Week 3: Keep the Momentum

Noel Nguyen Very beautiful, lush playing Noel =) Such lovely voicing to your thick chords. Listening in on your practice reminds me of the practice rooms at university as you react and adjust to your own playing!

Your head transplant made me laugh, particularly how it moves with you as you play haha. For what it's worth, I have to be careful how I position my setup as well. I have a really sturdy boom mic stand and a camera that mounts on to it with its own flexing adjuster to fine tune the camera angle. I shared a picture in one of the other threads (I think week 1 of this one). Happy to re-share what I use with anyone if they are interested - it's pretty simple as I am not a big audio / visual person at all!

Dustin Anderson  thanks for your encouraging words! And get better, although you don't sound sick in your recording at all, quite the contrary!

Noel Nguyen Excellent performance, excellent chord voicing, and excellent editing! How did you do that?

Also, your dramatic "catching of pigeons," as Chopin put it, is entertaining!

Maria Haha thanks! I used the Openshot Video Editor software.

And thanks for pointing out my desperate attempts to sabotage myself! For years I tried in performance to replicate what I did in practice and realized that I will always fail to do so. There will always be distortion, with many things lost in translation. So I decided to make the process work in my favor and practice in such a way that a failure to replicate what I do in practice would actually turn into a good performance! I can say this approach has been working in my favor so far.

Noel Nguyen You're welcome!

That is an interesting practice strategy. Maybe I should try that. Was your "catching of pigeons" a way to, as you had mentioned, break/disrupt your muscle memory? 

Maria said:
Was your "catching of pigeons" a way to, as you had mentioned, break/disrupt your muscle memory? 

 Correct!👍

Noel Nguyen Noel this video caused me much conflict -- laughing convulsively at the incongruity of the  ridiculous false head dutifully tracking your motions and the hands flying all over the place while also marveling with reverence at such sublime sounds that were emerging from your piano-.  I'm afraid I'm going to need a few sessions with Dr. Dahl before I can regain my emotional stability.

I've only listened to this piece a few times, each time as played from start to finish, most recently in an awe inspiring recital by a young pianist named Leyla Zeynalova.. It's too much to absorb in a single seating like that. With your video, I felt like I was inside the  edifice, looking up into some of its most intricate gearwork, which was lit up from behind by the sunlight of inspiration shining through.

sorry to get so poetic about it.  i guess that's just the effect that a floating disembodied head has on me. 

But also, the process and pitfalls of memorization have been much on my mind these days, and your quest to outwit and subjugate your muscle memory is very much on point and as instructive as it is ingenious. So thank you for all of this

Noel Nguyen Wow. Bravo! Love the editing too!

Peter Golemme  Peter, it looks like I'll need to book a visit with the great Dr. Dahl as well, since I am on the one hand extremely flattered by your glowing review, but on the other hand I realize I may have made a mistake by adding a giant distraction to the video to compete with my own playing!

But seriously, I really like your analogy of being inside the building and seeing the gears, because that was the main goal of the practice videos I've been sharing, which are meant to show what is happening behind the scenes, so to speak. In the past I used to be reluctant to show this aspect of my music making, following some silly code of secrecy like magicians never revealing their secrets. That was until I realized that I'm no magician (who am I kidding), so I might as well share all the aspects of my hobby, including the ecstasy and agony of practice, the screams and grunts, the flying hands, and yes, the floating fake head.

Noel Nguyen this was great Noel!

I might try and emulate the ‘catching the pidgeons’ exercise but I don’t think it will work well with my Handel fugue…

btw Also loved those little finger stretches too!

Noel Nguyen thanks for this informative and refreshing take! I really enjoyed watching your responsiveness to the color changes, and to see your arms twirling around in the air. 
Your practice reminds me of a past Graham Fitch YT Piano Magazine video where he said to reinforce memory and prevent “memory holes”, one could practice by playing 1-2 bars and then doing the next bars 3-4 in your head (with your hands away from the keys), then play bars 5-6 with your hands, then bars 7-8 in your head with your hands off the keyboard, etc. etc. It’s a similar concept to what you’re doing — breaking the muscle pattern so we don’t go into autopilot mode! 

Noel Nguyen I think you're doing fine by just being yourself, and your sense of humor is part of the package. And being able to laugh at oneself reflects a bit of healthy perspective on the life-and-death seriousness with which we all tend to approach our practicing and performance efforts. 

I'm not necessarily saying that you'd want this video playing on the jumbotron during your Carnegie Hall debut, but it does no harm here in a practice video, and if anything highlights by contrast solemness and substantiality of Rachmaninoff's chordal passagework, and the work you've done to convey it in your playing.

And I'm going through exactly the same thing with my YouTube channel.  I'm a accumulating a large library of recordings that are "not good enough" to post publicly, in contrast to a collection of exactly zero that are "good enough".  I think it may be time to show the world how I actually play, instead of waiting for that lightning stroke of luck in a performance that might create the impression that I play better than I actually can!

Peter Golemme RE:  I think it may be time to show the world how I actually play, instead of waiting for that lightning stroke of luck in a performance that might create the impression that I play better than I actually can!

Here, here !!!  Bravo !!!!   Well said!

Ha ha ha.  Oops.  I like to hear others say this but I certainly need to apply these words to myself.  (this was a pep talk to myself !). Thanks Peter.

Peter Golemme No worries Peter, and thanks for the support!

I know that if I make this video public I might finally go viral, but I'll pass on this one!

Sindre Skarelven About time someone mentioned the Chasse-Neige snippet😄. It's in the same key as the Rach Sonata after all.