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!
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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 脡tude 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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Alexander Weymann That was great and seemed so effortless!
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Vidhya Bashyam Thanks, Vidhya. Like most of Scriabin's piano music, this piece is much, much, much harder than it sounds. :-(
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Alexander Weymann It sounds VERY difficult and now I want to learn it! Great job!
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Gail Starr thank you so much, Gail - it鈥檚 another one of those random discoveries: I saw a portrait of the very young Ivo Pogorelich on German TV when I was a teenager; he played this piece, I immediately fell in love with it - and, to my great delight, found it in my grandfather鈥檚 extensive collection of sheet music for piano!
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Alexander Weymann I love it! The rhythms all sounded natural. I鈥檇 totally stress out about the mathematics of the 5:3鈥aha.
I鈥檓 going through a little Scriabin phase myself鈥攔ecently recorded 4 preludes and I鈥檓 working on an additional 4. He wrote so much great stuff. -
Marc M he really did! I saw that you had posted some Scriabin recordings of your own on somewhere on this challenge; I haven鈥檛 had a chance yet to listen to them yet, but I will definitely do that. By the way, if you don鈥檛 know this recording of Scriabin鈥檚 Fantasy in B minor Op. 28 by our very own intrepid leader and mentor, Dominic Cheli, you need to check it out! I have listened to it countless times already.
https://youtu.be/RZjtW1s_R0A?si=wOOG1bRshEkYNMPH
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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.
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Alexander Weymann Just listened to this amazing Mazurka. I really enjoyed it! I can鈥檛 wait to hear your next iteration and the rest of the set. Your sound/recording quality was so good too.
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Vidhya Bashyam thank you! My church choir director gave me an extra key so I now have 24/7 access to our practice room with this nice Kawai baby grand - much better suited for recording than my Yamaha semi-acoustic hybrid upright at home.
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Alexander Weymann What lovely phrasing and dynamics! You are well on your way to mastering this amazing work.
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Gail Starr thank you! I do love that piece so much. For a mazurka, which is supposed to be a small form, it has an almost epic narrative arc and emotional range.
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