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Post by pavane on Feb 12, 2023 13:45:51 GMT
As I write this, there are only 315 days left in which to perfect your Christmas carols for the 2023 festive season.
Zi suggested that perhaps we should aim to post a carol as part of the "Learn an instrument in 10 minutes a day" effort. I think it's a great idea, and why not broaden it to include a carol on any/every instrument any of us plays?
Christmas seems a long way off in February, but it is amazingly already 50 days since last Christmas day, that's nearly a seventh of the year gone. What remains is probably about right to develop a few skills, choose a carol, and aim to polish it to an acceptable level by, say, mid December.
This process might not merit a whole sub-board of its own, but I thought it might help to keep the objective in mind, and give an opportunity for occasional posts about progress, interesting arrangements of carols, or anything else that's relevant.
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Post by Zi on Feb 12, 2023 13:58:38 GMT
It's a brilliant idea. I'll give it a go on the harp - it will have to be something really simple... I think I like all of you too much to subject you to the clarinet but I will try to get something acceptable... (that's my standards not all of yours!)
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Post by keff on Feb 12, 2023 14:42:37 GMT
My current contract runs until the end of February and at that stage I was going to make a decision whether or not to carry on the 10-20 minutes of violin. I think recent discussions on the forum have made my mind up for me and all being well I would like to join you in the Christmas carol challenge. I won't be practising a carol until the end of November and in the mean time will try to become more familiar with the instrument. I am mulling over if I should be posting progress recordings and what might be an appropriate frequency of those recordings.
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Post by Zi on Feb 12, 2023 14:56:44 GMT
My current contract runs until the end of February and at that stage I was going to make a decision whether or not to carry on the 10-20 minutes of violin. I think recent discussions on the forum have made my mind up for me and all being well I would like to join you in the Christmas carol challenge. I won't be practising a carol until the end of November and in the mean time will try to become more familiar with the instrument. I am mulling over if I should be posting progress recordings and what might be an appropriate frequency of those recordings. Yay! I rather suspected you'd be joining in! I hoped so! If you hadn't blazed the trail with the recordings we wouldn't be at this point anyway! Frequency - I think that's whatever you're comfortable with. I can close this thread to only the usual suspects - ie put a requirement for a post-count on it. What do people think? edit - Loved the 'contract' remark!
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Post by keff on Feb 12, 2023 15:25:02 GMT
My vote would be to keep the thread open, at least to folks that have signed up to this lovely forum.
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Post by pavane on Feb 12, 2023 15:50:48 GMT
I'd be happy to keep it open. I don't suppose it will see a lot of activity anyway, but it might be nice to keep the idea in mind. I'll probably start work on some carols rather earlier than late November though - I will need to. I don't mean I'll be pracising them day and night for the next 300 days, but I like to have something relatively easy to work on when I want to do something but I'm tired. I play a jazzy one on recorder every year, but I start in early December and only ever get it back to the sort of standard I got it to last time by the time it gets around to Christmas and then I give up again. I could probably (hopefully!) be better if I worked on it for longer. I've never done any carols on clarinet but have bought a couple of books in the sales. IFF I get/keep going on the lyre, I've downloaded the material to learn a total of 16 easy songs for beginners. I'm not going to buy any kind of book at this stage because I might never get as far as using it, and I might as well have put the money towards a better instrument. It's usually easy to find carols online though - plus there is the book EMS offer.
Also like the idea of a contract for this!
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Post by Zi on Feb 12, 2023 16:12:54 GMT
OK - I'll leave it accessible for anyone - no matter who they are. It's easy to change your mind either way... We could add the uploads to a sub-sub board and lock that down just to people who are logged in. I had a look through my harp books and the carols are way too complex and they're are only a few of them. So, Mr Z has offered one of his simple piano books and I am going to choose one of the carols and then simplify it for harp. I hope you've noticed how glibly that rushed off the keyboard there! This is all with my new found composing confidence thanks to corenfa! You just know it's going to be ummm 'different' don't you?! I just hope no one takes out a contract on me after listening to the clarinet... @ pavane - Jazzy Clarinet Christmas I guess do you think? Or is that expecting too much of me? I know the answer to that one!
