Category: 40Pieces

Sight reading practice

I set up this idea of having a target of 40 odd pieces this year and I even made a list. But although I intended to put together the pages on my iPad to have them ready to read I never got around to it, and then I was highly occupied by the Grade 6 pieces. So it’s only recently that I started looking at The Problem this was supposed to solve, ie, not being confident enough with the sight reading.

The internet is full of quick fixes to sight reading Problems. Basically, I’d like to read fluently enough to play fluently a lot of pieces. I’ve mixed feelings – sometimes I think the reduced speed sight reading helps with the memorisation. But either way, needs must.

There were a few issues of Pianist and Pianist lying around near the piano and while I would not normally bother with beginner pieces I decided to start with those and see how far I got. What I’ve learned is that even for the easy/accessible to beginners pieces, the grading is not always consistent with the way I play. I find Beginner/Intermediate easier than Beginner sometimes.

This post is really for me to trap a list of what I’ve been doing for the last week or two. Nothing very deep.

So in no particular order other than the pile of magazines beside me here:

Pianiste (FR) No 146

  • Czerny Les Heures du Matin op 821, no 1 (GD)
  • Felix Le Couppey, Op 17/3, The Alphabet (GD)

Pianist 139

  • Antonio Fragoso Aria (I)
  • Melanie Spanwick Eastern Promise (B)
  • Christian Gottlob Neefe Minuet in F (B)
  • Theodor Oesten The Echo No 14 from May Flowers OP61 (BI)

Pianist 136

  • Felix Le Couppey No 17 from ABC du Piano [wonder if this is the same set as The Alphabet above]
  • Melanie Spanwick Mountain Stream (B)
  • Theodore Latour First movement from Sonatina No 1 in C (BI)

Pianist 137

  • Mel Bonis Raindrops OP 103 NO 9 (B)
  • Melanie Spanwick Glorious Day (B)
  • Charles Villiers Stanford (BI)

I think this exercise started about 10 days ago. Maybe a week. Not sure. Anyway, the abbreviations are GD Grand Debutant, B Beginner, BI Beginner/Intermediate. I see there are 12 pieces there already. At this rate, I could probably touch my 40 pieces target provided I do 10-12 a week.

It’s the start of September. I’m missing from the piano for about 5 weeks between here and Christmas.

On Sightreading

One of the gaps I identified for myself at the start of this more recent piano journey was sightreading. I suppose in part, it was because I wanted to read music as fluently as I read English. This might be unrealistic; I’ve been reading English since I was three years old and that is now a frighteningly long time ago. But arguably, my sightreading is weaker than I would like. I imagine a world where I can read anything I want up to and including Chopin’s third Sonata which is the apex of my ambitions, apart from buying a Steinway B, that is. But I struggle with sightreading, especially lefthand because I learned treble clef a couple of years before I learned bass clef. I struggle with ledger line notes too.

So I did what any sane person does when they want to get better at something. I searched sightreading on YouTube and disappeared down an increasingly disappointing black hole. There is a huge amount of advice out there from people telling you how you can sight read better. What most of them have in common is that they are targeted at people who know absolutely no music theory at all, have no basis in reading at all. I suppose it’s the easiest place to start with pedagogical stuff on sight reading. I’m not the target audience. I realised I was not the target audience because once you got past the names of the lines on treble and bass, there was an emphasis on understanding the length of notes. I know this. Understanding intervals: I know this. Understanding key signatures. Come on!. I know most of these too. I know that five sharps tells me it’s B major or G sharp minor. I’ll possibly draw them in the wrong order but interpreting them, I get there.

So what I’ve come to understand is that I’m a better sight reader than I gave myself credit for. Still not good enough but the hints around knowing how to read are unrealistic for someone who actually knows how to read; the point is to read more and more and get faster. When you see discussions about this on Reddit, the advice is that it is a numbers game. I read a piece by Elissa Milne a few weeks ago where she noted that in general, the higher some of her students went in the graded music education system, the worse their sight reading got for the simple reason that they weren’t doing enough of it. I’m not a fan of the Numbers Game but in general, she came up with a plan to increase engagement of students and to get them to sight read a whole lot more. That’s the 40 piece project that I have going in the background (see here). I’m not really on top of it because I don’t always have the music to hand and practice time has been thin on the ground these last couple of weeks. But I have done some things outside the scope of the exam pieces I’m working on. There has been some Beethoven, some Shostakovich, some Haydn, all composers that I don’t regularly touch. I have worked on a couple of pieces by Beethoven – the infamous Bagatelle that everyone knows, and I intend to learn the second movement of Shostakovich’s piano concerto no 2 and one of his waltzes. I have sheet music for both. Haydn I tend to bypass.

