After working on this piece for about 7 months, I'm finally comfortable to make a video of it. Comments and criticism are welcome. Thanks for listening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyJrjUdHyc&fmt=18

Beautiful! And some nice camera effects there too!

Nice tone, and very good rubato, sounding natural and heartfelt. You handle the middle section very well. Of course we always wonder "can he play that part too" and you play it well, without any musical sacrifice due to the extra technical difficulty of the part.

You show a very good dynamic range. I think you could use a lot more of your pp and ppp at phrase endings -- I would have liked to see most of them "drop off" a lot more -- but that's a matter of taste.

There are a few places (just a few) where I wonder about the rubato and if it's really what you "meant." Right at the beginning, I don't think it's a good idea to linger on that first E. (It's just a tad, but it's there.) I think it's important to 'set' a beat and tempo, even recognizing that the beat is a bit flexible. When you linger on the very first note like that, you leave the listener at loose ends.

You did a good job of it when the opening theme returns after the middle section, at 3:13, although I'm not sure you really want to pause like that before the E. Do you really want to "announce" the return like that? Do you not see the E more as flowing from the previous notes and sort of "belonging" to them? There are a couple of other places in the piece also where you do the same thing....Maybe you want to look for places like that, where you make a little "break," to see if you really think that's how the music goes.

About that "rubato" on the E in the first measure, I have a guess about how it happened, because I could imagine myself doing it for this reason: if this recording wasn't your first "take," as it wouldn't be for most of us ......by the time we get to "take whatever" sometimes we lose the sense of STARTING the piece, and we're playing as though we're in the middle.

One other place about the rubato: In the phrase at 1:00 (and its repetition at the end), you "clip" the last note of the figure, i.e. you play it a little too soon and leave some space after it (not every time, but I think 3 times out of the 4 that it appears). All I would say is, did you "mean" it? If you did, fine, but I think maybe you just got into the habit of doing that to make it easier to get to the next note, i.e. it's a musical compromise for the sake of the hand. From how you handle other parts of the piece, I know that you don't need to make such a compromise.

I hope some of this may be useful. It's a very good performance -- you really know the piece and have the feel for it.

Wow Mark, thanks for your detailed comments. It's much appreciated. I will go through them and have a listen to the recording later. I mainly play by ears, so I listened to lots of different recordings on youtube and learned the interpretation that I liked.

I will use your suggestions to make improvements on my interpretation. Thanks again.

You learned this by ear? There were a couple of spots where the harmony was wrong. I didn't consider them to be mistakes since you looked like you meant them (the C naturals you played as A, 3 and 4 bars from the end). Overall, I liked it very much but if I were nitpicking (and you asked), I thought you lingered a little long on most of the "beginning of the measure" notes. Also on bars 38 through 44, those are all 16th notes but you are playing the last chord of each phrase as an 8th or more.
I'm jealous though as I can't seem to make it through the con bravura without numerous klunkers.

Thanks Damon for your comments. I learned this 50% by ears because I was too frustrated reading the notes. I took piano lessons that didn't require reading much back 24 years ago and am now starting to learn it.

You are right about me hitting the A instead of the C natural. I'll fix that.

You and Mark commented about me lingering too long on the beginning of the measure and or the note before going to the first measure. I like this rubato feeling, but maybe I'm overdoing it. I'll see if I can do it just a tad.

Hey Damon, I learned the bravura fingering from you back in November or so =) I still hit some klunkers from time to time. Funny though, I seem to hit more klunkers on the Ebm7-5 run up (which I did in this recording) than the con bravura.

There were a couple of other odd harmonics in there. If you want me to locate them, I'll listen again. (I'll listen again anyway).



It's just a mental block for me, it's never in the same place twice. I really should finish this one off, though.

hello abster
beautiful piece, lovely playing and a classy video too. I don't know this piece intimately but always enjoy listening to it. Thanks again and well done. I'd be immensely proud of myself if I had produced this

canonie

Congratulations ab-ster on your performance of this lovely Chopin Etude - and you learned this 'by ear'?! Remarkable!

Also, as I've remarked previously, great video and sound quality.

Thanks Canonie & Cruiser for your comments.

By the way, youtube now compresses the audio too much even with fmt=18. For better audio, you can go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyJrjUdHyc and enable HD.

Huh......I didn't know. In fact, I have no idea even what "fmt" means (and even if you explained it I probably still wouldn't).

BTW, just to make sure I get what you mean by "compresses".....is that about dynamic range? I recently did my first youtube thing, and I found that this was the case, but didn't realize it was due to youtube.....I thought it was something about how the recording level had been set.

I'm glad you mentioned it -- thanks!!

Yes, compression limits dynamic range. It also raises the overall level so the track is louder than it really is. Great for a pop productions and electric guitars...not so great for a classical performance. Fortunately, YT's new HD feature allows a way around compression.

Thanks! I thought so but couldn't tell for sure.

No problems...here's a good article from Wikipedia about audio compression.

Actually I find it a God-send for listening to classical on the road (and other noisy environments). Otherwise, I can't hear the quiet parts. The nuance isn't completely lost because of the different timbre in softer notes.

Very true; I hadn't thought of that. I tend to listen to other forms of music in loud environments. I prefer peace and quiet for enjoying classical music.

