Noct's Theme - Snapshot #2
Worked on the next few phrases!! Also included a full take of what I’ve learned so far just to gauge progress.
This first phrase is the "easiest" part of the whole piece; it's sightreadable.. but there's a lot of room for musicality and Emotion here to capitalize on!! The descending triplets at 0:07 take extra concentration because it's easy to play them unevenly if I'm not careful.
The sextuplets at 0:13 are honestly probably the most difficult part of this entire piece for me....... descending 1 5 1 5 1 5 etc. all over both black and white keys is kinda difficult!! I need to work on getting good tone for every single note as well as making sure the rhythm is also locked in. My RH still lags when I'm playing at tempo so my LH tends to want to lag to allow my RH to catch up but that's not what we're about here!! Will need to brush up that microphrase.
The phrase from 0:15.......... I spent a LOT of time on this the first time I learned the piece and it shows because my hands still remembered LOL. I wasn't careful enough on this particular recording so my RH's voicing is pretty awful honestly but I'm still working on getting the voicing really stable. RH has both triplets and the melody, while the LH has constant eighth notes.. it's a fun phrase to play since it's pretty unique with the 3 voices but there's also so little room for error for voicing.
I need to work on the descending RH thirds at 0:21 *clown emoji* my RH should be inside the keys for all three thirds but I tend to walk them in which sacrifices my tone and note accuracy *clown emoji x100* We're working on it. And then the RH goes HAM with the buildup and I have to play with surgical precision here so that I can hit all the triplets as well as the octaves cleanly. And that top C octave is supposed to have an Eb but my hand is too small so :-D I tried rolling it but it's the peak of the phrase and even rolling it is still difficult so.. left it as a regular C octave since LH at least plays the Eb..
THE LH AT 0:32 SOUNDS REALLY BAD IN THIS RECORDING LAKWEJRLKEJ I swear I know how to play eighth notes LKJWLEKJLKJA the octave down sometimes lags and then my LH tries to compensate by swinging the eighth notes I guess.... also note to self to be careful with that Eb after the octave because I tend to kind of nosedive onto the key and therefore.. accent it.
The phrase with RH arpeggios and LH octaves is okay. Okay as in I can play it but I should practice it. I actually somehow mislearned AND missed this in the recording but I initially learned the second half of the LH octave phrase in THE WRONG OCTAVE ALKJLKETJLWJEA I cannot believe..... It makes sense that the octaves move up one octave for the ascending melody and it also ups the difficulty just a tad since I'm repeating notes rapidly between LH and RH but dam. I really mislearned that, huh. The only RH arpeggio that I have much concern over is the last one because the fingering is pretty awful- it doesn't HURT, but it's not conventional and certainly not something I'm used to. But it's the only one I've found that lets me ascend quickly and without pain while also being able to easily hit the E at the very top before descending. THIS ALL DOESN'T EVEN MATTER THOUGH I can play this arpeggio fine like 7/10 times but the LH THAT'S JUST CHILLIN' WITH OCTAVES... oHh NOoOoOoO LH can't play ANYTHING without babysitting...... that's the main problem. The first three arpeggios are fine because they're relatively very natural to my hand so I can think less on them and focus on the LH octaves but I need to expend a little more thinking for the last arpeggio while the LH octaves are also at their peak. Just need to practice more..
The C# minor chord at 0:44 is uncomfortable at best but I think my hand is slowly stretching to it? I have to really bend my hand into a claw shape but it works.. note accuracy is difficult for that octave phrase because I go from ascending octaves straight down to a full chord but it is POSSIBLE to play cleanly so I am satisfied.
And finally, here's a shot for fun of the whole piece up through the above section, without score- just something to see how much I've memorized and gauge where my weak spots are.
I'd say I've always "memorized" score pretty quickly from when I was young, but when I was younger I was just playing mechanically and didn't really process the finer details of dynamics, phrasing, etc. I like to practice with my score open now just to have it even if I don't need it. Plus, I feel like it helps improve my sightreading? Learning to read music is often compared to learning a new language and I totally agree with the analogy.
Anyway, I've got about 2 pages left but one phrase is the phrase from the beginning, so really only like 1.5 phrases left. And of course, need to clean up the little spots that are still giving me trouble. But overall, been feeling a lot more comfortable on camera with this piece than with others which is a good sign!