Of the pieces that are being worked on for repertoire, there is Handel’s Sarabande and Variations, and Prelude in C Major from Bach’s WTC. I’m not a fan of Bach senior but there are some glorious things knocking around. I also have Siloti’s transcriptions of some of Bach’s stuff. So I may adjust the list currently here to take account of other things I want to learn.

I started learning CPE Bach’s Solfeggio during the week to replace the List A Bach that I wanted to abandon. It’s astonished me how much easier it was to sight read than I expected. I’m assuming that part of it is linked to the short pieces I work on now and again and that this has helped a lot. So yes, in short, it’s a numbers game.

20240210 Practice Diary

This week, on Tonic, I was in the Gold list having gotten myself promoted a couple of weeks in a row. Now, playing with the big boys and girls. The ones who clearly don’t have full time jobs. * rueful smile.

I haven’t done today’s practice session yet so who knows this could change after I have done it. It was at best a mixed week. I missed at least one day because I was at a concert (a good reason, you would admit). But I also started a new job and much to my surprised this has resulted in me getting home later rather than earlier. I didn’t have so much time to practice, and also not so much time to listen in to other people practising.

So, in terms of what went well: the Mendelssohn is getting slightly more security; it’s not where I want yet but okay, there are no obvious weaknesses except when I am tired. The Rebikov is now more or less internalised but in some odd hybrid short/long term memory mess. This means some times I can play it under finger without one error; last night I spent a lot of time again trying to render a section of fluent, a section that I know intelleuctually in my mind but my fingers take on crab like features of their own and I watch as a C sharp/A figure turns into something akin to a diminished chord undescribed in no music theory text book; a flow of notes that my wrists do not wish to play even as I know in my mind what notes they are. More work is required. Nevertheless, despite being the last of the pieces I started learning, it is the second closest to ready.

For Elissa Milne’s Indigo Moon, I have struggled to memorise this. I would like all four pieces to be memorised so there’s work to be done here. I didn’t touch this for several months (and it shows) but although I can’t play it fluently at all, it is in reasonable health for the effort it got. With both Rebikov and Mendelssohn demanding less time over the coming month or two, I expect this to be okay as it was fluent at one point. The shapes are broadly okay for my fingers.

This leads us to the Bachs, Johann Sebastien and his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel. Invention in E major is out (I have no idea but it really wasn’t coming for me at al) and Solfeggio is in. The read through for that went okay, and the chunks of it getting touched in practice is about half the piece. This is a piece that I absolutely have to memorise – I cannot read at Prestissimo velocity – and it is a piece that demands work with a metronome. It is nowhere close to written speed and that will be a while. But it altogether feels more realistic than his father’s easy training piece. It will also feed into the Rameau I have lined up for after.

Outside that, there were two or three other pieces this week. Reddit’s Piano Jam for the month had a small waltz by Shostokovich so I read that through, and I’ve also been working on the infamous C Major prelude that is Fur Elise-sque in its popularity with being hacked to pieces and murdered screaming. I’m influenced by Alexandre Tharaud’s carefully pedalled recording. I am happy with how this is going although strangely enough I struggle to memorise it. But it is very easy to read. And just because I was super angry about the Bach invention last week and needed something more motivational, I have Handel’s Sarabande on the go, also easy to read, but I haven’t tried the couple of variations yet.

At some point I need to write a piece on sightreading and discuss all the can’t lose hints I keep seeing.

20240204 Practice Diaries

It appears I missed last week. I don’t think last week was a good week anyway. I missed a few days but I still got myself into the silver league on Tonic.

This week hasn’t been the worst. I missed two days – the first two days of a new job. There was measurable progress. I’m working four pieces this week, with some snipping time on one other piece. There was nothing from the 40 pieces challenge.

So: Bach, my nemesis 2 part invention in E major. Light of my life, dark of my soul. This week, bar 7 is severely weakened and I am very slowly gaining ascendency. It’s far from perfect but in slow practice it is rarely wrong. At speed, it is always wrong. But that’s okay. I’ve started working on the second part and while the same rhythm pattern is to be found, it is not causing the same trouble so far. I have a way to go. What is likely to be more of an issue is the fingering on black keys. I have a lot of work to do there. I estimate it will take about a month at the current practice rate.

The Mendelssohn is more or less under control and in that zone where it’s being practice not to make mistakes in it. This will also reduce the amount of time going to it so next week I will start back at Elissa Milne’s piece.

