Hi everyone
If you listen to Joplin's performance of MLR, in the first few bars of the B section he plays the right hand an octave higher than notated (He also does the same in the Trio). My question is... is this the official way of playing it, or just something he did for the recording? I can play MLR, and my edition of the score was notated to be played like this...(as most people play it - the RH an octave lower than Joplin)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLrxPZwV99M&feature=related
But I personally think it sounds better the way Joplin himself played it.
Thanks

Hi Samuel,

The copy I have of MLR, in Scott Joplin:King of Ragtime, isn't marked 8va the second time, but the B part of The Entertainer is. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule - ragtime has a little more leeway than some other genres of music, and I've heard people add grace notes and other embellishments, or interpolate parts of a different tune into a ragtime performance. I think 8va on Maple Leaf, if you like it that way, is fine.

In the Member Recordings section Fraggle has both MLR and The Entertainer, and he actually played both hands an octave higher on a repeat in The Entertainer, and it was cool.

The MLR you linked to was pretty good - there's some quite, uh, well, uh, not so good ones on youtube

Cathy

This is an interesting version by one of my favourite players, Bollani. He takes a few liberties with it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px1ivDxtBvU

You can play it as you like (as long as the jazz police don't hear you).

beeboss - that was fun

Cathy