http://www.emusictheory.com/
the site for exercises

metronome & scales, cont.

Got as far as C# minor scales today and once again undone on the contrary motion using 58, 1 beat per two notes. Maybe I was inventing rhythms of my own as mnemonic aids and lose it when I try to conform to the metronome.

sensory overload

Today I started doing minor scales in eighth notes at 60, trying to progress from doing them in quarter notes at 120 so that I could get a sense of rhythm not just tied to each note. I was instantly confused by the scales and realized that it was because I was doing them eyes open. I'm used to doing them eyes shut, and the additional information just disoriented me. It reminded me of the book I read about a particular remedy for blindness. The author was blinded by a chemical accident at age 4 (playing in shed with his sister) and some vehicle in the corner of his eye which prevents incursion of blood vessels was destroyed. The therapy was some sort of genetic therapy that permitted reconstruction of that vehicle. He described how he spoke with others who'd had it, some of whom had become depressed afterwards, and perhaps that's due to sensory overload that they couldn't manage. In his case he said that the moment he had the bandages removed, he was agog: how can people sit in this waiting room with this rug and not be astounded by the color? He found he had to learn how to incorporate his previous navigation strategies with his new sight because he couldn't just automatically triangulate, etc. But in his case it was successful, although the book ends with an indication that he was starting to experience a malignancy known to be a consequence of the treatment.

Anyway, with the scales at 60, I was doing ok until I got to the contrary motion on F#. I realized that I was using the sense of octave I get from individual counting to remember the scale and could not make the conversion to 2 notes/beat.

Lessons from the Little Printer from Hell

The very cheap HP 1600 that I bought last spring seemed, in its last throes, only able to print parts of things, as if it only had enough memory for a few paragraphs or portions of a picture. In its last illness, it ruined the spooler on my desktop and had designs on some of the keyboard functions of my laptop, so it's been tossed. I am so displeased that I can't even bring myself to afford it the dignity of a proper burial (i.e. try to return it for a refund). But I realized today that maybe there's a lesson in its behavior, if I can call it that. Maybe the reason I halt in confusion after the ends of measures is that I don't have enough storage space to recall and prepare the next. I hope the metronome will push me in spite of myself.

Public domain piano scores

http://imslp.org/wiki/

Memorizing - finding patterns in Czerny 18

Yuliya talked me through patterns in #18 and played it with the score, then played it "cold" (book shut) with only 1 mistake.

Left hand:

MM 1 - 4 descent: Left hand is diatonic G, with 1/2 step grupetto embellishments. Yuliya plays it all 2-1-2-3-1-2-3-1 (even the f#)-2-3.

MM 5 & 6: ascent is mix of diatonic G and a chromatic addition every third, with same embellishments: steps are 1e-2f#-3g-3,1/2g#-4a (note unlike diatonic scale, this has two 1/2 steps in a row)-5b-6c-6,1/2c#-7d (ibid). Note it starts on E, which is relative minor of G, and sticks in the G# and C# to the G scale.

M 7: 2 major 3rds except stick in the earlier F#-G 1/2 step, with same 1/2 step embellishments, then minor 3rd: 1 d- 3f# - 3,1/2g - 6 (3d fm G)b - 1 (minor 3d fm B)d.

MM8: diatonic G w/ no grupettos.

MM9: descent: LH descends by whole steps with variation of thirds. mm 9 - 12 have same base notes as do mm1 - 4; the difference is that mm 1 - 4 use 2nds for the grupetto embellishment while mm 9 - 12 use thirds. Last note in bass of mm4 is f natural but is f# in mm 12. The trebles of these two sections have the same note as upper note in mm 1 - 4 and lower treble note in mm 9. The treble notes in 1 - 4 are supported by their 6ths, while the treble notes in 9 - 12 are supported by their 3rds, so they are the same notes, different placement.

Refinement for the new arpeggio drill, described in New Drills, cont., below

The latest drill adds minors to the root, the 1st inversion and the 2nd inversion. And diminished and augmented arpeggios. I heard Dvorak's Serenade for Winds on the radio yesterday. (I think I remember Suzanne playing it.) There was a passage in the middle movement that seemed a bit like this drill: where a note spins off arpeggio after arpeggio, major, minor, different inversions.

Balance

I can better hear the different voices of Consolation #3 when I play with my eyes closed, which I can briefly do now that I've memorized the first 2 pages. This is helping me separately pace the lines of 8th notes (and - help! - 16th notes) in the treble and the triplets in the bass.

