I bring, finally, a finished piece- I was able to finish “Innocent Age” earlier this month! After a lot more hours than I initially anticipated, it is done and also a lot more polished than usual. The take itself is eh BUT the knowledge that I had mastered this piece is enough. Hopefully.

Detailed Analysis

I already talked about the first half in the previous post, but it has been a while since that breakdown so I’ll go over some choice sections. The beginning phrase sounds so much better to me compared to the first progress update, especially in terms of voicing. The RH chord at 0:20 was my sacrifice in this take- I typically play it very cleanly (and that’s after a lot of practice!! It’s a weird shape!!), but given that the rest of the take was decent, I had to give that up here. The RH octaves at 0:22 jumping from B to E are actually one of the trickiest parts of the arrangement for me! I’m glad it came out okay here. The cleanness of the RH octaves at 0:24-0:25 still cracks me up… yeah I practiced hard but also I honestly thought that would be one of the hardest parts. Another sacrifice around 0:31 in the RH chord, whoops. Changed the fingering for the downwards arpeggio in the RH at 0:35 and was able to play it faster than before, and then we launch into the next half (NEW)…

From 0:39, there’s a cool echo effect in the RH. The jump in both hands at 0:41 was tough, but it looks pretty seamless in this take so I’m happy. I had to practice that jump quite a bit. Slighttt lag in the LH at 0:44 when I second-guessed myself on the big jump downwards, but oh well. The RH octaves from 0:46 were also pretty tough to play cleanly for some reason, so I’m happy I got lucky in this take. I LOVEEE the downwards octaves in the LH at 0:48!! One of my fave moments with the build up in both hands. And the downwards arpeggio at 0:50 in the RH- I swear, I got SO LUCKY in this take LOL this moment was one of the main reasons I was willing to sacrifice some of the earlier chords. I put a lot of time into this specific arpeggio separately, but it’s just really tough for my hand size to get cleanly regardless- the stars aligned in this take, I tell ya. Another slight lag around 0:52 because there are just Big Jumps happening everywhere, but not too bad.

Things start to pull back and become more spacious from 0:55 with the RH melody shifting to a higher register. I always picture delicate glass when playing this section. Can’t reach the RH chord at 1:03 so I broke it, but sounds pretty tight here so I’m okay with the trade-off. I had to hyper focus for 1:05 once the pedal comes up to ensure that I played everything cleanly without having the dampener to hide behind lol. And then I was able to breathe finally as the arrangement closes out with some nice chords.

Thoughts on the Learning Process

This piece is only like 1:20 long LOL so considering that, I spent a LOT of time on this arrangement, but I also feel like I gained a lot of experience points through this so I have no regrets. If my hands were a little bigger, I think I would agree with the 2/5 difficulty that the arranger assigned this (based on his own relative scale), but since I had to work so hard for basically all of the octaves and chords AND THAT ONE DOWNWARDS ARPEGGIO, this was definitely more like a 3/5 for me.

The arrangement is almost dense for the middle chunk with all the chords and jumps and such- it was interesting to try and make everything sound lyrical while still executing the countless chords and jumps.

I’m really happy with how the voicing turned out for the very first opening phrase, and also with how clean the octaves are overall (despite the couple of spots that I had to give up in this take). Knowing that I was able to play some really tricky octaves cleanly was a great motivational boost!!

It only took a week or so to learn the notes for this arrangement, so I spent several weeks after that just working on specific spots and then getting comfortable with playing the whole thing with minimal mistakes. I think the practice paid off!

Conclusion & Final Thoughts

It’s been a while since I was able to get a take that is somewhat satisfying (despite the obvious blips in this one… it was a rough session). I also really, REALLY loved this arrangement from the moment I heard it, so I’m happy I was able to bring it to life. I think I could’ve done a better job with adjusting the LH volume down, but honestly, I tried practicing as such but the jumps just make it super hard to control volume since I’m working so hard already just for note accuracy. I was okay with giving up the volume control in this case.

For this take, I’d give myself an 83/100… for the best run-through off-camera, maybe a 95/100? It’s a bit of a shame I couldn’t get a cleaner take, but then again, I did enjoy the process of learning this piece and that’s what really is valuable to me.

Anyway, this wasn’t, like, a super difficult piece or anything but I am just happy to have completed something. Not sure what to tackle next, but glad I was able to have an update for this month!