Group 3
Welcome to the NEW TWO WEEK INTENSIVE on tonebase!
Improving your Lyricism (feat Chopin)
Post your progress with videos and written commentary on how things are going for you!
- Course Period: June 26 - July 10th
- Class Size: ALL are welcome!
- Optional check-In via Zoom: July 2nd at 11am PT
- ZOOM MEETING Recording!
- https://youtu.be/Fl-ExGT9aZY
Assignment #1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQpw6fZBOlE
- Pick a short piece (Mazurka, Nocturne, Prelude) or excerpt of a longer piece (Ballade, Polonaise, Scherzo, Sonata, Concerto). Focus on lyrical/slow sections.
- Learn bass carefully, labelling all chords and cadences.
- SING melodic line. Practice singing until your voice can identify the melody instantly.
- Submit a video: playing the Bass while singing the Soprano.
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Assignment #2
https://youtu.be/ri2UD1z8sKE?si=w36XWzqb_rao3RAu
-Label all breathing points with an apostrophe between phrase markings. Practice deep breaths between significant points or use a regular breath for phrase changes.
-Sing Bass notes of all chords while playing Soprano melody.
-Submit a video: playing hands together (performance).
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Running a bit late: I'm getting stuck trying to sing the bass AND play the RH. So, I'm just trying to sing the LH line, but can't seem to manage the octave jumps with my voice.
I've never actually tried to do a harmonic analysis before, so here's my "kindergarten" attempt. This assignment has inspired me to sign up to take Grade 6 ABRSM theory!
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Gail Starr WOW! How nice!! It is super challenging to do all the bass-notes. I tried initially, but then gave up and only do first beat of the bass. Even just the first beat of the bass, i get a sense of the harmonic changes throughout, and find it easier to trying to maintain a longer bassline for color.
Re:Theory. Theory can be really fun. (I didn't think so as a kid trying to do it on the side). As i was telling dagmar, there are community college class (in US) for music theory, and even some are remote. It's fun doing it with a cohort.
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Gail Starr Beautiful singing, Gail! Crystal clear voice!
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Sindre Skarelven You’re so kind!
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Group 3: we won't have a Zoom debrief after this TWI, so I'd like to ask you: how do you see your development in the last two weeks? Here are some prompts to get you started:
1) In one sentence, what did you learn from this TWI?2) What skill do you need to practice daily to improve your lyricism in Chopin playing?
3) How easily (or not) was it to practice singing/solfege? What did you learn from it?
4) Which new practice methods began with frustration or struggle, but need to be used regularly until they are habits?
5) How important are harmony and colour to lyrical playing in Chopin?
7) What new understanding(s) did you gain about Chopin's music?8) Do you have a new set of questions or topics to approach in your lessons?
9) How has your listening changed?
10) How has your score reading changed?
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Jarred Dunn
Here's my bass singing attempt (link)), as well as both hands(link)
Would appreciate some feedback!
Thanks for a great course!.
1) What did I learn: Always work on singing OUT LOUD (especially bass).
2) What skill do you need to practice daily to improve your lyricism in Chopin playing? Voice warmup to get to the right pitch.
3) How easily (or not) was it to practice singing/solfege? What did you learn from it? did't try solfege
4) Which new practice methods began with frustration or struggle, but need to be used regularly until they are habits? Singing Bass, and not get distracted.
5) How important are harmony and colour to lyrical playing in Chopin? Everything. That's where the magic is!
7) What new understanding(s) did you gain about Chopin's music? It's all about the breathing in the singing. Experiment with different rubato and color (and different level of deeper/longer breathing).8) Do you have a new set of questions or topics to approach in your lessons? Ideally, when would one start doing this? After learning the notes? Or even as one is learning the piece?
9) How has your listening changed? YES!! I'm paying more attention to the bass line color as i'm listening to recording
10) How has your score reading changed? n/a.
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Lc to your question 8: I started to learn my piece with the start of this TWI and found the exercises helpful. So with learning the notes I could already shape them. However I think it would have been easier to do the exercises if I had beed able to play the piece a bit more securely already. Like singing AND playing together was a bit too much to process, especially as I am not trained in singing. Now that I know the piece better it is easier (I still sing some parts because I keep forgetting about some phrasing/directions still)
So I think as soon as you don't need full concentration on playing the notes of one hand right, you can benefit from the singing. And even more later, when everything is ready to work 100% on interpretation.
