Hey, folks -- he's human!!!

Was there ever any doubt about that? Though I wonder about Ives.

Bravo, Jeffrey. That was fun(for me at least)

Bravo! You are amazing! I especially enjoyed the Liszt-Wagner one.

I'll post a few pages shortly... It's going to be VERY tough Jeffrey, and not the whole work, because I simply can't post the whole work, but I can't resist a good challenge. (PS. It's contemporary... brrr....)

Some questions I need to ask you JeffreyJones, since I'm trying to become like you:

1) How many years have you been practising sightreading?
2) Do you count in your head as you sightread, and if not, how do you deal with a measure that has a very tricky rhythm?
3) How far ahead do you look generally?
4) How many outer and inner ledger lines do you have memorized by heart, and accordingly what range of notes can you play blindly?
5) What kind of piece is the most challenging for you to sightread? (e.g. heavy and frequent two-handed chords, scattered notes everywhere, polyrhythmic, etc...)

I bet he'll say something like he

There you go Jeffrey:

www.nikolas-sideris.com/AGS/Jeffrey.pdf

I, personally, think it's VERY difficult for various reasons, but I'd like to view on it. It's part of a score, not the complete score unfortunately, due to copyright reasons.

Thanks!

Holy moly! Well, we have up to 6 outer ledger lines, which he says he knows by heart.

Love this thread and kudos galore to jeffreyjones. He gets my vote for the all-time Piano World "put up or shut up" award. We should establish such an award and call it the "jeffreyjones cup" or something. Well done.

I have to get to work, so I'm not going to look at Nikolas' score yet. You have my word I'll record it later!

Heh... I know!

There is one good thing about the score, though... It's all 16ths and nothing else. Very little pedal and nothing else. (I'm mainly interested about the 2 and 1/2 pages, rather than the second half of the third page, btw... That part should be 'easier' (but under no accounts "easy" per se").

Thanks Jeffrey: Really looking forward to your take. I'm very interested exactly because I want to see how you fair with something like this, see if you understand "what's wrong" with it and tell me if it's as difficult as I think it is...

It's incredibly difficult to read because it requires so much redistribution between the hands. All of that has to be planned in advance. (Although I'm sure some 20th century specialists would be able to dispatch it rather easily - someone like Oppens, Crossley or Aimard.)

Fortunately, the tempo isn't too terribly fast, so it seems completely playable to me.

(Though I don't know why anyone would want to - it seems to suffer from a common problem among contemporary composers, it sounds cool in Finale, but nobody actually wants to learn it because it's awkward and just not worth the effort. I've seen a dozen versions of this same kind of writing in the last 5 years; it seems to be very much in vogue right now.)

There are ways to get that same effect without abandoning idiomatic writing - for example, in some of Carl Vine's sonatas or the Babadjanian poem.

The reason the notes were distributed as such was because of the lack of any real pattern in the single melodic line. It would be unfair of my big hands distributing the right-left hands, where someone would feel very differently. Contemporary scores quite often leave this issue (as well as fingering) out exactly because it becomes very personal.

And I should note that I don't compose with the aid of Finale. In fact some times I don't compose with the aid of a piano either! This chunk that you see remains a part of a much bigger score. And of course it has been performed (that specific part in one go) so it's perfectly playable thank you! Oh! BTW this work was composed 6 years ago in 2005!

When I was putting the notes in Finale, I pondered exactly for the reason you mention (the distribution of the hands), and I decided for the above reasons to go with the version you see here. Of course later on, I decided to proof read the score and I asked a composer friend and a couple of pianists here to 'have a look'. I'm quite open to suggestions, so I'd appreciate any info, or sample page you have on that style of 'semi-random' streams of notes and the distribution of the hands... In public or private, I don't mind either.

Could you perchance play some of Dvorak's 6 Mazurkas? I am interested in what they sound like.

Here is the link.
http://imslp.org/wiki/6_Mazurkas,_Op.56_%28Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k,_Anton%C3%ADn%29

Edit: Scratch that, I found recordings on Pianosociety.com.

How about a Moszkowski etude?

Jeffrey, I'm really impressed by your sight reading skills, but if you don't bite for this one, I will still be impressed.

Op. 72, No. 11, A flat major:

http://erato.uvt.nl/files/imglnks/usimg/7/7a/IMSLP09192-Moskoswki-etOp.72-11.pdf

I was just gonna say, make him sight read Bach's fugues

I have tremendous trouble with fugues in general. 2 parts are relatively okay, but my LH technique gets in the way.