Rebikov is heading the same way. There are occasional memory and fingering hick ups and I honestly hope my neighbours like it because they heard it a lot yesterday. I must say I like the piece a lot more than I expected when I started learning it first – it has some unusual fingering shapes but I know it has freed up the lack of flexibility in my fingers a lot. I expected that more from the Bach but it isn’t really happening. Anyway, over the next week or so, I expect the practice focus to move from getting it right to not getting it wrong. I will keep this and the Mendelssohn in regular repertoire afterwards.

For non-exam pieces, the main work is on one of Bach’s preludes – the famous one, basically. I like the way it sounds and it forces me to address how I practice – I practice to memorise, this is clear. Anyway, I’d like to finish that and add it to repertoire as well.

The open question, of course, is what I move to as the time taken by these pieces reduces and I work towards the exam rather than the learning. An obvious answer is to start looking at the exam pieces for Grade 8 which I’ve targeted before end of 2025. The one I would like to start most is Rameau’s Cyclops but I also have a map in my mind about what needs to be finished to feed into the next grade and for the Rameau I would like to be on top of the Bach. I am not on top of the Bach. For the Rebikov, the choice is either the Rachmaninoff or Debussy. The fixed pieces are:

  • Rameau – Les Cyclopes
  • Tchaikovsky June from the Seasons
  • Debussy Reverie
  • Rachmaninov, Moment Musical Opus 16/5

The obvious ones to start with are the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. I will map the Debussy to Milne and the Rachmaninov to Rebikov. Tchaik builds on Mendelssohn.

I don’t want to constantly say we’ll see and depending on where they go, I might revise my planning. Grade 6 is currently pencilled in for April which, Bach pending is now realistic provided the practice schedule does not fall apart.

For January, it feel apart on the days I was travelling. I find that okay.

20240127 Practice Diary

This week was not the most productive on the question of practice. According to my practice tracker, I did three days this week and that includes this morning’s one hour session. I was travelling this week and I did have a few out of the ordinary commitments.

On the plus side I will league up on Tonic more than likely later tonight, so there is that, I suppose. Last week I didn’t come close but then there were some seriously dedicated people practising last week.

So, this week, the focus is on two- three main things. Currently I am working on fault free run throughs of the Mendelssohn – it is Tantalisingly close. Some of the trips are much more secure now but the piece as it whole doesn’t run cleanly. I’m also polishing up some of the musicality. I like the way it sounds.

The other main target is this Rebikov piece that I landed on for the self selection. I’m starting to really like it and also it is almost close to Ready For Polishing.

But it’s an odd one. Some days, the first half of it is so solid you could build a forty storey apartment block on top of it. This morning, you’d hesitate to place a feather on it. I love elements of the melody patterns in it, and the flow of the voices. I spent some of this morning’s practice on the last 12 bars. These are not secure yet but as I will do a second practice after lunch, I have strong hopes for it to be ready to polish. If I can successfully film some of it later, I might do an entry on it. We’ll see.

I also did some work on the Bach. It is breaking my heart. I didn’t find a tutorial for it on either Josh Wright or Tonebase for that specific Invention yet. Although I see tutorials for other inventions and am wondering about listening into them.

For the fourth piece, the Milne, I didn’t touch it this week.

The sight reading piece was an E Flat Ecossaise by Beethoven. It really did not fit my fingers at all – very much the feeling it works for a child. I resented working on it. I will do some Burgmuller this week, I think. Meh.

On the place side, the Rebikov is coming along and I really like it – in fact, I like these pieces much more than I liked the exam pieces I did as a teenager.

20240121 Practice Diaries

It wasn’t a great week for practice and I only got a couple of slots in. Also, I didn’t progress up to the silver leave in Tonic so yeah, bit disappointing.

I am struggling with the Bach. So much so I think I will see if Josh Wright has a lesson specifically for that piece (he doesn’t, I have just checked).

For the Mendelssohn Gondola Song, this morning was frustrating. I am getting to the stage where I would like to record it for the youtube and instagram and despite knowing every note of it cleanly, I’m struggling to get it clean through. And there is no consistent mistake. If there was, I could clean it. I love it though, it doesn’t pain me to replay it repeatedly but it pains me not to get it right repeatedly.

What I did work on a lot this week is Autumn Leaves (3, con afflizione) by Vladimir Rébikov. This is one of two pieces by him on my radar. A year or two ago, Pianist pulled out his Christmas Tree waltz for one of their Christmas repertoire suggestions. I haven’t started that yet (maybe I should, together with another Christmas piece I’d like to have ready for next Christmas. Need to update the repertoire plan I guess).

