I have a huge interest in Ragtime, old time piano, 2 steps, cakewalks etc.

Just curious if anybody else has this adiction and struggling through trying to learn piano via this path.

Would also be interested if anybody has favourite websites with sheet music and midi files from this era. Most of it would well and trully be out of copyright now and I would like to collect as much as I can.

I have found that playing midi files via the input to my digital piano is a fantastic way to get the feel of a tune and helps in learning. The only problem is the temptation to let the midi file do all the hard work and just enjoy listening to the tunes.

I have also found that depending on how the midi file is written it is possible to turn off one track at a time and play along with either the left or right hand to learn that part.

I guess this is one of the pros to having a digital piano. No, I don't want to start a discussion on digital versus acoustic. I would love an acoustic piano, it is just not practical at the moment. Oneday!

Hi Egel, I'm learning Scott Joplin's Swipesy. It's a very simple rag, but with a "cute" melody.

You should try it.

cheers

Egel, have you looked at IMSLP? You can download free Joplin music there. And just about any other composer's music you can think of.(Except music still under copyright).

I printed up many Joplin pieces from this website.

Listening to a downloaded midi of the song right now. I will look up the sheet music later.

Thanks

Excellent, wasn't aware of this site.

Thanks, I will have a look around.

I like "honky-tonk" type music. Not sure if that is considered ragtime or not. something about *drumming* the out of tune keys saloon style could be really fun. It must not be easy though.

Midi files:

http://www.ragtimemusic.com/links.html

Scores to download:

http://www.ragtimepiano.ca/index.htm

For a list of additional online links:

http://www.ragtimepiano.ca/sources.htm


Mel

I also like Honky Tonk.

Have you ever noticed in the old western movies that the piano player is always bullet proof, he always seems to keep playing whilst the rest of the saloon is brawling.

Perhaps I have noticed because of my interest in piano. I guess most of the audience is watching the rest of the action. Alawys gave me a bit of a giggle.

Yeah and the saloon honky tonk player not only does'nt get shot but usually gets free drinks and hooks up with any leftover frisky women at the end of the night!

That's it settled, I am taking up saloon playing.

Count me in, Egel. I am obsessed with Scott Joplin's works.

I'm a big fan too. Another great site to check out is "Perfessor Bill's": http://www.perfessorbill.com/sources1.shtml

Undone

+1!

Joplin's my favorite, but I enjoy all ragtime & honky-tonk styles!

Remembering You (closing theme from "All in the Family"):
This would probably sound better played on an old upright piano. I couldn't find an arrangement of this other than simple lead sheet, so made up my own.

I am. It's just very difficult music for me to play, that's all.

I'm a fan of ragtime also. It's great music to play at parties - everyone seems to like it. It's also very forgiving of pianos which are not perfectly tuned.

al-mahed, that's great! I'm glad you decided to take this one on. I'm looking forward to your performance.

Me too, lets see how long will take to master it

Hi, Egel. Here's a link to my site with ragtime midi files mostly of my wife Sue playing: http://www.rtpress.com/titles.htm But there are a few recordings of Eubie Blake playing too. Unfortunately, they're just straight up midi recordings of her playing and the hands are not split into tracks.

A late friend, John Roche used to do that, however. http://www.johnroachemusic.com/ He only had use of one hand in his later years.

I believe Warren Trachtman and Bill Edwards also sequenced that way. To get a stereo midi playback effect with the original Soundblaster audio card. Perfessor Bill's site is linked above and his midi's are mostly his own performances. Here's Warren's site which has allot of his ragtime piano-roll to midi conversions: http://www.trachtman.org/ragtime/

Howard

Thanks everybody.

Quite a few links to look at.

For those who find ragtime hard, I too have struggled with most of it too. I have had success only through perseverance due to my love for this kind of music. It is not easy, but there again neither is playing the piano in general, otherwise everybody could do it.

I find that listening to a midi of the song before attempting it helps. I then break it down into small parts and persevere until it comes together.

