I feel that now may be a good time to flush out some of my thoughts on my writing since improving my writing style and efficiency is also a goal of this blog.
I have never considered myself a good writer. Somehow when I'm playing piano the connections in my brain are firing in a concentrated coherent manner, but when I sit down to collect my thoughts into words my synapses start firing haphazardly in such a way that it usually takes me a while of pondering a sentence before I'm satisfied enough to write it down. This leads to an elongated writing process and frustration as I forget the beginning of a decent sentence as I'm putting the finishing touches at the end. Thus why I hope this blog helps me learn how to simply sit down and just write. So far, I think it has been working. I managed to pound out a decent eight page paper for my ethics class in two days, something that I had never thought possible. In fact, college has taught me to be come comfortable with lengthy papers to the point that I'm not sure how I could write a decent paper under three pages with a coherent flow and enough content to still make sense. Even now, as I continue to write, the words come easier than they had at the beginning of the post.
Today's post contains six pages worth of etudes. Unfortunately I won't go into very much detail because, quite frankly, I wasn't able to play much of it. The etudes are just to hard. I'm finding that I'll sit down, play a few measures, and just give up because the pieces don't make much sense unless taken at the required tempo (which is usually pretty fast). However, that does not mean that I am not sight reading. Instead I have been sight reading a few children's and exercise books.
The third and fifth etude are related in that both pieces are in an upbeat 3/4 with the melody comprise of quarter notes over a sparse staccato bass. However, the melody is not a simple one because the chord tones of the piece are also in the right hand and are played in a rolled like manner immediately after the melody note is played. Both pieces include a contrasting key change and a return to the tonic. The fifth is slightly different than the third in that it is more chromatic with leading tones found on every quarter note that lead to the melody note.
The fourth prelude is choppy with the right hand and left hand trading off in eighth notes. The trick is to keep the melody legato above the staccato homophony in accompaniment.
The sixth etude is probably one of my favorites simply because it reminds my of a melody from Harry Potter. If you thought playing a chromatic scale was hard, try doing it in thirds. The entire melody is found in thirds in the right hand is comprised almost entirely of sixteenth notes for the entire piece. Beautiful, but deadly hard.
Total time spent sight reading: 2 hours
Total time spent writing: 1 hour
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