This is a two page piece, in F sharp minor. I don’t remember learning anything in that key before but I know I have pulled stuff out by ear in that key when I was a teenager (and also C sharp minor, was a big achievement when I was 15). Anyway, without going into the details I had serious reservations about it at the beginning – fingers weren’t the right shape and I questioned the wisdom of doing it. At some point, when it is finished, I will disassemble it, video it, and do an entry on it. One of the interesting things about it though is that there are not a lot of recordings of it around – the one I have on my learning list on Apple Music is I think Anthony Goldstone. Bing Chat cannot find it but if you have an IMSLP subscription, it is there too from what I can see.

It’s a piece I have come to like a lot – there are some gorgeous progressions in them. But the fingering is unduly challenging for my left hand. On the plus side, it will feed into what I want to learn.

In both cases, I have struggled a lot with memory in playing this morning. It may be because I haven’t had enough sleep lately (I haven’t, this is true). My fingers are slipping a lot more easily than I ever remember being the case before since Christmas. I keep the piano keys covered and I dust but still. It’s like the ice I have enjoyed (not) this week in Brussels. That’s infuriating.

I have not [yet] today touched the Bach or the Hillne. I will probably do a second and third practice session later on today. I will need to work on the Bach and also analyse where those rhythmic figures turn up. At some point if I get through that (and do the exam) I should write/vlog that up too.

On the 40 pieces project, I started the second piece today. It’s an Ecossaise in E flat major by Beethoven. In many requests it is very easy; I just don’t like it very much. But I can see that it is instilling some reading discipline in me, this and the Haydn. You’ll find notes on the pieces when I feel like updating it on the relevant page.

In other crazy ideas, things which went wrong: La Jetée by Yann Tiersen, particularly late last night; and I bought some more sheet music because Brahms OP 79. Shout out to the sheet music shop who saved me the danger of browsing it. I need to do a read through with a recording because the initial sight read was a bit of a disaster.

In general, the weeks (there have been more than one) where I get to do daily practice of around 90 minutes are hugely piano productive for me. So I like that very much. It’s just this week again will be disrupted but at least there is only one day of business travel.

20240113 Piano Diaries

I was travelling for work this week and coincidentally, the Henle Challenge was running on Tonic. Not a good week for me not to be getting a lot of practice in. I’m also not super organised with the ToneBase live streams.

But I am listening to a stream on rejuvenating my practice…Some of it is quite interesting. Anyway, in light of all this, where do we stand on various things:

On the 40 pieces, the first pieces was a piece by Haydn, Minuet in F Hob IX:8 No 11. It’s the first piece of Haydn I remember learning and it’s rather pretty. I have more or less finished learning it, so I need to choose another piece and put it by the piano.

On the Grade 6 project, I’m working seriously on all four pieces now. This is what happens when you find 90 minutes to practice every day. It also sucks when you miss those 90 minutes(Tuesday, Wednesday I am looking at you this week). Here’s the current summary:

  • Bach Two part invention in E major: about 30% done, the famous bar 7 occasionally correct now and a couple of the errors rooted out. Need to take a look at the second part of it to identify other similar rhythm pitfalls
  • Mendelssohn Gondollied 19/6: This is being polished. It’s committed to memory and now it’s in the “practice until you can’t get it wrong” mode. There are a couple of places that are slightly more frequent problems but in general, I can play it through with only 1 or 2 errors. This is really good news
  • Rebikov’s afflicted autumn leaves: this is about 60% done much to my surprise – a lot of progress this week. I’m also starting to enjoy it and there are some progressions in it that I really love.
  • Milne: Indigo moon: this is about 50% done again. It’s not instinctive to memorise for me.

Mostly I try to touch all four pieces daily and once they are all memorised, I will be practising them as a performance.

40 Pieces Challenge

After writing this, and having done some daily practice this morning, I turned to the question of music to use for this challenge.

In the end, because I have Pianist Magazine membership and access to everything going back to around 2010, I went through their scores and picked out 40 pieces, mostly beginner pieces, and I dropped them into a spreadsheet. If I already had the sheet music (there are a couple of pieces from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, for example), I noted that instead of the magazine as a source. Most of the pieces are beginner pieces, there are a couple of Beginner/Intermediate and a couple of Intermediate pieces. Most are not rearrangements and the vast majority are one pagers.

What does all this mean? Well on the days I get to practice, fifteen minutes are going to this challenge. I may occasionally vlog these things but I am not sure yet and there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of prepping the vlog anyway.

You can find the list here if you are interested.