Lesson B.2

Bach and Joplin were both pretty hesitant and ragged. But here is the thing: there was no doubt that I had worked on them. Teachers can tell when you don't practice. That is a motivating factor for me. Shame.

Dr. Tony B. looked at the two books I got at Dietz. One I can return. The other has some simple exercises he assigned. Including a basic overview of a blues scale and an assignment in improvisation. >cringe< All I can think of is the poor kids in all those Junior High jazz band performances we attended who had to take turns doing improvised jazz solos. It just always seemed to me that the jazz solo is the fruit of a skilled, accomplished musicians who know what they're doing, and asking unskilled beginners to attempt them makes as much sense has asking Junior High biology students do brain surgery.

And someone will say, but we do let Junior High students dissect frogs.

And I Just can't shake the feeling that something else is going on when a performance *features* jazz solos by kids at the front end of the learning curve.

Lesson B.1

Summer break is over, and now Dr. Tony B. has taken me in hand. He wants to hear the Clementi way slower than I have been playing it recently. It needs more precision than I allow.

He gave me Bach's March in D Major. I'm bumping along slowly, staring at notes.

He gave me a couple of Fred Kerns' simplified Joplin arrangements to choose from. I have been working on Pleasant Moments. The opening section is simple and charming. But then I turned the page once and encountered a B section that is much more challenging.

And already I find myself Not Reading the Music. In the Joplin, for instance, there is an opening figure that is played in a low octave, repeated in a middle octave, and then again up another octave. Once I puzzle that out and know what the figure is, it's like my brain refuses to associated the notes on the page with what my fingers are doing because it is so much easier to just play the figure, and so much harder to make myself associate the notes on the page directly with fingers on the keyboard. If I can't do that, i will never learn to sight read.

I also have a Hal Leonard adult student book to buy.

Lesson 19

I did the last two Hanons in the first section. #19 is not so bad. #20 has spans an octave and took some real getting used to. Especially on the way down, the fingering is one of those tricky deals where 4 plays the note and then suddenly 3 has to take that note.

We worked on fingering for the second section of Clementi.

This is where I am on the first section.
Clementi 2009.06.26

Sure sounds ham fisted, eh? Some of that is the placement of the mp3 recorder: it picks up a lot of thump. Of course some of that just my tendency to pound.

Lesson 18

We skipped last week's lesson because I was waiting on a car in the shop.

And this week we made note of the fact that next week is our last lesson. July is off. Then in August I will start with Dr. Tony B., as Yu Han has to move on. Something about her Visa. Or maybe her Witness Protection cover has been compromised.

Anyway, I did two Hanons okay. There are only two more in the first section of the book, so I'll work on both of those for next week.

The rest of the time we spent on Clementi. Yu Han had only a few suggestions for first section. I played through the second section, which is much easier than the first, and that is what I will concentrate on for next week.

Lesson 17

I stumbled through the Band of Brothers theme. Haven't been working on it. I need to give it some real attention for next week. The Hanon 17 was passable. Then we worked on the Clementi Sonatina in C. I've made some progress playing with better sensitivity. Yu Han quickly identified a couple of stumble traps that have been troublesome. I also am keenly aware that my 16th runs are uneven whenever I play with any tempo.

I have only three more lessons with Yu Han. This has been a good run. I've made enough progress so that I'm not ready to say "Oh, what's the use." When I became an adult onset tennis nut in late 1997, I was crazy to play all the time and I improved quite a bit. Then there came a point when my gains definitely leveled off. Oh, I still love to play, but I don't pretend that I'm going to just keep getting better and better, and I'm not as crazy about playing as I was there for a while. I expect something like that is ahead for me on the piano. But I'm not there yet.

Lesson 16

We worked on Clement's Sonatina in C. I basically have the whole first section memorized and have been trying to pay better attention to the dynamics and feel of the thing. I'm also trying to clean up the places that always trip me up.

I made a photocopy of the four pages of the first section and did some colored highlighting. The idea is that if I can see how the repetition and variance actually works, then I'll be less likely to get lost. Sometimes with this piece I run up the scale and get to the top and suddenly can't remember how it is I'm supposed to get back down this time.

Yu-Han worked with me on playing with a better feel and touch. I've been pretty ham-fisted: "[f] means pound and [p] means plink." But Yu-Han showed me some wrist technique that will help things sound, well, more "musical." You would think that x pounds of pressure on a key would produce the same sound every time no matter what the rest of the hand, wrist, and arm are doing. I mean, how could the mechanical chain of key, hammer, and string possibly know what's going on above the finger? But somehow it makes a difference. And the way some pianists play, I suspect the influence may extend all the way to the eyebrows and hair.

Lesson 15

Yu Han says my arpeggios will be better if I vary the practice routine with some uneven timing: dotted-8th + 16th variations. I bet that would work. If only I would try it. What with the Churchill biography that I can't put down, and the holiday weekend (watching the whole Band of Brothers set), I haven't been practicing much.

I am trying to make my playing of the Clementi "spiritoso". After all, Clementi was not Brahms.

I'm going through the same thing with Clementi that I did with the Joplin piece: once I know it, then I don't look at the music any more. And that is not good.

But see, poor Chamberlin is still Prime Minister and it's the winter of 1940, and Churchill as Lord of the Admiralty is going to ... well, I don't know, but something bad happens in Norway pretty soon ...