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Post by keff on Jan 26, 2023 9:11:26 GMT
I have just spent my pre-breakfast practise time doing some separate hand work and then playing through the piece I hope to perform at our piano group meeting on Saturday. It is a piece from Bach's French suite, the allemande from suite in E flat which I find very tuneful. Depending how many people go I have another possible piece, Schubert's Entr'acte nos.3 from Rosamunde which has been arranged as a duet. I like playing secondo and piano teacher plays primo. The issue with the Schubert is that we have not been able to rehearse over the last couple of weeks because rehearsals mostly take place in my home and my other half has had a heavy cold so we have been putting off visitors.
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Post by Zi on Jan 26, 2023 11:20:39 GMT
That's very interesting keff. And ironically I was going to ask how people practised.
I imagine a group like yours does help build people's confidence about playing in public. A supportive non-judgemental group of people who are keen to foster performance could be extremely useful and quite clearly yours have found the right mix if you're anything to go by! I wish there were more groups like that dotted about. There are recorder groups but quite often what they want are reasonable players so any beginners might find themselves a bit lonesome.
What was the theme for this time?
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Post by keff on Jan 26, 2023 11:49:19 GMT
When it comes to practice I am guilty of playing pieces over and over far too much. I should spend more time with the tricky bits, working out which fingers to use so that other fingers fall naturally on the next note (this is very important with Bach). Separate hand practice really helps concentration on how the notes or phrase should be articulated and you can also pay attention to dynamics. I do not practise scales which perhaps is another undoing. Not so long ago I did have a prolonged period looking at triads of all major and minor keys.
We did not set a theme for the next meeting. Some members do like them though but of late we just ran out of time in the meeting to discuss what the theme should be. Themes were introduced during covid when the meetings took place using zoom. We were aware some members wouldn't be able to contribute musically so having the theme meant they could make spoken contributions such as taking about a painting, reading poetry or a passage from a book.
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Post by Zi on Jan 27, 2023 19:25:01 GMT
My teacher used to insist that I didn't do the keep playing the same thing. So I'd try very hard to concentrate on tricky bits. One of the recorder players had really useful ideas about how to practise tricky bits by concentrating on either the high or low notes before trying to put it together. I do that too. I find after a bit though that I have to play at least sections through because I lose my way, and it no longer makes sense. So, every so often I struggle through as best I can. At some stage, I try to listen to someone else playing it but I won't do that till I've had a good stab at the rhythm as that's my biggest problem. I always, always, always sight read it first no matter how difficult it is and no matter what a hash I make. When I started out the pieces were really tiny so they did eventually get better but as the pieces have got longer, there are more tricky bits and so getting it to be passable is more difficult. I do remember to abandon pieces temporarily as well as I can become too obsessed with them and they don't necessarily improve any. Sometimes a break from them does the trick - or maybe I forget how bad is was! The other problem is that because I'm now learning the treble, swapping between the two recorders is sometimes tricky. I start playing descant on the treble and vice versa. Actually, for some reason the treble is likely to be the one that 'triumphs' and I play treble on the descant even though I've been playing descant a lot longer... sigh!  It's really nice to know that someone else has guilty 'secrets' over practice!  edit - I never perform in front of anyone - too scared! But I do 'pretend' performances using backing tracks! |
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