April 29: Fantasy in D minor

Today, I played through Mozart's "Fantasy in D minor". I don't always try to play classical music exactly as written, and you'll notice some ad-libbing here. Most of the time, I make something up in response to a mistake - that's the secret to my extemporaneous music, too. If I don't play the note I expected to, and if it's at all possible to change that mistake into the first note of a new direction, I go for it. In this recording, there are several such mistakes, listed below the player.

Recording #5: 04/29/10 12:59 PM
Location: NRHS Pit
Length: 6:09


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0:43 - This is supposed to be a straight major arpeggio, but I accidentally augmented one of the triads. There was nothing to be done about it, so I kept going.
0:47 - I knew I was about to stumble over the fingering for this phrase, so I paused to recover - and inserted an equal pause at 0:49. That turned into two different pauses, but the trick is to make the music sound natural, and I don't think it was that bad.
0:57-1:03 - You can hear me testing the pedal, figuring out how much to use for this section. I decided on "none", which is why the sound gets crispier at 1:02.
1:58 - That abrupt pause is actually Mozart's.
2:04 - This is one of my favorite runs, and I screwed it up. Generally, if I make more than one mistake in a homogenous section, I just slow it all way down so that the mistakes feel like foreshadowings of a dramatic ritardando. Kind of dorky, I know; you can judge the effectiveness of the strategy during this run.
2:12 - A diminished arpeggio across three-quarters of the piano. I should have slowed it down; it's really awesome when you can hear the diminished triads.
2:29 - I didn't mean to speed up as much here, and it ended up making me stop and slow down at 2:36.
2:46 was a pretty bold alteration, even for me - I actually played wrong notes on purpose, because it was the only way to work with the mistake I had already made. Mozart, wherever you are: I apologize, a little.
2:50 - This is how I wanted to play the first run, too.
2:59 - Excuse my soft expletive; I couldn't decide which of the two chromatic-scale fingerings to use, and so I screwed it up.
3:29 - At this point, I considered it a lost cause to keep playing the song with any pretention of going "as written", so I started screwing with it on purpose.
4:33 - I played the wrong thing completely, so I made something up until I could fit back into the song at 4:40.
4:48 - That's my phone's buzzing, not the quacking of some really deep-voiced duck.
5:15 - I hit a non-diatonic note, so I hit a few more to make up for it.
And the rest of the song I just embellished with some of my own style, which is very not-Mozart, but the way I see it, it's my show now, not Mozart's. There are scores of music teachers who disagree with me, and it's true, I probably wouldn't do this in front of them. But there are tons of pianists who play literally everything by the book, and the world is just fine without one more. Is that an excuse not to practice as hard? Of course. But I'm spending the same amount of time at the piano, and in a way, getting more done.

What do you think?

Hide and Seek

Tonight, we played the "Coffeehouse" show at my school. I arranged the song "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap for eight parts, and recruited seven of my most talented friends to sing it a capella with me. It's certainly not perfect, but the energy was amazing, especially in the second half of the piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCCxl8WqwhU

We're going to try and record it in a studio so you can really hear all the harmonies. When I finish editing the PDF of the arrangement, I'll post it here.

April 28

Eighth period, I have another study hall every other day. Today, the concert band was rehearsing onstage, so I took the band room (even though it has the worst piano out of the five). A couple of spectators came to the door at some point. I noticed them about halfway through. This happens to me sometimes: people passing by like the way I play and stop to listen; it always flatters me, but I just wish they'd tell me who they were! what they thought about it! It's like playing for an audition - there's that weird silence at the end while I'm waiting for an acknowledgment that doesn't come. This is one of the better recordings, anyway.

Recording #4: 4/28/10 1:49 PM
Location: NRHS Band Room
Length: 13:49

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April 27, Part 2

This is another one I did today. I think it's a little better. Seventh period, my study hall, is sort of my escape. That's why you'll be seeing so many posts marked between 12:30 and 1:18 PM. I've got to come up with some system for identifying the ones worth listening to...

Recording #3: 4/27/10 12:49 PM
Location: NRHS Stage
Length: 7:15

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April 27, Part 1

I play five different pianos regularly: four at school (band room, chorus room, stage, and pit), and one at home. My first post on this blog was recorded on the stage, which has the only grand piano. If you start listening to this blog a lot (which would make me very happy!), you'll probably hear the differences: all five pianos have their own distinctive characters. The grand is probably the best sound.

This one was made in the chorus room. I felt kind of melancholy at the time, as you might be able to tell. My very cool Music Theory teacher walked in at the end because she needed the room, so it's kind of an abrupt cut-off.

Recording #2: 4/27/10 11:02 AM
Location: NRHS Chorus Room
Length: 3:20

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Test Run

Much of what you see on this blog will be from my study hall period at school, when I'm playing the grand piano. Today, I was with my friend Julia, rehearsing "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga and "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap for a show we're doing on Wednesday night. We also did a good deal of screwing around with Amanda and Will, so I'll probably delete this post after they all see it.

Everything from 1:20 to 2:57 is just talking, so you can skip that if you want. It got cut off at the end because I used my phone to look up a lyric, not realizing that it was still recording, but the music stops at 13:07 anyway.

Recording #1: 4/26/10 12:41 PM
Location: NRHS Stage
Length: 14:02

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Unfortunately, I didn't tape "Hide and Seek", because I thought the original recording was still going. You'll hear it soon, though.

Comment!

EDIT: The performance we were preparing for eventually made its way onto YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=345Te9l2D2E