Week 16/97: Cavatina

This is the theme from the Movie The Deer Hunter, which features a surprisingly young Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep. Anyway, it was originally composed for the guitar. I started with a piano transcription but didn’t like it. The version here is a more faithful transcription, in that the notes are the same as those played in the guitar version (except for the parts where I possibly misread it… some parts don’t sound quite right…).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioDT45Nch0U

I would like to try to do a piece a week if at all possible. Next up is a Bach.

Week 15/97: Chopin Prelude Op 28 No 20

I hadn’t originally planned on starting a Chopin piece yet, but I started playing around with this piece and couldn’t stop. So, here we are…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H3Sv7FSPd8

The slight pause at the end of bar 8 is because I’m obsessed with getting some unacorda action into the last phrase of this piece…

I’ve figured out how to record directly to the laptop, bypassing the microphone and all of it’s noises. However, the audio from the program my webcam uses for recording is not as good as the audio from Audacity. Compare the video with this MP3. There is some kind of weird rolling sound underneath the music in the video. So I don’t know what the deal is with that, but I think it’s an improvement.

K545 still proves to be tres difficile. I am working on Cavatina instead. I didn’t think I was ready for this but it’s actually not so bad once you get into it. Arpeggios are harder than scales but 16th notes are more harder than 8th notes.

Week 11/100: Impertinence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTEMuSGow7s

It is true what people say. While I am making excellent progress, I am going to need to practice a lot more if I am to make my goal in time. Life has a bad habit of getting in the way of piano practice, though.

I’ve got the first section of K545 memorized, but that doesn’t mean I can play it up to speed. Still, progress is tangible.

I’ve started adding some structure to the pieces I learn. I try to always have 2 pieces, a long term project (something that’ll take a few weeks–right now K545), and a short term project (something that can be learned in a week or so). On top of that I always practice my scales (I now have 12!) and try to do something from Alfred’s if I’m not too tired. An Alfred piece can be learned over the course of a day, but I usually don’t spend that much time on it because I dislike them.

Handel’s Impertinence was my last short term project. So now I’m looking for a new one. I think… something from anime…