Group 1
Improve your listening and playing of polyphony - the art of weaving simultaneous independent musical lines.
By focusing on polyphony you will also achieve a new understanding of voicing and phrasing. While you’re at it, you will also gain a new appreciation for the beauty and sophistication of the music of J.S. Bach. Magdalena will help guide your discovery and answer questions along the way.
BYOB - Bring your own Bach. This challenge does not rely on specific repertoire, so feel free to pick any Bach piece that best suits your current abilities.
Choose your challenge. During the two weeks, you will be able to adjust the number of exercises you wish to submit.
Pianists of all levels are welcome. You may choose how much of the piece you would like to work on. It can be a phrase or a page.
Course Details:
WEEK ONE:
Goal: Playing the upper part (soprano) independently
Submission 1
- Practice and record the upper part in slow tempo. Think of a tempo beforehand, and give yourself an empty measure before you begin
- To make it more manageable, you may divide the piece into sections and submit a short fragment each day
- Skip the ornaments for now
- Sometimes voices cross. When in doubt, follow the directions of note stems
- Be aware that sometimes the particular voice/part moves between hands
- Submit the recording of just the upper part (with the count-in)
Submission 2
Now that you have recorded one part, sing along with the recording (the same melody, on La La La, or, if you are comfortable enough, you may use solfège)
- pay attention to how your own voice deals with leaps, and the changes of direction in the melody
- When you are holding a long note, make sure to take a big breath beforehand. The goal is to physically experience the phrase
- You don’t need to have a trained voice - just do your best to approximate the pitches you are playing
- This part may also be submitted in smaller increments
- If you do not have an extra device, just submit a recording of you playing the upper part and sing along with it.
Submission 3 (optional)
Play the recording of the upper part and try to play the lowest part along with it. What are your questions/observations?
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WEEK TWO Assignment:
Playing the lowest part (bass) independently
Perform the same drill as in Week 1, this time with the lowest voice. If your piece has three or more parts, choose the bass (stems going down).
Send in submission 1 and 2 (submission 3 is optional), the same way you did last week, using the prompts above.
FINAL PROJECT
When you are ready, play both parts in a slow tempo, keeping in mind all the discoveries you have made. Record and submit. What did you learn? Share how this progressive exercise has impacted your hearing of multiple voices simultaneously.
- Sign-Up : Thursday, December 1st, 10 am PST
- Course Period: December 5 - 19
- Class Size: max. 4 Groups á 10 Participants
- Optional check-In via Zoom: December 13th at 2:15pm
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84980265481?pwd=NUVRVkRyS3hjSmtsNjd3azRUUDF4UT09
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I have never done one of these intensives before - is there where we post our submissions?
I am working on the Allemande from French Suite #5 - love that piece!
Thanks!
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Sam Smith Hello Sam! I love French Suite 5. You can submit your recordings in this page. First, upload your recordings on Youtube and after that share the link in your posts here.
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Sam Smith Yes! You can easily post your videos here after uploading to YouTube!
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Hello all! I'm excited to join this two-week intensive. As a beginner, my hope is to learn how to *hear* better and translate what I hear to my playing. I'll decide today whether to play the G Major Minuet from the AMN, which I learned in October, or pick up something new. I look forward to hearing everyone play.
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Hi everyone! I'm excited to join this Bach's Polyphony course. First, I will try to make a video of the Prelude and Fugue in C minor of the Well-Tempered Clavier Book I. Michelle R Very good choice the always beautiful G Major Minuet!
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Hi all! It's my first time with these intensives. I will be workshopping the Prelude and Fugue in G Major from Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2 (BWV 884). I am practicing this piece for the RCM Level 10 exam in June.
Before sending in my submission, I have a question about the "upper voice" in my case. Below are the first 4 bars of the Prelude. For the first 3 bars, is the "upper voice" the entire right hand, or do we exclude the repeated Ds? And for the 4th bar, the upper voice is just the white dotted D right? (Because the rest of the right hand is the middle voice?).
Thank you all, and looking forward to our intensive!
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Hi all! Here are my submissions. I'm playing here the Fugue in G Major from Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2 (BWV 884).
