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Undone,

Beautifully played! That is the slow counterpart I had hoped to hear (z32 and the other youtube video are at a much faster tempo). I gave myself the "pass" on Night Song yesterday (I may try to make a recording sometime, I don't know) and am now on Hava Nagila. If you finished Night Song ("halfway mark") in July is it safe to assume the difficulty of the second half is much higher? Thanks for posting the recording and great job once again!

W

Great Job Undone!

Waltz, yes, I found that the pieces in the second half of Alfred’s book 2 do keep getting more difficult to complete, in part because many are longer. But it’s also true that at about the time I was finishing Night Song, I also started working a lot more on supplemental pieces and that certainly slowed my progress in Alfred’s quite a bit.

Oh, and by the way, Hava Nagila was definitely one of those songs that took a long time for me to complete (at an appropriately quick tempo), but it’s also one that’s a lot of fun to play.

Undone

Two questions on Light and Blue:

1. What is a "moderate blues tempo"?
2. How do you keep the LH from sounding like it is just droning on and on... when I get to about measures 13-18, that left and part just gets annoyingly repetitive. Perhaps this improves as I quicken the tempo?

Undone,
I concur about Hava Nagila being fun to play, I generally end up bouncing my left leg to the rhythm as I play. The only gripes I have are that my left hand fatigues as I practice and for the "third movement" (please forgive the liberal use of the term) Alfred's suggests A and C to be played with 3 and 1 respectively: that hurts my hand haha.

AWTPP,
AlexMan's youtube video of L and B is a tad on the fast end of the tempo spectrum (but it can be played that way if one wishes). Have you listened to John Frank's recording? His tempo feels "right" to me, but it is mostly up to the interpretation of the performer. I am not sure exactly how "moderate blues tempo" would be strictly defined: to me it is slightly ambiguous (as are much of Alfred 2's written tempos).

AWTPP - a "moderate" blues tempo might be in the range of 80-100 bpm, or at least that's how it sounded good to me - I used to listen to a lot of blues and have a fairly large CD collection - I played my versions at 90 bpm (see back on page 32 of this thread).

The left hand part is what it is and it'll sound the same no matter what the tempo - it was designed to be simple and serve as a drone against which the RH melody is a sharp contrast - but the basic LH pattern is actually broken at several points, which does break up the monotony somewhat - instead of fighting it go with it, tone it down and let the RH dominate as it should - or get creative and invent your own LH variations - and enjoy the music!

Regards, JF

Just checking in, working on Theme from Symphony No.6 ( 1st Movement ) this week. Sounds a little muddy so I gotta "polish" it off before tomorrow's lesson. Also finding this a little challenging on the dynamics but that'll come..

TTigg, How did you find Waltz in G Major? I’m on this one now, and have also started on Symphony No. 6. I like Waltz, but its gong to take some time before I’ll be finished with it. I suspect I’ll finish Symphony first.

Undone

Not in my book #2 (not the all-in-one). For #3 the only option was all-in-one and it's not often the 2 books don't have the same stuff.

From looking @Alex's video it looks nice, complicated, but nice. I would agree you'll finish Symphony first

Re The LH in Light and Blue. If you look at the score you will see the bass line is 12 bars repeated. It follows a standard 12 bar blues chord progression of a definite pattern, which is very slightly different to the pattern introduced in Book 1 with Got Those Blues.

Light and Blue
Pattern I , IV , I , I , IV , IV , I , I , V7 , IV , I , V7

Got those blues
Pattern I , I , I , I , IV , IV , I , I , V7 , IV , I , V7

Commas inserted merely to improve the spacing as the preview reply box seems to ignore repeated spaces.

Just thought I would throw that in. I've always enjoyed Light and Blue, as for tempo I play it at a tempo I am comfy with, a little bit faster than The Entertainer, which I don't play fast!

Good to hear the progress you are all making.

Ttigg, thanks for the update. Will you be making any recordings? If so I would love to hear.

Sundew, are you still in book 2?

W

Thanks I will be soon. Gotta work on putting together my "list" of stuff between the 2 books and I just picked up the Zoom H2 to mess about with

Hi Waltz, and the brief answer is "Yes", in so far as I abandoned Alfred some time ago in favour of original compositions. I recently began looking at Blues, hence the pedantry in my previous post,and decided to dust Alfred off.

You all knew it was coming... My performance of Night Song recorded this evening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edRoWhjU04

I tried to play at an "intermediate" pace somewhere in between Undone's and Z32's. There are a few shaky spots and I would appreciate any feedback.

W

Loved it.
I'm going to have to get a recording of mine done since I play at a different speed (which I liked when I was doing it) Of course it may be a "noob" butchery of the composers intended but hey, that's what some of us do, non intentionally of course

Thanks Ttigg! This is such a pretty piece to play and probably my favorite in Alfred's 2 thus far. It can be played in many different tempos and they all sound so nice! I can't wait to hear your take on it .

W

Waltz – Well, I still think it sounds better at a slower tempo, but that’s just personal preference. Seriously, I think you did a fantastic job technically with this piece. And the sometimes abrupt tempo changes certainly were dramatic! I think this is a wonderful piece to explore such interpretations. This is not a true classical piece (although it may sound like one) and as such it frees us from going back to some musty old tome to find out how “it should properly be played”. I really enjoyed listening to your take one this selection and think you did a bang up job at bringing your own feelings and personality to this “fun to play” entry.

Undone

Thank you Undone, it means a lot to hear positive feedback from you. I probably won't make a recording of Hava Nagila due to the awkward page turning I have to do (plus it's so long; it would take too many takes to have one I'd want to show lol). Once again, it is very, very nice to hear positive remarks from everyone here on A#2!

2nd Recording:

I'm sorry. The more I listened to my 1st recording of Night Song the more I agreed with Undone; so I decided to rerecord the piece at a slightly slower tempo. My main focus was on maintaining control and to have a more "nocturne flow" as opposed to rushed and wild. So here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve7U7wxQzfc

Let me know what you guys think! (if you can tolerate another video of mine )

Hi Waltz and Everyone:

I'm still three songs away from La Bamba, but Calypso Carnival sounded like it would be another one that'll give my left wrist a work-out, and Night Song will be another beautiful piece to learn.

Both you and Undone did a wonderful job with your Night Song recordings. I enjoyed listening to them, and especially liked the slower tempos and dynamics in Undone's version.

I've started with Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 earlier this past week, and managed to get it up to where I can play it hands together at a pretty good tempo. I absolutely love the piece and the run from measures 17 on through 33 (the ending). I can see where all of those thumbs over and under scales practices in book 1 comes in handy here. It's definitely challenging trying to do this smoothly while attempting to steadily increase the speed at the same time in that section. Although I had to stop and give my left wrist a break because it's still feeling the effect and twinges of exhaustions from too many straight hours of Light and Blue.

BTW, yesterday marked my one year anniversary since I've started on this wonderful journey, and while I may or may not be able to execute every single piece perfectly, I still can't believe that within a year I went from playing Jingle Bells to learning the first simpler pieces of Liszt. And still, there are so many more beautiful pieces of music waiting, and so little time and talents, (sigh...) well, lack of skills.

Cheers and take care everyone.

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