Yuliya says to play the bass and sing the treble. This helped a lot too. She says that if I think that the pace of the singing is too slow, that means I need to speed up the piece, since it is a song.

After working on the above I played Song of the Lark and was better able to separate the bass line from the accompaniment line. Yuliya says that the latter needs to be the quietest of the three. I am starting to be able to hear what I need to do.

Flabbergasted

Am astounded to see that an incomprehensible treble passage in Lizst Consolation #3 is in fact the e flat harmonic minor scale in the treble (starting on the 5th) and the e flat minor arpeggio in the bass.

New Drills cont.

I got rather compulsive about the arpeggio drill. It consists of taking a note (in my case, C seemed like a good choice), and doing (1) the triad from that root, (2) the triad of which that note is the major 3rd (in this case the first inversion of the A flat triad), (3) the triad of which that note is the minor 3rd (in this case the first inversion of the A minor triad), (4) the triad of which C is the 5th (F, 2nd inversion), (4) the minor triad of which C is the 5th (f, 2nd inversion), (5) the C triad plus the 7th (and my book calls these "major-minor 7ths" - - I think people call them the dominant 7th, in other words a minor 3rd up from the 5th, or B flat), (5) the 7th of A flat starting with C, (6) the 7th of F starting with C, and (7) the 7th of which C is the 7th, or D's. Repeat C and c, then c dim and c augmented, then C one last time. Then I went on to D and did the same - - which took me thru D, E, F#, A flat, and B flat. And then I thought maybe I was done. But that seemed too good to be true. So I charted exactly which arpeggios this much of the drill covers, and it turns out that it's exactly half of the 7 x 13 possibilities. It looks like if I take a half-step after the B flat round and continue with B, then C#, E flat, F, etc., I'll hit them all.

Consolation for Lake Wallenstadt

Consolation #3, to be exact. Yuliya decided that was a better choice. I have actually gotten to the 6th measure on this one, further than I did on Wallenstadt.

By the Lake of Wallenstadt

I'd rather actually be there. I have begun working on the bass clef of the first 4 measures. It's in both the book and the CD of Lizst pieces that Jody gave me for Christmas and, by ear and eye, seemed like perhaps the easiest piece in there. Daunting.

Czerny #14, revisited

I think I got it! At least so that the mistakes are just stupid mistakes. And I can actually play it with a little humor. Am ready to give myself a sticker and move on.

New Drills!

Yuliya (who celebrated the 20th anniv of her arrival in the US yesterday, remembering that she had at that moment $314 and spoke no English) has taught me the "Russian" way to play minor scales, in which the hands do 2 octaves, then diverge, with the right hand continuing the melodic minor and the left descending with the natural. And she taught me a way to do arpeggios in which you begin by doing every conceivable arpeggio that uses (in whatever inversion) the same base note. I'll start with C, thank you.

Arpeggios

The harder ones for me are the ones where you get no leverage from the black key/white key height difference - - C, F, G and F#. I guess the fingering of the others is intended to take advantage of that leverage, using long fingers for the black keys and anchorage from the thumb on a white key.

Czerny

I approach Czerny with an element of despair. For several months I have been working on #14 from the School of Velocity. I have worked out a strategy for every little beat. Sometimes I remember all those strategies when I play the piece. Sometimes I can actually apply the remembered strategies. I am now bold enough to try to struggle through it with the metronome. It's marked "molto vivo e velocissimo." I play it largo. If I set the metronome at 40, there's not enough pulse to get me to the next beat, so I set the metronome at 80 and pretend it's written in 4/8 instead of 2/4. And even that speed is "aspirational" - - as in the ABA's generous statement that the expectation that lawyers will perform 50 hours a year of pro bono service is actually an "aspirational" standard. I can follow the beat for a while, and then I start getting behind. I imagine that an aspiring world-class tennis player might feel that way when playing a real champion - - he can keep up a volley for a while, and then he just loses it. When I start a new Czerny next time, I'm going to mark it for each time I play it - - as if I'm in prison, marking off the days of a sentence on the cell wall. And my aspiration will be that the succeeding pieces in School of Velocity will have fewer and fewer marks. Hope springs eternal.

Drills

I really like drills. The satisfaction probably comes from the belief that they improve my mental grip on the keyboard, and I can bask in that even when they sound lousy. I do major scales, simple arpeggios, minor scales (harmonic, melodic, and natural), and 3rds and 6ths. I think it's time to find a way to learn a drill that will show me something about 7ths.