Aaugh, just what I was afraid would happen. I've been having a very fertile musical period since I last posted here, but somehow good musical times somehow always seem to render me verbally inarticulate. It's quite frustrating, because I'd love to tell my friends about the fascinating time I'm having, but without the ability to articulate what I'm experiencing, it's all "like, wow, the dominant-tonic relationship, y'know, it's deep..."
"Switch Back Rag" has continued to inspire and challenge me. It's quite simple, mostly staying pretty close to the C major 5-finger position, but that's good because it enables me to concentrate on the ragtime trick of having the steady beat in one hand and the syncopation in the other.
Inspired by this syncopation, I got out my rhythm reading books and started practicing rhythms & syncopations on my little drum-let (kind of a tambourine without jingles). In fact, I was having so much fun with it that I went out and invested in a set of bongo drums, so that I'd have 2 different rhythmic tones to play with, and I have to say, the bongos are a most amusing toy. I'm not even attempting to play them in any authentic fashion, just using the deeper tone to mark the downbeat while exploring the various quarter-note/quarter-rest pattern-options within a measure of 4/4 time.
Showing posts with label syncopation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label syncopation. Show all posts
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Switch Back Rag
I feel that in the last two days I've finally found my groove again at the keyboard, for the first time since I came down with the flu a few weeks ago. The trigger has been finding a piece that's just plain fun to play.
I tested out using my demos of Sibelius First and PhotoScore to scan in some sheet music so I could play it back and hear what it was supposed to sound like (a process that went remarkably smoothly, once I got past the recalcitrant scanner). One of the pieces I listened to was called Switch Back Rag from First Ragtime Pieces by Dennis Alexander, and since it was catchy enough to get stuck in my head, I decided to learn it. It's at just the right level to be challenging yet doable, but longer than anything I've learned thus far (two whole pages! :) ).
The challenge for me seems to center on the areas where the left hand is playing a normal 4/4 background while the right is doing something syncopated. My usual strategy of learning HS and then putting them together isn't working as well as usual because part of the time the melody moves from hand to hand, and then when they're playing together the individual parts are straightforward enough -- the whole problem is interweaving them effectively.
I tested out using my demos of Sibelius First and PhotoScore to scan in some sheet music so I could play it back and hear what it was supposed to sound like (a process that went remarkably smoothly, once I got past the recalcitrant scanner). One of the pieces I listened to was called Switch Back Rag from First Ragtime Pieces by Dennis Alexander, and since it was catchy enough to get stuck in my head, I decided to learn it. It's at just the right level to be challenging yet doable, but longer than anything I've learned thus far (two whole pages! :) ).
The challenge for me seems to center on the areas where the left hand is playing a normal 4/4 background while the right is doing something syncopated. My usual strategy of learning HS and then putting them together isn't working as well as usual because part of the time the melody moves from hand to hand, and then when they're playing together the individual parts are straightforward enough -- the whole problem is interweaving them effectively.
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