Week 1: Rhythm, Scales, and Leaps!
Hello Everyone, welcome to week 1 of the Practice Plan Challenge!
This week we will focus on
Optional: Sightreading
HOW TO START:
1. Take the Practice Plan Quiz if you haven't already!
2. Choose a repertoire piece that you really want to work on the next month
3. Let's focus on the above skills this week
4. Watch the appropriate level video for you from the courses above, and start working through the different concepts and apply them to your repertoire!
Optional: Download the Practice Breakdowns!
The Goals:
- The #1 goal is to improve your pieces/playing by using the tonebase Practice Plan!
- We will all focus on three abilities each week (+ sightreading because this is ALWAYS good for you!).
- The 3 new skills will be announced on Monday of each week so that we can all work on things together!
- We are all different levels, so by clicking on the course links above, you can scroll down to your appropriate leveled video. That is what YOU should watch/work on for the given week.
- Then, you will write or post a video demonstrating how you are working on the different abilities!
- You are encouraged to show how you are trying to apply the abilities in your pieces! (Ex. you watch a scales video, then write how it may have helped improve the ending of Chopin's G minor ballade!)
- With the focused work of this plan and challenge, we should all be able to improve our repertoire over the next month, and post submissions of our final performances to be watched in a "Watch Party!"
- Optional: Use the Practice Breakdowns to help guide your work!
Share which repertoire piece you have chosen, and post either writing or a video to share any progress!
36 replies
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One of Ben Laude's teaching modules on rhythm - on polyrhythms, specifically - did inspire me to dig out a piece with lots of polyrhythms (3 against 4, 3 against 5, and 4 against 5): the Étude in F# minor Op. 8 No. 2 by Alexander Scriabin. Ben's suggestion to think of the two different rhythms moving against each other as flowing independently and not obsessively try to somehow mathematically make them fit into each other really helped me play this. Also, there are lots of leaps in the left hand which make this piece appropriate for this week's set of themes.
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Chopin's Mazurka in C# minor Op. 50 No. 3 poses several rhythmic challenges typical for his mazurkas; it also features some short, lyrical scales - scales don't have to be fast and virtuosic, right? Sometimes, the task is to play them legato and cantabile.
This is my first recording of it, so it's just a first rough draft - still musically immature and with several yucky wrong notes. But since the set of three mazurkas Op. 50 is one of my big projects for this year, this was a good opportunity to get going and make a start on learning one of the pieces.