Anybody a Ragtime fan

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

SpencerF - thanks for the link!

Cathy

Yeh, thanks for that. I'll have to play through some when I've the time.

Yeah you are welcome! just keep in mind that a lot of that stuff is pretty offensive. Gives you a real taste as to what the culture was actually like. No reason to censor history from sensible adults though.

But it is an amazing collection. I am working on printing every piece out. It's taking me a while...mostly just finding the time to download and save each picture takes forever.

I hope your library will be open to the public! I tend to turn my screen sideways and sightread from there. You can get through lots.

Wow that sounds...hard and awkward.

I also turn the image sideways!

lol, still it seems like it would be awkward to play from a computer screen. Maybe not though, i have never tried it. Though i don't think it's possible with an upright grand.

I use this reading through method on my DP or clavichord. Balancing a screen on an upright could have its difficulties.

What the hell, I'm not doing a lot, I'll start now. Suggestions?

Aggravation Rag is quite professional. I'm not sure you need so many Ab's in A minor. Surely G#'s make more sense?

Bit of a pain they're single images and not pdf's.

The "Trio" (3rd strain) is the toughest part. I want to take on this next after I finish the 1st strain.

Like you, Maple Leaf is my "side project." The notes are easy to learn but bringing it up to performance tempo is the tough part. This is one that sounds very nice around 96 BPM.

Yes that third section is really hard. The other sections aren't so easy either, the first is the only one I can play at > 40bpm. I find Maple Leaf a lot harder to remember than other Joplin rags, it seems to be full of unusual harmonic movement.

The first two measures of the fourth section are my favorite of the whole song, they just seem to totally capture the genius of Scott Joplin.

Hi Chris, based on your own experience, which ones of the 8 rags you've learnt you consider the easier and the harder?



cheers

Question about Ragtime. Does anyone play and perform only Ragtime? I have always wondered about that so I just thought I would ask. As for me, I love Ragtime, Joplin the most. John

None of the rags I have learnt was easy but some were harder than others. The first four I learnt, each of which took several months to learn were

The Crysanthemum
Palm Leaf Rag
The Entertainer
Pleasant Moments

Of the four the Entertainer took most time for me to learn. Palm Leaf rag only has 3 movements which is a point in it's favour.

The hardest rag I play is

The Nonpareil

Three rags which I learnt more quickly were

Bink's Waltz
Swipesy
The Favorite

And there is a large set of rags which are in progress, all of which are going much more slowly than the three above and which I would consider to be on the hard side.

Eugenia
Maple Leaf Rag
Pine Apple Rag
Rosebud March
Weeping Willow
Paragon

Chris G, that's a great list! Nonpareil is such a nice one too.

Weeping Willow is on my Joplin top 5 favorites. It's not one of his popular works but it's such a melodious piece.

I've heard and read that some of Joplin's hardest works are: Gladioulus, Fig Leaf, Magnetic Rag, Breeze from Alabama, and Solace. Perhaps one day learn them.

Your host tries a bit of Billy Joel's Root Beer Rag.

First you'll here excerpts from Kathy's song, written for my friend Kathy, then a much shortened version of "rock opera" arrangement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and finally a bit of the Root Beer Rag.

Keep in mind this is a noisey setting in a huge hall (at the NAMM show in CA).

Hi, Frank.



Many of the top ragtime players focus on it pretty much exclusively. But many of these are not musicians who do nothing else for a living. Most have unrelated day jobs. But I can think of a few. Bob Milne comes to mind. Though he also does Barrelhouse Boogie from the 20's and early 30's which is closely related.

Other full-time musicians I'm personally acquainted with who play a variety of genres, like jazz, classical, and a contemporary ragtime offshoot known as Terra Verde include Dick Hyman, Max Morath, Tex Wyndham, Jeff Barnhart, Tony Caramia, Morton Gunnar Larsen, The Ophelia Orchestra, Paul Asaro (Leon Redbone's piano player), Mary Sammon (Buddy Guy's keyboard player), Butch Thompson (former pp for Garrison Keillor), Mimi Blais, Glen Jenks, Frank French, Scott Kirby... the list goes on. Almost forgot John Gill .The list of top ragtimers with day-jobs is even longer.

And then there's my wife Sue, who Frank mentioned. She's also a full-time musician. But her musical range is pretty broad, bordering on the eclectic. In addition to Ragtime she does allot of early blues, novelty, stride, boogie, swing, cabaret, show tunes, a little classical, country, pop, and rock. Her latest project is a tribute to one of her earliest influences, Laura Nyro. And lately she's been learning Bossa Nova. In Portuguese. She also seemed to make friends with Jacqueline Schwab at Frank's Cape Cod PianoWorld party and tried her hand at Ashokan Farewell which Jacqueline did for Ken Burns... I sense another influence coming on... perhaps to both of them.

