Alexis Ffrench
Link to video -
I'm now on the 3rd and final op post Nocturne by Chopin in class: Nocturne No. 21 in C Minor, KK IVb/8.
It's a challenge because it's very repetitive, the first half page is almost all I chord alternating with V7. I can't find the climax of the piece--I'm not even sure there is one! It's almost a meditative piece. In this regard, it's just as hard as any of the others, but in a different way.
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I'm now on the 3rd and final op post Nocturne by Chopin in class: Nocturne No. 21 in C Minor, KK IVb/8.
It's a challenge because it's very repetitive, the first half page is almost all I chord alternating with V7. I can't find the climax of the piece--I'm not even sure there is one! It's almost a meditative piece. In this regard, it's just as hard as any of the others, but in a different way.
Thanks for listening everyone!
I'm now on the 3rd and final op post Nocturne by Chopin in class: Nocturne No. 21 in C Minor, KK IVb/8.
Oooh this is such a lovely and compelling piece!
It's a challenge because it's very repetitive, the first half page is almost all I chord alternating with V7. I can't find the climax of the piece--I'm not even sure there is one! It's almost a meditative piece. In this regard, it's just as hard as any of the others, but in a different way.
I can imagine! Chopin is always devilishly hard in any case, but there’s something about this…maybe it’s what you said, the meditativeness, lack of obvious climax…
Have you tried recording yourself and listening to the story you’re telling, or trying to find the story you should be telling, but aren’t?
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Thanks for listening everyone!
I'm now on the 3rd and final op post Nocturne by Chopin in class: Nocturne No. 21 in C Minor, KK IVb/8.
Oooh this is such a lovely and compelling piece!
It's a challenge because it's very repetitive, the first half page is almost all I chord alternating with V7. I can't find the climax of the piece--I'm not even sure there is one! It's almost a meditative piece. In this regard, it's just as hard as any of the others, but in a different way.
I can imagine! Chopin is always devilishly hard in any case, but there’s something about this…maybe it’s what you said, the meditativeness, lack of obvious climax…
Have you tried recording yourself and listening to the story you’re telling, or trying to find the story you should be telling, but aren’t?
Have you tried recording yourself and listening to the story you’re telling, or trying to find the story you should be telling, but aren’t?
Wouldn't you know! Some time after I posted yesterday, I went into the kitchen and was humming the piece. My humming became a bit more vocal and it just gravitated towards wanting to be an operatic tenor singing a serenade! I think that's the germ I need for this piece. An aria! Chopin loved bel canto opera.
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Have you tried recording yourself and listening to the story you’re telling, or trying to find the story you should be telling, but aren’t?
Wouldn't you know! Some time after I posted yesterday, I went into the kitchen and was humming the piece. My humming became a bit more vocal and it just gravitated towards wanting to be an operatic tenor singing a serenade! I think that's the germ I need for this piece. An aria! Chopin loved bel canto opera.
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Very nice SK! I will work on doing some recording soon. I have been working very hard on 3 Chopin pieces myself.
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So my piano jury is this afternoon! I’m a little nervous but also really excited. And excited to be past it!
But obviously there’s a little bit of anxiety there too because I woke up from the funniest anxiety dream this morning.
I had a dream that I went to the testing room, and instead of being in the piano classroom with a Steinway grand as expected, it was rundown house (the kind you’d expect to see as “the old lady’s house” in an anime film with stuff everywhere, hoarder style). There was no grand piano, only a very rickety digital keyboard. I sat down at the piano, and the rule was you had to cover your legs with a big pile of winter blankets. When I did that, I realized there was no pedal, instead, under the keyboard was a small child. Every time you wanted to pedal, you had to tap the child’s head with your foot. Then I realized I didn’t have my sheet music (that’s how you can tell it was a dream, because I always play from my iPad!) so after I ruffled through all these scores for the wrong pieces, my husband said he would go and get it. So he left, and then the lead instructor stood up and said “I’m going to the post office, who has mail?” and that was when I realized there were like ten other teachers in the room. Everyone stood up and started running around collecting all these envelops to be mailed. The lead teacher told me to practice while she was gone, and I started to practice (I was trying to figure out how to pedal without stepping on the child’s head). The keyboard was mushy and horrible, but I thought maybe I could get the hang of it but then I realized that one of the walls of the house was missing and open to the street, and a cement mixer came and started pouring cement in the road, and then there was a big rusted metal frame structure, almost like a water tower but without the basin at the top, which was attached to the cement mixer, so the frame started to topple over as the cement mixer continued to move away from it while pouring cement. I was trying to practice my piece, and watching the metal structure slowly get pulled over, and I realized both my husband and the teacher were not going to be able to get back to the house because the road was now covered in wet cement. So I was stuck there Then I realized I was practicing the wrong piece….
And then I woke up.
I think it’s going to be a good day.
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@shirokuro What an interesting dream! It kind of reminded me of a Dali painting but a film version. Surreal and whimsical!
I went through years (this was a long time ago now) when I had nightmares and night terrors (that's when you wake up in the middle of a nightmare and you're still having it until you're fully awake and realize what happened.
Then they stopped. It was if someone flipped a switch. That was great.
Looking forward to more of your posts...