For submission 1, I noticed that I definitely sped up in the middle of the piece somewhere. I was also unsure at the scale at the end on whose voice that is, so I just went for it.
Submission 2 where I sing along -- the longer notes become much more apparent to me. I was practicing this piece previously by hand (rather than voice), so it's striking to hear the soprano long notes.
Submission 3, I decided to use my metronome, which meant I had to go along at some parts where I made mistakes.
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Khoa Phan Howard Awesome work!
Good questions above, the RH technically would be 2 different voices! The lower notes and then the upper D's are a different voice as clarified in bar 4!
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Hello ! I'm glad to be here I have yet to decide what to submit, I'll do it soon thank you!
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Well, I thought this would be easy - not! I tried it this morning - I keep trying to sing along with the upper voice instead of the lower!
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After some thought, I decided to choose a Bach Chorale instead of the Minuet in G - "Wie Schön Leuchtet der Morgenstern." (Translated to English, it is something like "How beautifully shines the morning star". My German is quite rusty, so if any German-speakers could correct me, I would appreciate it.)
This is my audio recording of the first section, 6 measures, played slowly, upper/soprano only (I did honor the fermatas - I'll try to ignore them in the second section).
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Here is assignment #2 with the first 6 measures - I didn't have ready access to a second device, so I played and sang. Observation #1 is that I went at a much faster tempo than in my original recording! I did sing with the recording, too (after I made this one). Observation #2 is that finding phrases was easier when I was singing. There was a natural-ness to it.
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Assignments 1 &2 with final section of chorale. Singing is giving me a different way to think about the music. I'm beginning to hear better how the notes relate to each other.
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Week 2, Assignment 1
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Here is the final project - bass and soprano played together.
I learned how to hear the voices better. The singing exercise helped me greatly in hearing phrasing - not necessarily play it, yet, but I hear where I have gone wrong (or right!) in the lines more easily. I can hear the beautiful voices mingling together in my head and look forward to the day when I can play that which I hear in my head.
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Here are the first two assignments. Just the first 4 measures of the Allemande from French Suite #5. I had a lot of trouble trying to sing and play at the same time. I have tried this before without much success - I really envy those people who can accompany themselves while singing. But it is always good to challenge yourself to try something difficult!
I slowed down while singing - can't concentrate on singing and playing at the same time...
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Hi everyone! This is also my first experience with Tonebase intensives and I'm looking forward to the process. I'm working on the Sinfonia 11 in G minor (BWV 797) for this intensive; the challenge will be learning how to upload to YouTube, which I've never done LOL. Is there a simple way to just upload audio recordings through the Voice Memo app on the iPhone?
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Solmi Gim Yes, I think you can do that as long as the Voice Memo creates a file. I can't remember if it does. I used a recording app on my iPhone, and uploaded it from there. It seems to have worked just fine.
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Michelle R thank you!
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Here my first video. I have practiced separate hands, short passages with the assignments and so on... I have tried to show clearly the voices in the Fugue too...
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Juan Carlos Olite As always, your playing is beautiful, Juan Carlos! My son was just playing this prelude and fugue last night, so I've gotten to hear it a few times over the past couple of days.
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Michelle R Thank you very much, Michelle!
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Hello!
My submissions are as following.
I played one of Bach Choral.
No25. " Es ist vollbracht! Vergies ja nicht."
It was not easy to follow my own playing with holding a tablet. I think even without holding it, still it is not a easy job.
However, I am able to focus on the melody and my playing with this way and really enjoyed it.
Thank you for introducing this way. It is like to play with a different instrument which help the voicing practice greatly.
I wonder what are the most important points to care when play Bach.
Appreciate it.
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Yikes I got behind this week. I’m working on the Bach Prelude and Fugue in C# minor from WTC 1. I’m posting just the first section of the fugue. The prelude is beautiful and one of the more manageable preludes, but then I got to the fugue and was like wow, there’s five voices! So this is a great intensive for working on this piece. I actually started by just playing the everything together very slowly, so separating them out is really making me hear it differently. I wasn’t really able to sing the bass part along with the soprano part so I just played them. Feels super weird to play them without the other parts.
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Alice Lin Alice, I tried to watch your submissions but it says they are private. I wonder if you didn’t check “unlisted” when you posted to YouTube?
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