I have only been playing again for about 12mths after a 30 yr break and I am guessing it will take me another 30 yrs to master.

i'm gonna save this in my post history for future reference.

Hopefully you will get there quicker than that. I was taught to work on the left hand first before trying to learn the right hand and that makes sense because the left hand holds the key to playing at a steady tempo.

I'm excited with this rag, things are working so far, it is so difficult to me, I'm spending all me avaiable playing time to study this piece for a week by now! The octaves, the 5th finger "landing" on the black keys... I'm almost done with the first part (the first repetition), but now that I'm learning the second one I can see I'm still far away...

Cebukid, there are so many nice rags that are not from Joplin, find in youtube a guy called BachScholar, he recorded a lot of nice rags from other composers.

Check it out (Egel too, and all fans of ragtime):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-u3nja4OGE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys3Sc8CEacM

cheers

al-mahed, yes I'm familiar with the works of James Lamb and other ragtime composers. I haven't been playing (as a grownup) too long, so I haven't had a chance to tackle others' works yet, although I enjoy listening to other rags very much!

..and yes, I'm familiar with B-Scholar's playing. He's a very good, classically trained player of ragtime.

Also, I've started Maple Leaf Rag! It'll be my fourth Joplin piece. I don't find the first strain difficult at all actually. I'm just dabbling with it for now, because I'll be taking on Chopin Op. 9/2 pretty soon.

Good luck with Swipsey. You'll find that each Joplin piece is a different learning experience, and once you've played one, you won't be afraid to take on others.

Swipesy is a great rag and it's one of the 8 or so rags that I play. The parts which were hardest for me to learn were the last four measures of the third section and to a lesser extent measures 7 and 8 of the first section.

The first measure of the second section requires threading your fingers between the black keys to hit white keys. My fingers can squeeze through on my piano but if I play it on other pianos I sometimes find my fingers have a hard time fitting between two black keys.

Maple Leaf rag is a tough one, I work on it from time to time as a background project but I still have a long way to go till it sounds good.

In Oct. 2009 we had a wonderful Piano Forums Piano Party on Cape Cod. 5 houses, 5 pianos, over 3 days.

One of our new guests was Sue Keller, a well known and respected ragtime pianist and entertainer.

You can view some pictures of the party here...
http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1221179/5.html

The next page has a list of MP3 recordings compiled by Sue's husband while we all took turns playing the pianos.

Pretty much anything that says Sue Keller will be ragtime, and very well done.

I enjoy ragtime myself, but I'm pretty much limited to Billy Joel's Root Beer Rag.

Hi Chris, this is exactly how I feel. The 7-8 measures of the first section gave me more trouble, but the most difficult part until now is the second section because of what you already said and specialy because measures 5 and 6, have to fly the hand and land the 5th finger at F# at measure 5 and do the octaves.

Oh, the 15th and 16th measures of the first section are giving me a hard time too.

The thing is difficult, and I hope the other section go more easly

cheers

Cheers Frank, thank you for let us know about it!

I'm a huge Joplin fan. I've tried to listen to other of Joplin's contemporaries, but they dont compare to Joplin. William Bolcom composed a few really good ragtime pieces also.

Playing ragtime is a whole different story though.

As to the first question. Since easy ragtime is difficult to find. I would work on things like Strauss waltzes and polkas since you can find easier versions of those and the playing style is kind of similar.

I also love ragtime and that is how i worked my way up to it.

My main issue with ragtime is joplin is actually not my favorite even though his music got me into it.

Because of this my favorite site for rags is at the university of colorado.

http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/sheetmusic.pl?Rag&titlepages&1

this collection is extremely large but it is all in the public domain which means that the collection ends at 1914 (so many years before they posted it all) and the pieces that would have had their copyrights renewed because they are popular (most of Joplin's stuff) will not be found there.

The other nice thing is that a lot of the less popular rags are easier so you can eventually work up to the really hard eubie blake and joplin stuff