Martin Wulf

great men awsum....

Hermes

Today's piano lesson...improvisation. I do not play anything but classical music on the piano. No Christmas carols. Today, the professor says, I will sing a Christmas song and you must play it on the piano in C major based on what I sing. Jingle Bells. First, play the melody. Then add tonic, dominant and sub dominant chords in the left hand. Then play it as Mozart, Bach (in Canon) and Lizst (octaves, crazy jumps glissandos and scales) would have done it. Fun stuff.

big john

I used to listen to George Winston in the truck while driving to and from the desert with my dirt bike friend.

big john

Always loved Keith Emerson's piano especially from 6:20 on this track

big john

my favorite Bach

TMonk

Had this melody (and version) stuck in my had the last day or so... Phillips' solo singing and the imminent harmonization at the onset are exquisite:

Hermes

Mamas and the Papas - Dedicated to the One I love was in 1967 when I graduated from HS.

From my other training front - piano, my teacher says, I need more volume in hands. And she has a rule of thumb that one has to be able to play a piece each hand separately at twice the speed that you want to play with the hands together. I am grinding out Bach Inventions separate hands against a metronome.

More volume in my hands, metronomes with speed targets for separate hands, it seems like structured track training to me. I started taking lessons with the goal of playing Liszt's Liebestraum and I knew that I needed professional help with that piece. Now it seems like I am preparing for a Bach competition.

The truth is that I am several levels above from where I started just a few months ago or better yet from where I was when I stopped playing 3 decades ago. I could easily insist on Liebestraum but for now, I am staying with her program. You can take the head of the music department out of the university but you cannot take out the head of the department out of the person. She wants what she wants and knows what works.

TMonk

For Christmas I bought my mother two copies of Schubert's Rondo in A major - a duet for four hands. She's familiar and has performed it before. I (a jazz player) am probably in way over my head... She said I could simplify it a bit if I needed to at parts. I haven't started practicing it yet, but would like to soon. Once I get into it I want to set myself a weekly progress goal and be able to play it with her by the next holiday season:

Hermes

TMonk Which part are you going to play?

TMonk

Primo, per my mother's choice.

cmh

I can imagine your mother was thrilled with this gift.

TMonk

I think so. We (my fiancee and I) are only ~30 minutes away from them so we're fairly close. She's a member of the Fallbrook Chamber Orchestra, and if all goes well, we may perform it late in the year.

Hermes

Here the the two Czerny Etudes I have been working on. The first one is finished and working on speed. The second one is 25% complete. I put up the little girl to make us practice a little harder.

Hermes

I got two new assignments yesterday. Carl Czerny Book 740 Etude #8. This is predominantly about left hand work but there are sections of the right hand that are near impossible for me at the moment. She wants some of the chord progressions in the right hand to sustain without the pedal. And of course, she can do it. That means holding notes with two fingers while changing the hand to a new chord position and then release the held fingers while placing the new ones. My hand just seizes up. This technique is required in Bach Fugues where one has to play two voices with each hand. You do not see this technique much, if at all, in Liszt, Chopin or Debussy.

Here is a kid performing the Etude. I can sight read the piece at very slow tempo right now if I do not sustain the right hand.


The other assignment is to play the alternate version of Bach's Two Part Invention #1. The alternate is the same voices / notes but Bach adds triplets to play against even notes and the Baroque embellishments. It adds distinction between the two voices in counterpoint and sounds very cool. And of course, I cannot do that either.

And I am to bring my Three Part Bach Invention book next week to start on adding a 3rd voice in counterpoint.

When I was in engineering school, I had professors that assigned homework and when I showed up in class, they were always pushing the envelope. One does the homework but the questions were all new and maybe one could be responsive if one did the assignment and really understood the material so that a different spin did not throw one off.

I worked on an Etude with a special dotted rhythm with my right hand. I get to my lesson and she wants me to play a different etude in the dotted rhythm with both hands. Did that no problem. Then I have to play the Bach Invention from memory without music. It is a good thing, I had it memorized anyway since she had not assigned it.

I think this is all great stuff. Anticipate what is to come and the harder the better.

cmh

Hermes - I admire the way you spend your time in retirement.

Hermes

For those that may have an interest in counterpoint music (contrapuntal) here is a duet by John Legend and Kelly Clarkson. Baby It’s Cold Outside. Two independent voices / melodies coming together in harmony.

Hermes

@tmonk. Do you think Chopin was inspired / used Czerny 740 #8 in composing the Revolutionary Etude? It sounds very similar to the 740 #8 although Chopin is much harder to play. According to my teacher all the composers after Czerny copied / used his ideas and harmonies in composition.

TMonk

Cool peace @Hermes, thanks for sharing. As you might imagine, I was quite familiar with the famous Chopin Etude, the Czerny not as much. I instantly recognized the Chopin after listening to the Czerny a couple times, and some of the immediate similarities. I think the melody itself is unique, but the style, structure and composition is quite similar and I'm sure inspired at the very least. The wild arpeggios in the left hand and chord melody in the right hand are two similarities that I noticed immediately.

Hermes

At my lesson yesterday, we discussed the Chopin piece versus Czerny. She said the Czerny piece is much harder to perform because there is no rest for the left hand for the entire Etude. In the Chopin piece, there are small interludes of chords that allows some rest for the left hand to recover.

Hermes

TMonk We need a status report on the Schubert piece.

TMonk

ehhh pretty dismal. I'm hoping to start gaining some steam soon but it's been hard with all of the wedding planning going on. I'm hoping to gain some momentum soon as I drop volume for intensity on the bike and we get closer to the wedding (May). We've delegated a bunch of work to the wedding party and siblings recently so that should help.

I'll post back here when I have a meaningful update

Hermes

Each year, we purchase a poinsettia plant from Costco for the holidays. The plant generally lasts through the end of December with some degradation with leaves falling, losing color and etc. This year, I purchased the plant two weeks before Thanksgiving. It still looks great with all its leaves and only lost a little bit of its red color and does not shed anything. Difference?

It is in the same room as my piano and gets a steady bathing of classical acoustic piano music every day - mostly Bach. Immortal notes.

https://www.greenmylife.in/the-effec...sic-on-plants/

cmh

That tells us you are playing the Bach quite well. Keep it up.

Hermes

Thanks for the encouragement. The reality is more that I practice Bach a lot.

Hermes

I am starting Bach's the Art of the Fugue #1. This should be fun. Here is Glenn Gould playing it.


TMonk Here is my new favorite version of Chopin's Heroic Polonaise played by Valentina Lisitsa. It is hard to top Horowitz and Rubenstein but she is flawless on this piece and the speed she takes the fast octave section is nuts.