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Post by Zi on Feb 14, 2023 9:24:56 GMT
Even the simplest carols we have here are too complex for the harp and that's factoring in what I might be like by Christmas 2023 so I took a piece of Bach arranged for the recorder and I decided I could probably learn the top line. So if the worst happens and I get only a little way with it, I'll divide that melody line between left and right hand. However, at the moment I'm intending to aim for a re-arrangement of the Bach. I've taken the piano accompaniment's bass line and thinned it out, removing any accidentals. I played it through on Muse and it sounds quite nice. So, my aim is that; and there are a number of simplifications I can go through down to bottom line which is just the melody line of the Bach.
I wouldn't have thought of doing that until Corenfa mentioned writing 8 bars so I'm really pleased with myself - here editing Bach. A bit. My husband says that I should try really hard for the more complex version because it's so pretty (except he didn't say pretty of course). But I'll have to see if I can manage quavers with the left hand by Christmas... So far, I still can't read the bass line.
One of the much more advanced harpists once said she'd ended up learning a lot more by heart because it was easier that way and actually, as the piece is so short, I may do that. I have resisted learning by heart. Not even sure I can do it!
So, that's where I am on the harp. For the recorders I thought I'd try for a duet. I've never played a duet by myself before so that will be a challenge in itself. The clarinet... well, I still would like to play something jazzy. At the moment it looks like Jingle Bells!
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Post by keff on Feb 14, 2023 11:41:14 GMT
Zi, will send you an email.
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Post by Zi on Feb 14, 2023 11:48:08 GMT
Yes, it would certainly more than do. It's perfect! I'll put that on the list for the harp! Thank you! As you say, I could thin it out too. I feel quite confident about that now I've thinned out Bach! Corenfa has created a monster hasn't she?
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Post by pavane on Feb 14, 2023 15:01:59 GMT
...learning a lot more by heart because it was easier that way and actually, as the piece is so short, I may do that. I have resisted learning by heart. Not even sure I can do it! This is another of those different brains working in different ways thing. I am hopeless at learning music by heart. When I was playing piano I must have played the Bach C prelude (the one that's all arpeggios that everyone learns) hundreds of times but could never actually remember past about the first 4 or 5 bars. What I do is: learn something well enough that I sort of know it, and combine my 2nd rate memorising skills with my 2nd rate sight reading skills, and that way I can get through something moderately long and/or complicated.
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Post by keff on Feb 14, 2023 15:10:24 GMT
I'm another that doesn't memorise and would also say that the prelude in C major isn't easy to memorise. Sometimes it is necessary to memorise short passages in the middle of the music because trying to read the notes is too confusing.
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Post by Zi on Feb 14, 2023 15:19:01 GMT
I don't think I will learn music easily by heart but poetry is another matter. Read through the thing once and I can (could?) remember a fair amount. I used to be able to learn whole swathes in a couple of read throughs. Not sure how much now cos I'm ancient and age alas has withered the old memory, thing!
Anyway, music that looks similar - like loadsa arpeggios - would be tricky - the memory tends to smooth over things that are the same...
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Post by Zi on Apr 14, 2023 9:40:51 GMT
It's April. Arghhhhhhhh!
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Post by Misty on Apr 21, 2023 12:33:48 GMT
Still plenty of time, Zi!
Like keff, I won't be practising carols until November, although I used to go to a Folk Festival where they had a workshop for instrumentalists and singers with the intriguing title "Carols in August", where we discovered and played / sang lots of bygone carols (same or similar words, different tunes). It was really fun. It's many years since I've been to the festival, but we are booked to go in summer 2024, so hopefully there might be something along the same lines on the agenda. My arthritic joints are no longer up to the dance workshops I used to love....but that means more time for playing in music workshops. Every cloud has a silver lining!
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