'But as they said in one of the later Rocky movies, "Time...it's undefeated.".-- Mik
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@shirokuro What an interesting dream! It kind of reminded me of a Dali painting but a film version. Surreal and whimsical!
I went through years (this was a long time ago now) when I had nightmares and night terrors (that's when you wake up in the middle of a nightmare and you're still having it until you're fully awake and realize what happened.
Then they stopped. It was if someone flipped a switch. That was great.
Looking forward to more of your posts...
@Daniel said:
Then they stopped. It was if someone flipped a switch. That was great.I’m glad to hear that! My dream was more funny than scary, but unpleasant (or worse) dreams are truly awful.
@bernard I survived!! I still need to listen to the recording again, but I think it went ok. I was able to maintain my focus pretty well and the flubs I made were not disastrous.
I was definitely nervous and my hands shook a bit, but I think I did a good job of keeping it together.
And I am sooo glad I did it!! The whole experience has been great and I learned so much just prepping for this performance.
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@Daniel said:
Then they stopped. It was if someone flipped a switch. That was great.I’m glad to hear that! My dream was more funny than scary, but unpleasant (or worse) dreams are truly awful.
@bernard I survived!! I still need to listen to the recording again, but I think it went ok. I was able to maintain my focus pretty well and the flubs I made were not disastrous.
I was definitely nervous and my hands shook a bit, but I think I did a good job of keeping it together.
And I am sooo glad I did it!! The whole experience has been great and I learned so much just prepping for this performance.
@ShiroKuro I'm glad for you that it went well.
I was able to maintain my focus pretty well and the flubs I made were not disastrous.
Kudos to you for maintaining focus.
Class this spring has been challenging. I'm slowly working through why. Part of it is because there's only one other student in class. That's both a pro and a con. The pro being that we each get half an hour of class time. The con being lack of varied input.
I'm also noticing, since I don't memorize, that reading through one of the pieces I'm working on is pretty much doable, but as soon as I start to incorporate some suggestions from the class, it gets harder. Sometimes, much harder. My focus moves from reading to the suggestions so I start missing notes, etc. It's kind of frustrating. But that's the process. Once it all gets incorporated, things smooth out a bit. Just something of a bumpy ride, I guess.
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@ShiroKuro I'm glad for you that it went well.
I was able to maintain my focus pretty well and the flubs I made were not disastrous.
Kudos to you for maintaining focus.
Class this spring has been challenging. I'm slowly working through why. Part of it is because there's only one other student in class. That's both a pro and a con. The pro being that we each get half an hour of class time. The con being lack of varied input.
I'm also noticing, since I don't memorize, that reading through one of the pieces I'm working on is pretty much doable, but as soon as I start to incorporate some suggestions from the class, it gets harder. Sometimes, much harder. My focus moves from reading to the suggestions so I start missing notes, etc. It's kind of frustrating. But that's the process. Once it all gets incorporated, things smooth out a bit. Just something of a bumpy ride, I guess.
@Bernard is this the Chopin? I am sure thst is much more complex to read than the pieces I read.
I don’t memorize either, for a bunch of reasons, but I do see how that sometimes creates its own challenges. Following the score, knowing where I am not only in the music, but also on the page…
I think of these things as cognitive burdens. For example, I play from my iPad and so I use my left foot to operate a Bluetooth pedal to turn pages. I’ve been using my left foot for page turns for forever…. Like years.
But I still notice that often I have trouble spots at the page turns. And I think it’s just an extra cognitive burden, to have to think about the score, the music, the musicality, and on top of all that, moving my foot just so, all together… and so those become spots where I am a little weaker, a little shakier.
How many pages is the piece you’re working on?
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@Bernard is this the Chopin? I am sure thst is much more complex to read than the pieces I read.
I don’t memorize either, for a bunch of reasons, but I do see how that sometimes creates its own challenges. Following the score, knowing where I am not only in the music, but also on the page…
I think of these things as cognitive burdens. For example, I play from my iPad and so I use my left foot to operate a Bluetooth pedal to turn pages. I’ve been using my left foot for page turns for forever…. Like years.
But I still notice that often I have trouble spots at the page turns. And I think it’s just an extra cognitive burden, to have to think about the score, the music, the musicality, and on top of all that, moving my foot just so, all together… and so those become spots where I am a little weaker, a little shakier.
How many pages is the piece you’re working on?
@ShiroKuro Yes, it's the last (in my book, not chronologically) Nocturne op. posthumous. No. 21 in C Minor, KK IVb/8.
An issue with reading vs memorizing is the need to spot large jumps, especially in my left hand. So my eyes come off the page and need to return in a split second to where they left off. I'm working on some blues music in hopes that it helps me improve my left hand 'marksmanship' without looking as much. Another issue is the brain power needed to read... but on the other hand, if I memorized there would be the brain power needed to recall. So I guess that balances out.
This week I'm working on setting up 'clues' so I don't need to have my brain racing so much while reading. (For example, noticing that every other 8th note in the first half of the first page is almost always a G, and it doesn't stray far from there throughout). I had actually taken note of this at first readings, but fell out of consciousness at some point.
Re: page turning. It's only two pages long, but last week I played from photo copies so I could avoid the page turn. Made a huge difference. Will be doing this from now on.
Link to video
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