School me on Classical Music

Nomad · December 2014

robinbowes said:

Both lovely pieces. I can just about play the same as you, with big pauses.

The Bach one is pretty easy because it's the same fingering pattern for each bar (apart from the diddly thing at the end). The hard bit for me was working out the notes because it was the first time I'd tried to read music for about 35 years - took me ages to work out the relationship between the dots and the piano keys.

I did it by learning a few bars at a time, literally note by note, and playing them constantly until they were ingrained. Then I'd add a few more and play the tune from the start up to the end of the new section, and so on until I had it all. Then it was a case of just playing it countless times until the thing was (muscle-)memorised.

Working out the notes for the Beethoven one has been rather more difficult (not being in C natural is probably a factor). Although there is a repeating finger pattern in this as well, it's not as regular as in the Bach prelude.

I got a saxophone about a month ago, and I've noticed that I'm finding it easier to look at the staff and see what a note is from the position of the dot - something I really struggled with on the piano. (I had to draw a little chart of lines and dots, with the note names next to each, and it was still tough.) Maybe the time I've had away from reading has worked to the good (neural pathways building in the background?), so it would be interesting to have another look at the Beethoven piece to see if I can make better progress. If there is one piece I'd really like to learn on piano, it's the 1st movement of the Moonlight.