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Lc lovely playing, great dynamics
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Lc very beautiful playing, Lynn!
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Lc Beautiful playing and singing, Lynn! I hear very expressive and singing qualities in both soprano and bass-line. Looking forward to hear you play more of this ballade later, hopefully!
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Here my last upload- a brave attempt at playing my excerpt with both hands and singing the bass. This was quite a challenge! And got me muddled a few times
Now to the questions: 1. What I learned in one sentence: singing the bass helps the musical line and dynamics (without the distraction of all RH melody details).
2. Multitasking!
3. I didn’t try solfège this time, will give it a go in the future. I believe it would help memorization very much.
4. staying with the bass no matter what else is going on in the music.9. The TWI definitely made me listen more to the LH when listening to recordings.
Thank you very much, Jarred, for these inspiring assignments, your detailed feedback on our videos and this great TWI!
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Andrea Buckland Sounds great, Andrea. Very tender and with your singing we could listen the extraordinary beauty of the counterpoint lines in Chopin.
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Juan Carlos Olite Thank you very much, Juan Carlos!
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Andrea Buckland So beautiful! This is the perfect Nocturne for you. Your singing enhances this piece so much.
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Andrea Buckland your voice blends so beautifully!
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Angela Fogg Vidhya Bashyam Thank you, Vidhya and Angela!
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Andrea Buckland Multitasking is right! I can hear your soprano playing is becoming rooted in harmony - once you have RH connected to LH, it's easy to organically build phrases. You're on the right track by listening to LH without the distraction of all RH melody details, working on this until automatic habits form (singing bass automatically, voicing harmonic colour tones, etc). The wonderful thing about your video is in the moments when you hesitate or need to check what your hands are doing because you are singing the bass.
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Andrea Buckland Beautiful singing, showing us this gorgeous bass line! I love how you change and find fitting vowels.
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Sindre Skarelven Thank you, Sindre!
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About the questions:
1) Singing the main lines of a piece increases remarkably the quality of your practice.
2) Patience in the first steps of exploring every single melody, attending to breathing and harmony besides other aspects of the music.
3) It has been difficult because of the long phrases (and tessitura) of Chopin writing.
4) I would insist it's a matter of patience, look at the score with analytical eyes rather than play and play...
5 and 7) As more as you play and look at Chopin music, more you notice the harmonic and polyphonic complexity of his music, of the inner voices, and you understand the historical ridicule of Wagner's words: "Chopin is a composer for one right hand".
9 and 10) It's a question of a lot of practice to develop a polyphonic way of listening and playing. And we understand the enormous importance of playing Bach music; in fact it's well known Chopin rendered admiration for Bach. So, we have a real challenge for our practice: think, listen and play with a polyphonic mind.
Thank you Jarred for this superb course!
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Juan Carlos Olite very well said, Juan Carlos!
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Here I am at the 11th hour - but at least not a week late as usual.
So, here is singing the melody
https://youtube.com/shorts/hBeKdJwm24E?si=vkkhtsZGnbTtcg-E
and singing bass line
https://youtube.com/shorts/yLneta2ORAM?si=Y_SczeL-nOgCVWXw
and my analysis
I think this has been a great challenge!
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Angela Fogg Love your singing Angela! Really beautifully complements your playing of this wonderful Mazurka.
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Angela Fogg You have a lovely voice, Angela!
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Angela Fogg better late than never! Your choral sound is great and it's clear your practice was solid in both hands. Since it's the last day of the TWI I'll give a couple of future thoughts for using this at the piano: (1) ask yourself how your voice can illustrate colour changes in repeating motifs (0:40-45), (2) great that your bass tone colour changed in descending chromatic scale - use the same colour changes at cadences (Pre-Dominant - Dominant bass notes give harmony its colour). Great work and keep coming back to TWIs!
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Jarred Dunn Thank you for replying, I will try to bear these things in mind.
I have found all your comments interesting, not just for me but for everybody else as well. Thank you this has been a really great challenge!
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