Some of the 3 or 4 parts in 48 P+F are almost sight-readable, but the fingerings are next to impossible to figure out.

My sightreading abilities are surely nowhere close to Jeffrey's, but it's pretty good considering how little time I actually play the piano. One of my teachers routinely ask me to accompany her students in concertos without prior warning. Of course, in concertos accompaniments, you are free to simplify some things and most are well-known concertos. The Ravel concerto, however, I have a devil of a time accompanying. Not so much notes, although that isn't exactly easy, but counting is way more difficult. Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with the rhythm.

Inspired by this thread, I started sightreading Beethoven's sonatas starting volume I. Not too bad, but Beethoven's stuff again are never easy, and whenever he goes polyphonic with non-trivial LHs, I mess up. Do you have the same problem with LHs Jeffrey?

I'm curious, when it comes to polyrhythms, can you sight read something like this:

http://216.129.110.22/files/imglnks/usim...in_Eb_Major.pdf

2nd movement, 2nd line, starting 3rd measure. there's a bunch of similar syncopated polyrhythms the rest of the piece, some even trickier than this one.

i was reading some music with a violinist friend and when i got here, i'm like, what on earth?

after much practicing, i think the next time i see something like this i would be better prepared.

EDIT: indeed, this time as i'm trying it it's very easy.

the ones on 4th page, 2nd line (still 2nd movement) are tricky too, but not quite as bad--but 1st measure, 3rd line i think is impossible to sightread accurately unless you've played something exactly the same before. maybe it's my ignorance, but i'm curious, can you sigttread that?

EDIT: tried it, still impossible!

No can do Lingyis, one of my conditions is it had to be solo piano. If you don't follow the rules you don't get a recording from me.

Nicolas' piece: http://www.box.net/shared/o4dcavaifigvcgodbps6
Moszkowski Etude: http://www.box.net/shared/hn3dyj83fd7vixjd1cyz
Dvorak Mazurkas: http://www.box.net/shared/f906ihxt1pzskrr6j7uj

Jeffreyjones, you are phenomenal! By the way, I think the 2nd link is the same as the 1st... Look forward to hearing the Moszkowski.

Looks like a pretty good idea to me....

Great job! Thanks a lot. Really liked the final Mazurka, I like all of Dvorak's piano pieces.

Fixed it, thanks!

Thanks Jeffrey! It's quite interesting that you're able to latch on pitches, without any other aid really.

I'll explain it to the other thread as well, but that specific part (the 2 and 1/2 pages) was composed with one thing in mind: to have no repeated patterns, to have nothing to latch on. Thus the notes are all over the place, the octaves go up and down like nuts and there's no fixed place for the hands. And that's why I never distributed the hands. It's not random in the sense of "whatever comes next", but it's random in the sense of "Yikes! No idea what's going on here", which was my main point on that part of the score.

I won't derail the thread any longer. Again thanks Jeffrey!

On the one hand, I was looking at the music and thinking 'this makes no sense,' but then I was instinctively doing pushing and pulling, broadening and contracting without even realizing it. I dunno. It was a strange reading for sure.

That's okay, I'm sure you'll do well anyway

I was gonna suggest some certain Beethoven sonata movement with tricky yet innocent looking LH passages. If your LH is good, I can imagine you do pretty well on those. Only thing is that it's way too in the standard repertoire.

I'm currently learning Beethoven's Emperor concerto, I'm curious, how hard do you find the LH in places like:


Those 4 measures (middle 4 measures) are taking me quite some time to learn. If LH and RH were reversed, it becomes sightreadable at full tempo, so I'm just wondering for better pianists than I if they can sightread it at close to full tempo. No need to post a recording, I'm just curious to know.

It's weird, if the passage is in the RH, my brain can process it pretty much instantaneously, but since it's LH, it barely even responds to it.

Bravo on the sight reading!!

Fantastic! I'd be happy at 25% of that.

Just a quick question - how much time do you normaloly spend previewing a piece to determone key signature and changes, overall structure, flow, etc. before actually starting to play?

here is a Saint-Saens etude if you dear to try!

it's no. 6 the Toccata!

imslp

http://imslp.org/wiki/Mazeppa,_S.100_(Liszt,_Franz)