Thanks much for that -- but I must admit, it's way beyond me. Granted, I didn't try my very hardest, but it's tough stuff for someone who's not conversant with that technical language, and I did have the impression that even with utmost effort I wouldn't have gotten much out of it.

I got far more from your post.

No problem once again.

Thank you!

Cheers!

Unfortunately, the compression that I mentioned was regarding bit rate. This compression is used to make the data that is transferred from youtube to the user's computer smaller. The smaller the data, the more gritty and robotics the sound becomes.

The 'fmt' option is a way for a user to specify what quality (bit rate) to be used. fmt = 18 is 'high quality'. This used to have high bit rate audio, but not anymore. The one that has high bit rate is now HD. I found the fmt value for HD, it's fmt=22.

You can append this option to the youtube URL with '&' delimiter. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyJrjUdHyc&fmt=22

I did use the audio compression that Horowitzian mentioned when I was editing the audio. I used it to trim the peaks just a little bit, so I can bring the overall volume up.

I think that was what my link was about, though I was talking about audio compression at first. That's the same reason I refuse to rip CD's into my iTunes library as mp3's, especially classical CD's. I can hear a major difference between the lossy mp3 codec and lossless codecs like Apple Lossless.

Thanks for the info on the appendable quality value; that's very useful.

The track sounds amazing; nothing wrong with a little light compression. I use a compressor (the extremely nice pedal unit from Keeley Electronics, to be exact) with my electric guitars (well, except for Les Pauls, which really don't need it).

Ah yes, that's what the wiki link is talking about... I didn't open the link before. Thanks for that. Cool that you play guitar too, I wish I could.

You're welcome!

You should pick it up! It's a fun second (or in my case first) instrument. I only play for myself and jam with friends every once in a while, but it's still rewarding. I have six guitars right now; four electrics and two classicals.

Nice playing!

My main comment would be that I think sometimes the balance between the RH melody and the RH inner voices could be better(the melody louder and/or inner voices softer).

I think listening to Youtbue recordings by great pianists can be trememdously helpful ...almost like taking a free lesson from them. If you can identify what you like about their playing then you can try to do that also.

Some of your rubato I liked and some was not convincing for me. For example, I like your slight pause on the first note but I thought there should be a gradual ritard at the end(as opposed to waiting before the last note but playing the three before that in time).

Thanks pianoloverus,

Yes, I'm still working on playing the melody voice louder than the inner right hand voices.

I like Valentina Lisitsa's interpretation. I thought that it's more 'compatible' to modern ears. I also listened to Kempf, Igoshina, Cortot and Horowitz. Each plays them differently.

I'll work on the gradual ritard at the end. That makes more sense than waiting for the last note.

As far as voice balancing goes, you should probably strive for quieter inner voices rather than a louder melody. If you aren't careful, you can get an ugly sound if you push the melody too far. I'd recommend splitting the difference and going both ways.

IMO sometimes the balance was OK, sometimes the melody needs to be louder, sometimes the inner voices have to be softer, and sometimes both.

I agree; it was an excellent performance as is. It doesn't need much at all to be an absolutely fantastic performance.

Bravo!

Sounds great! Very balanced and controlled performance. I like the rubato.

A surprising, quite interesting fact about this etude is that Chopin, in the autograph manuscript, originally indicated the tempo as "Vivace" and later added "ma non troppo". In addition, the passages from bar 46 have no "forte/fortissimo" or "doppio movimento" indications. Also, the poco piú animato (often marked at bar 21) is not given in the original manuscript.

Are all the later additions given by Chopin himself or did editors have a hand?

Great performance. Great presentation. Thanks for sharing.

(my first post!)

Very nice!

I started working on this piece pretty recently, since about the time this thread was last visited (over the holidays), as my main "getting back into piano" piece (I've played on and off over the years). It would be very, very tricky to learn it by ear, because of the multiple voices and figuring out exactly what notes to hold over, etc. It certainly wasn't obvious from the recordings I analyzed, anyway. So kudos to you for being able to do that!

That con bravura section is killer (my first reaction on reaching it in the sheet music: GROOOOAN... tooooo many acccidentalllls!!!!!) It was much easier for me to learn it by ear--what I did was recognize its basic "algorithmic pattern" (paired in leaps by tritones, generally chromatically descending, etc.). Despite knowing that intricately, I still play it with a lot of, as Damon would say, klunkers. It's improving, though, reasonably klunker-free at 3/4 speed, I think. It'll still be some time before I can share my results here

All the recordings I've analyzed have slight pauses in between each middle section theme, like, for example, right before the section with tritones. I naturally have long pauses there because I'm still simply just taking too long to figure out where to move my hands but I do feel that those short pauses make sense, despite the sheet music not indicating it.

But yes, thanks for sharing... it is good encouragement to stick with it, and inspires me to get it to performance quality!

Very nice, thank you for sharing!

This piece brings back a memory... The first time I played it in a performance was for a high school literary competition. I was such a bundle of nerves; I will never forget introducing the piece, sitting down at the piano, and then completely forgetting the piece! Totally gone. Good thing the timer didn't start until I started playing because it took me awhile to compose myself and get it together, but my nerves were shot and it was all I could do to play at all by that point.

So, for this one I can't say anything but job well done!