This is a study group for the wonderfull music of David Nevue. We will be playing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

The talented participants will include:

Monica Kern
Shortcircuit85
Opus45
Shirokuro
kawaigirl1
rocky
psychopianoman

The sheet music can be purchased HERE.

If interested reply, everyone is allowed, skill level does not matter.

We are looking at starting after July 4th.

All right! I am psyched indeed. One of my favorite new age artists, and a chance to have a song ready for Christmas! (Last Christmas, I never did quite nail down my holiday pieces in time to feel comfortable playing them for others.)

I just listened to Nevue's recording again. Oh, if I can actually play this by Christmas, I will be one happy man!

A beautiful carol...beautifully arranged.

(I see (hear) what all the fuss is about this guy and his music...divine.)

I listened to the sample clip, I will have to order the cd now, I looked at the sample page and it does not look to bad but he does usually open a little mellow on the intro and then tends to get more technical.

I think this will be fun even if it is hard. I can not wait!

Gulp! I just looked at the sample page and listened to the GRYMG arrangement. It is a lovely arrangement. But it's also clearly no walk in the park and sounds a lot harder than the other David Nevue pieces I have learned. [wonders if maybe they should have started earlier, like January?]

I too thought it sounded difficult when I listened to the recording, but the music seems simpler than I was expecting. It's easier from a technical perspective, harder from an expressional perspective. I think it's the fact he is rocking alot of chords back and forth that both makes it sound harder but look easier.

This being my first Nevue piece, I would be interested to hear how you guys (Monica, Shiro, Rocky, anybody else who have played his other pieces) compare the skill level of this piece to any of his other pieces when you get the score.

The hardest piece I have played is The Vigil, it took a while to get it down and longer to memorize.

This looks about the same, he usually follows a predictable pattern and after a week I usually latch on to what is happening. His left hand almost allways follows a set pattern once the song gets going. The right hand focuses on bringing the melody out and playing with the chords.

I have finished 4 of his pieces and am working on 3 others now but am in no hurry to finish them up, just toying with them when I have a moment.

Oh goody goody, let's get started! I mean, after July 4th of course. I'll get out my score and see how I think it compares to Overcome (the only other DN piece I've played so far.)

BTW, Psychopianoman, what other DN pieces have you played?

Monica, would you list your DN repertoire too? I'm curious what everyone's chosen to play.

My DN repertoire: Solitude; The Gift; Home; Overcome; Emerald Valley. And a bunch of sheet music downloaded I haven't started yet.

GRYMG definitely seems the hardest of what I've learned so far.

I have finished in order of difficulty to me:

Overcome (follows easy pattern)
Ascending with Angels (follows easy pattern)
Variations (only harder due to the expression)
The Vigil (hardest for me because I had to sight read this one)

Currently playing around with:

The Gift (A little harder than overcome)
Take my Life and Let it Be (needs lots of expression)
The Emerald Valley (About the same as overcome)

The difficulty is only my opinion and I do hope to learn all of his music. Once I tackle a little more of his stuff I think I will be ready for some David Lanz.

I think it's interesting how people's perceptions of difficulty vary so much... I view The Gift and Emerald Valley as being fairly easy and comparable to each other, and Overcome as being the hardest--yeah, it's got lots of repetition, but that low E-flat bass run is a KILLER to play smoothly without messing up! (At least for me. ShiroKuro, I am FINALLY at a point where I can play it better with the new fingering you suggested than I did before with the old. Phew!)

Ok, sign me up for this group. I haven't got the sheet music yet, however, I looked at the sample page and it looks....well....difficult to me. However, most stuff looks (and is) difficult to me. This is another one like "Edgewater" that I probably won't be very successful with, but we shall see.

So far, I have played the following of David's:

Home
The Gift
Psalm 77
Deep Heaven

Have played around with:
One Night at Mozart's
Winter Walk
Overcome (never gonna play this one right!)

Never say never, rocky. You will play it. Just as you and I will one day play Edgewater. I hope.

Add me in.

Ok, so I downloaded GRYMG just now...looked over the music and, well, just about fainted!! Just glancing over the sheet music this looks pretty daggone difficult to me!! Hopefully, it will be easier to play than it looks.

