Week 4

Project Post-mortem

https://youtu.be/DYJL_dBEnbU

This is what 30 days of regular practice looks like! I basically spent 30 minutes minimum per day at the piano working on this piece, and I am super happy with the results. Not only do I think my experience helped make it easier to decide to sit down at the piano to practice, but being able to watch my recorded “before” and “after” performances really highlights just how far I have come in the last 30 days. It’s awesome to watch and listen to my being able to play it all the way through with minimal mistakes. It’s actually surprising–it definitely did not sound this good to me when I was playing it! I feel like this has also been a good experience in teaching me that the perfectionist critic in my head doesn’t always see things as they are, and maybe I shouldn’t always trust its judgment.

All in all, this was a great experience and I’m incredibly proud of my progress.

10/10 would DK30 again

Midweek Update 2: Electric Boogaloo

So between what my teacher said and my own understanding, the pedaling for this piece is more intricate and instinctual than I expected, and I don’t think I will have enough time to get it to where I want it before my end-of-project performance. I think I’ll just spend the next few days practicing the piece and smoothing out mistakes and then record what I have on either Sunday or Monday.

I also plan on recording the first movement since I’ll have everything set up already, so maybe I’ll post that here too as a kind of “here’s my current progress for this entire sonata.”

Midweek Update:

I’ve tested the audio interface setup and it records great, so everything is in place for my end of project performance, equipment-wise. Piano lesson is tomorrow too so I’ll probably start incorporating pedaling either tomorrow or Saturday. I’ve notated a few spots on the sheet music where I need to nail down small sections or transitions, so I’ve been doing a lot of that this week. I’m really looking forward to the final result!

Week 3

Section 3: measures 36-44

Third section is learned at speed! …mostly. At around 200bpm, I still make occasional slips in the bouncing octaves, but at the moment the section is in a pretty good spot. The only thing I really need to practice is the transitions from section 2 and to section 4 just to smooth out the full playthrough. I am going to ask my piano teacher about pedaling this song on Friday when I have my lesson. Section 3 in particular has made it fairly clear that some pedaling will be necessary to make the song “flow” and, while I have some ideas about how to pedal it, I’d like my teacher’s expertise and second opinion. I know I won’t ever be able to pedal it like Wilhelm Kempff does, but if I can make it sound close then that’s still pretty good.

I have been playing around with Section 4 already but haven’t gone through the repetitions to make it solid, so that’s what I’ll be doing this week until Friday, after which (hopefully) I’ll have the song pretty solid and I can work on incorporating pedaling.

I also may push the finish date of the project back a few days, depending on how intricate the pedaling is. I’d like to give myself enough time to practice it before recording my final playthrough so that I can get as close to a finished, polished performance as I can. As such, the video may not be done and up until April 1st, but I would like to get it up no later than that, even if just to keep to the spirit of the whole “30 day project” thing and have an honest report of one-months-worth of progress, not “30 days plus a week” because I think that would be cool.

So far I’m very happy with my progress. I feel like I’m past the frustration of the “struggle period” when it felt like my fingers were constantly betraying me. And even though I figured I would have it learned within the scope of the month, it’s still nice to be able to play through most of the piece at speed and have it sound pretty decent. Without the structuredness of the DK30, I doubt I would have followed through on this one–not for a while, at least.

Week 2

Section 2: measures 16-36

The second section is (mostly) learned! There are one or two transitions that I still need to tighten–measure 23 and measure 24–but aside from those two brief pauses, I can play both this section and the first at speed! This week I also made it a point to play the whole song up through what I know so the first section is feeling better and less effortful. I may need still need to practice a few of the movements a bunch of times (the Bb3 to Eb5 part remains a little sloppy), but a bunch of repetition once I’ve learned the whole piece will hopefully remedy that.

I’m also a little lost on how to pedal this piece. I had tried to dive into this movement a few months back (but quickly lost interest in the repetition required to learn it), and my piano teacher gave me some great advice about how to pedal the first few measures based on how Wilhelm Kempff appeared to be pedaling it in a video of one of his performances. I suspect the rest of the song will require some similar “pedal finesse” and I may ask him again once I’ve learned the piece and am looking to polish it.

Admittedly temperamental progress this week, but progress nonetheless! I missed a few days but managed to get the section learned in time anyway–thanks in part to the hour I spent yesterday.

I can also gladly report that no mental breakdown has happened yet, so that’s good.

WHY IS THIS SONG SO HARD

So I missed about a day and a half of practice so far this week because I had a lot of school projects due on the same day and had no extra energy for practice. I skipped Monday and only sat down for about 10 minutes on Tuesday, but yesterday and today have been a full 30 minutes minimum so all is well again. :)

Week 1

Section 1: measures 0-16

I’ve learned the first section! I can play it at speed (~180bpm) and sometimes even 100% accurately, but it still needs some repetition before it’s been completely internalized and I can reproduce it without effort. Sections 3 and 4 are shorter and simpler, so assuming that I can learn those two in just a couple days each, I should have plenty of extra time at the end of the project to “hone.”

And by hone, I mean “make it sound like I’m not stumbling through it.” The style of the piece is not something I’m used to at all—the quick tempo and constant motion in every melodic and harmonic line forces my fingers all over the place. I’m much more comfortable with the slow saunter of the first movement (since it’s basically the only full piano song I know at the moment), so this has been mechanically tough so far. That said, I feel like it’s forcing me to expand my comfort zone at the keyboard and, while the process so far has definitely been tedious, I’m very happy with the progress I’ve made and look forward to the finish line!

P.S. Before I started, I recorded myself playing what I could of this piece, which was not much at all. My plan is to record myself on the last day and edit together a final video juxtaposing the early “attempt” with a final, solid playthrough. (I even bought an audio interface so I can actually capture the audio as opposed to relying on the speakers of my digital piano and the garbage on-board mic on my laptop.)