But Sue's best known for her 7-year stint as the Music Director of the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, MO... she'll be there again this year. But now that she's "retired" from running it, she'll actually be able to focus on performing for a change.

Sedalia, btw, is the place to go if you're interested in Ragtime... here's this year's line-up:

http://www.scottjoplin.org/performers.htm

And that's only the paid performer/ticketed-concert lineup. If you play enough ragtime to keep it together for 15 minutes in front of a packed, free, outside venue circus tent, they'll likely squeeze you in somewhere. Or strut your stuff at the nightly open-piano after-hours party at the hotel. Many of today's top ragtimers started out that way. Come. It's a week-long ragtime blast.

Howard

That was awesome, Frank! Thanks for sharing that.

Hi Howard, Thank you very much for the response. You luck man, get to listen to all that piano for free. Here I have to play to listen and some times the sounds not so good. Maybe I just need to practice more. Thank you, John

I'll be there.

http://ragtimepiano.blogspot.com/2010/04/raggin-my-way-to-scott-joplin-ragtime.html

A great deal of very rare ragtime and stride sheet music has recently been uploaded to www.pianophilia.com. You will need to register, but otherwise is free.

Regards
Chris

Hello folks,

Do anybody know this book? It is a good edition?

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/Library-Of-Ragtime-Early-Blues-Piano/3594359

cheers

I have it and I love it I've been working on W.C. Handy's St. Louis Blues from it - one of these days I'm going to have time to make that my recital piece.

The book has a pretty good section on Joplin, but if you've got Joplin elsewhere that's not the reason to buy this book. This book has great rags, cakewalks, and blues from lots of different composers. Too much fun

It's also got that plastic comb binding so it opens flat and stays there.

Cathy

Hi Cathy, thanks a lot for the reply!

As you said, I'm willing to buy it because the broad compilation of less known composers, AND because it has the comb binding as you pointed! The only doubt I had was whether the quality of the scores itselfes was good and reliable or not.

cheers

The quality is good. Very readable, and at least the Joplin and St. Louis Blues are original versions, so I assume the rest are, too.

Cathy

Ohh yes... the originality problem... would be terrible learning something not original, or an easier arrangement!

Anyway, I'm having a lot of trouble with my Swipesy by know, I think I'll wait a little bit more to buy this edition, I don't know if there are much rags of the swipesy level (people say it is one of the less dificult rags, I don't know what you think about it.. )

thx

I've become a fan of a few "newer" Rags, such as:

Mad Scientist Rag:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HucjsXrWtSo

Gitchee Gumee Rag:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk3Vp_74rmI

Thanks for those links, billertl, and welcome to the forums. Larisa used to post here on occasion, and I've seen her on the Elite Syncopation forums (I lurk there - I'm not a member). I take it you play some ragtime - there's a few of us here who do.

Cathy

Larisa is an amazing musician. I'm a ragtime artist myself, and I could only hope to be half as talented as Larisa someday. I've seen most of her Youtube videos, and I'm very impressed.

Another Ragtime person who I follow on Youtube alot is Tom Brier. I've heard he's recorded a few CD's, which I want to buy someday.

Ragtime is the genre of piano music that I'm drawn to the most. I also like Jazz, blues, and rock. But there's just something classic about Ragtime.

I have a Wellington Piano that was made in 1904, which I want to have restored (it's in rough shape). People have told me that the cost of restoring it would be so expensive, that it would be smarter to just buy a new piano instead. But I think I'll opt for restoring the 1904 piano, just because I think old pianos have character. 1904 was the height of the Ragtime craze, and I could just imagine a person playing Ragtime on that piano back when it was new.

I actually have several pianos, which could all use some work. And Ragtime lends itself well to my old pianos that are slightly out of tune.

I met Bill Edwards (i.e., "Perfessor Bill") one time at a concert he gave at a local church, and, he is simply one of the best ragtime players I have ever heard!

And, he's a really nice guy to know, too. Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCBC9K3SAZ8

His main homepage is simply:

http://www.perfbill.com/

And, of course, his unforgetable Hanon Rag <http://www.perfbill.com/albums/pbrec7.shtml> If you're bored with Hanon, try this!

I have a 1905 Howard. Beautiful case. But unfortunately the tuning pins are beginning to loosen and not all the strings will hold a tune any more. I'll never have enough to restore it, but I haven't brought myself to be able to give up the case yet, so I still have it and play my digital most of the time. Maybe in the next couple of years I'll find a way to deal with the dilemma and get myself an acoustic I actually want to play. Or a better digital.

Thanks all, for more great music in your posts.

Cathy