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Post by Zi on Jun 14, 2023 7:19:00 GMT
keff - I'm amused by the explanation! I did wonder how you'd got that particular mix. Sometimes selections through happen chance can work out the nicest. Hand is an ongoing issue. I've managed over the last 8 years to damage my left wrist very badly and a finger joint on my right hand which makes some movements almost impossible at times. In both cases I tripped so that allows me to blame it on chemo clumsiness rather than age clumsiness! So, I just chalk it up to the cost of being alive and I don't mind. I'd struggle with the age clumsiness thing (or just clumsiness). Today may be the day when I do something with a recorder that involves making a sound so I may have a list of music later... perhaps... maybe... I do find other people's lists interesting and inspiring! keff, when you say 'there' as in almost there etc etc - do you have a kind of point you're aiming at or what? Just curious... I think I have a vague goal and I sort of think I'm sort of at that vague goal... I'm just curious if other people have some 'standards' they're aiming at for a particular piece.
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Post by keff on Jun 14, 2023 8:07:06 GMT
keff, when you say 'there' as in almost there etc etc - do you have a kind of point you're aiming at or what? Just curious... I think I have a vague goal and I sort of think I'm sort of at that vague goal... I'm just curious if other people have some 'standards' they're aiming at for a particular piece. I suppose the destination to be aimed for is to be able to play a piece fluently without major hesitations or mistakes that cannot easily be recovered. Tempo is never as fast as professionals but then again slower often means that the details can be heard. Was thinking just a few minutes ago whilst doing some practice what it means to learn a piece of piano music and answered myself by thinking it could just be about knowing what notes come next thus avoiding being surprised when you get there. That is rather superficial as knowing which fingers to use, articulation, dynamics, tempi changes, key changes and probably many more things need to go into the memory even if the score is placed in front of the player.
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Post by Zi on Jun 14, 2023 14:36:04 GMT
I guess that what your aim is, is a question in itself. When there's a teacher there, I presume the teacher has an 'aim'. I know my teacher used to identify issues or have something she wanted me to learn and then she'd sort out music to do that. She did the same for Mr Z on piano. It was that expertise that we enjoyed as doing that for ourselves would be extremely difficult at that stage in our learning. It may have become easier - I haven't found that out.
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Post by keff on Jun 14, 2023 15:06:13 GMT
I had a piano lesson first thing this afternoon and did more work on two pieces from the Bach French suite in E flat major. My teacher reiterated her intention to at least partially retire at the end of the month and asked if I had thought about approaching another teacher. I have been with her for the best part of twenty years and may go it alone from now on.
Teachers usually have strong ideas how music should be interpreted and it is difficult to judge if other interpretations are equally valid, especially when the judgement comes from someone educated in science rather than music.
In those twenty years we have studied a wonderful mix of musical styles; Bach, Mozart piano sonatas and some violin sonatas, Beethoven sonatas, the odd Schubert piece, a few pieces by Chopin (I'm not a big fan), Brahms, Rach, Grieg, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Bartok (didn't like Bartok until we started to look at some of his works), Herbert Howells, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass. I could easily spend the next ten years just going over this lot. We have played lots of duets and piano with violin pieces. We did the first movement of the Bach double violin concerto at our piano group.
I may in time go to another teacher but waiting to see just how she will manage partial retirement or whether partial turns into full.
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Post by Zi on Jun 14, 2023 20:36:33 GMT
I am sorry to hear that keff. That is a very long time with one teacher; she really must seem like a fixed point in a moving world. We miss our teacher after just a couple of years. I'm trying to imagine how it must feel, multiplied out.
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Post by Zi on Aug 6, 2023 9:03:55 GMT
I'm playing stuff from one of the John Pitts beginner books for the treble. Great thing about it is that it's really easy and I can pretend that I'm playing much better than I really am!
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Post by pavane on Aug 6, 2023 17:16:08 GMT
I have not played a great deal lately - I've been distracted by circumstances that have demanded a lot of travel and I haven't been at home a great deal. However, things have settled down a bit and I've made a start on catching up. Had to do some grass cutting today but luckily tomorrow is a bank holiday so it's going to be raining heavily all day and that means lots of instrument time. Various of them could do with cleaning/oiling/polishing but I hope to actually play them too. I've spent an hour or so playing van Eyck things on tenor recorder - all stuff I've played before so, yes, I can also pretend that I'm doing better than I really am. I'm going out soon (social duty, to be honest I'd rather not) and in the short amount of time I have available I'm being masochistic and doing C minor/Eb major exercises on the clarinet.
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Post by keff on Aug 7, 2023 10:06:48 GMT
In the last few days I have been inspired to half learn Girl from Ipanema. I say half learn, if I'm careful get the rhythm right and crash through the notes. Still on with the Bach (of course) and hoping a couple of pieces will be ready for the Morecambe Bay piano group in early September. May visit the Clitheroe group in a couple of weeks time but undecided what I might play.
(Had so much rain that garden needs a lot of catching up)
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Post by pavane on Aug 7, 2023 10:50:22 GMT
I really like The Girl from Ipanema and the whole Stan Getz/Bossa Nova thing. TGFI is "one of those songs" - not quite up there with Summertime but a perenial favourite; I even recently heard a new version sung as The Boy from Ipanema. I take it you saw in the news that the original English language singer of TGFI, Astrud Gilberto, died recently? Getz was clearly a fairly unpleasant person and treated her pretty badly (apparently she was paid a minimal session fee for singing on the record, which she allegedly did because she was the only one of the Brazilians who could speak English, and she never got any royalties from it). I still like that original recording though the original LP version is imho much better - they edited out most of the Getz contribution for the (much more famous) single version.
If anyone is interested, you can compare versions:
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Post by keff on Aug 7, 2023 11:14:23 GMT
Thanks for posting those two recordings, pavane. Certainly a nice contrast between voices in the first recording. I do recall the news of Gilburto's passing but it didn't influence giving the music a try on the piano. Think I'm trying to play it slightly too quickly!
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Post by Zi on Aug 7, 2023 15:47:35 GMT
Summertime is just really, really Summertime and it sounds fabulous on the recorder. Perhaps it's one of those pieces that just always sounds emotive no matter what you do to it. @keff - Where did the inspiration come from? I sympathise over the rain. It's been wet here too. If there was a song about slugs I'd be inspired to play that. We have lots of them. pavane - Hang on in there! Supportive thoughts winging their way even as you read this!
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Post by keff on Aug 7, 2023 16:12:50 GMT
@keff - Where did the inspiration come from? Long story....have an acquaintance who lives in Madrid whom I met when he sought advice by placing a post in another forum about setting up a piano group. I may have been the only one to reply and so an online friendship has developed over a couple of years. Recently he was encouraging me to use Meetup to advertise the Morecambe Bay piano group which caused me to look up the Madrid's group website and in there I found a YouTube recording by one of its members playing TGFI. Pavane's recordings are now increasing my motivation to put more effort in to learn it properly rather than crash through it.
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Post by Zi on Aug 7, 2023 17:50:00 GMT
That's a nice reason! And it's also nice that the recordings work as an incentive! Let us know how it goes, of course!
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Post by pavane on Aug 8, 2023 8:27:25 GMT
Keff: glad you enjoyed the recordings and hope you enjoy working on TGFI
Zi: thank you for the supportive thoughts!
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Post by keff on Aug 11, 2023 11:23:11 GMT
I have just found another rhythm nuance in TGFI. Shows that I need to take more care when reading music. My usual approach is to sight read giving most of my concentration to reading pitch rather than rhythm and if it sounds ok it must be right (not always, in fact more wrong than right).
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