Good thing I'm getting started on it now so it will be ready by Christmas......2010

rocky, you just motivated me to download the piece. Move over; I'm going to faint, too. Let's see...how can we put a positive spin on it? Uh, it's only 4 pages? The left hand doesn't look too bad? The first two lines look positively easy, so if worse comes to worst, we can just repeat them a dozen times and pretend that's the entire song?

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to play the first two lines!!! Yes, indeed, I can handle those!!

4 pages, but you have to go back play parts of page 2 and 3 again!!!

Hopefully knowing the melody already will help out!!

Okay, I just listened to the piece again while going along with the sheet music, and it's not QUITE as bad as I had feared. The only real tough part will be the fast jazzy section in measures 32-40. I'm not optimistic about my chances of pulling those 8 measures off. But the rest seems doable.

Yes, I'm also thinking this is going to be a bit difficult. I played through GRYM and Carol of the Bells yesterday, and the Carol is definitely easier-- no, no, not GW's Carol, the one form the Virtuoso book!

So I'm going to start the Carol first (too much difficult music in my practice menu right now) and then start on GRYM. And of course, I won't be starting with the easy part. But I haven't decided which section looks like it's the hardest. Any thoughts? Are the rest of you going to start at the beginning or somewhere else?

Monica, I just re-read your post, so I'm guessing measure 32 is the place to start then? (I don't have my score out just now)

BTW, as I was looking through this piece yesterday I was thinking that it's very DN-esque. The development of the music is very straight-forward, the sections transform into each other seemlessly and naturally. And the theme is very clear (obviously, since it's a lyric) I think there will be some challenging places, but it should be a lot easier when we get started on them. This is very do-able!

I have not looked at it yet but I like the way you described it, most of the time he follows a set path, I will get it tonight and see. I hope it is not as bad as everyone states.

I played a bit of this last night and maybe, just maybe, it will be something I can play. Some parts look harder to me than they actually were. I will give it my best shot!

Bob, thanks for the great concert report! I soo wish I could have been there, it sounds like it was a wonderful night. I'm not surprised you found David Nevue to be really good with the audience, I've emailed with him a few times, and he seems really friedly and down to earth. So are you going to start working on any of the music you heard there?

Hi everyone,

I'm very excited to see this happening here at PianoWorld. How cool is this - people excited to play my music!

I've got three new sheet music selections coming out soon as well. I hope to get them up within the next week or so if anyone wants to tackle those.

They are.... (drumroll please)
"Wonderland" - really simple
"Sweet Dreams & Starlight" - gets slightly tricky at the end
"Watching the Clock" - this one is in Ab - SEVEN flats! That might scare a few of you, but actually it's pretty simple to play once you figure out the time signature changes and remember that it's C *FLAT* which is really weird to see on paper and then play a B - er - not a B, C flat.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

David, I *really* like your music!!! I knew from the newsletter that you would be having new sheet music soon and have been waiting anxiously!! I have almost all the others even though I can't play them all. Heck, even the ones I say I can play don't sound much like your version, but hey, they sound ok to me!!

My favorite at the moment is "Deep Heaven", just love it!!

P.S. I really hate C flats!!!! :p

yeah, F flats aren't much fun either...

Well David, I think I'm not alone when I say I'm excited to see that you're excited to see us learning your music. I think it's neat that the composer is out there watching us learn his music. It's not like Chopin is going to pop in on the other group learning Raindrops...

No kidding Andrew, how cool is that?

(of course, it will make it very intimidating to submit a practice recording to the study group...can you imagine how he would cringe hearing me destory his beautiful music?)

HI Y'ALL. AND HELLO TO DAVID NEVUE! I'M NOT A MEMBER OF THIS GROUP, BUT I DECIDED TO POP IN BECAUSE I LOVE DAVIDS MUSIC. I WAS EXCITED TO SEE HIM ON THIS THREAD. I AM WORKING ON OVERCOME[/b] RIGHT NOW. I JUST GOT DONE DOING THE GIFT[/b]. I WOULD LIKE TO DO THE VIGIL[/b] SOMEDAY, I REALLY LIKE THAT SONG. AND DAVID NEVUE: WHEN I HAVE BAD DAYS I LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC.....AND IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER!!!! SO KEEP ON COMPOSING THAT BEAUTIFUL MUSIC!

Arias, if you post here that automatically makes you a member.

We'll expect recorded practice submissions by September! :p