tomekkobialka's Music Blog

CHOPIN PROJECT - UPDATE

2015-05-17T15:34:00.004-07:00

As you may have noticed, this blog has been very quiet recently...

Well, I just wanted to make it known that I have not abandoned the project at all and I have been steadily working at the etudes ever since my last post.

The only reason I have not been posting on this blog is because it takes me a very long time to write a post about a specific etude (I usually have to give up an entire day for this) and I simply do not have the time to write blog entries alongside my piano practice.

Currently I am in what I call the 'overview' phrase. This is when I spend about 7-10 days on each etude, with about 1-1.5 hours a day of focused practice, before moving on to the next etude. This is certainly not sufficient time (for me at least) to play the piece at the final speed fluently, it only serves as a way of getting the etude under my fingers. But I think it is important not to spend too long practising one specific piano piece, it is important to take a long break to gain a fresh perspective in approaching the piece in terms of practising and musical interpretation. Besides one tends to get bored if they play the same thing over and over again for a long time, to the point where piano playing becomes a sort of chore.

That is why I am not lingering on one etude too long, and move on to the next one relatively quickly, even if I feel I'm nowhere near the 'finish line' for that specific etude. (Let me again emphasise that when I say or imply a 'finish line' I do not mean one in the ultimate sense, only that I can play the piece well enough to pass in an amateur recital or online recording/video).

I'm just about to finish looking at Op.25 No.3 (Horseman) and will then move on to No.4. When I get to the end of Op.25 I plan to write a larger blog post where I summarise my experiences with each etude and the learning experience as a whole. I plan this to be sometime around July...but of course I can't be sure about that!

So far all I can say is it has been great fun looking at these etudes. I feel like my technique has definitely improved and I look forward to sharing my thoughts and comments later on in the year!

CEP #5A - Op.10 No.3 RECORDING

2014-12-14T05:45:00.001-08:00

As promised, here is the link to a digital piano recording of me playing Chopin's Etude Op.10 No.3.

https://soundcloud.com/thomas-kobialka/chopin-etude-op10-no3-e-major

Still a work in progress of course!

CEP #5 - Bach on Acid

2014-12-10T08:38:00.002-08:00

Chopin Op.10 No.3 Update

Whoops! Sorry for the recent lack of posts. Here's what's been going on: I signed up for a local concert to perform Chopin's Etude Op.10 No.3, so for the last few weeks I've been putting most of my focus into trying to get the best out of the piece for the concert. The concert wasn't recorded, however I will upload a separate recording of me playing the piece some time this week.

Without further ado, let's move on to the next etude in the set:

Chopin Op.10 No.4

Etude Op.10 No.4 in C# minor is one of Chopin's angriest and most dramatic pieces for piano. It's pure rage, from the beginning right to the very end. There are many factors which contribute towards this:

Fast tempo (the tempo marking above corresponds to just under 12 16th notes a second)
Loud. Yes, most of the time this piece is very loud!
Sharp contrasts in dynamics. There's a lot of fortepianos and sforzandos in this piece!
The "perpetuum mobile" feel to the piece. There are almost no breaks between the 16th notes, and if there are, the rest only has a value of a 16th. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the piece earned the nickname "Torrent"

What is especially special about this piece is the fact that Chopin places plenty of focus on the left hand. Up till this point, the right hand has been in the spotlight, doing the tricky moves, while the left hand was more or less accompanying. In this etude, however, the hands seem equally split in their difficulty (which in this case are different aspects of fast runs)

Perhaps this was intentional by Chopin. To me, however, this piece greatly resembles the kind of 'hand-to-hand' passing patterns you see often in Baroque and Classical music. I have a feeling that Chopin was trying to compose a more romantic rendering of the likes of Bach and Mozart (hence the title of this post). Therefore, the fact that the focus is on both hands seems like an aftermath of this.

Probably one of the main criticisms of Chopin's etudes is the imbalance of focus between the hands. It is clear that Chopin places most of the focus on the right hand throughout the entire etude set. Of course, this is not a result of Chopin's inadequacy as a composer - in the Romantic period, the right hand simply was considered to be more important than the left hand, and it is only in the 20th century when composers decided that the right and left hand were, actually, equally as important. The composer-pianist Leopold Godowsky even published his own "Studies on Chopin's Etudes" which aimed to rectify the imbalance of hand focus in Chopin's etudes, by rewriting many of Chopin's etudes for the left hand, sometimes even with no right hand accompaniment.

How I studied the etude

This piece is all about improving the finger dexterity in both hands. This is especially useful for me since my left hand is severely lacking compared to my right hand...the result of focusing too much on playing early-Romantic pieces (!). I quickly realised that there is no point in rushing when learning this piece. One must learn by practising slowly until you can play all of the quick, tricky passages perfectly with your eyes closed. Then speed up the tempo...until you reached the desired tempo (which may or may not be 88 half notes a second - that's crazy fast!).

There are no 'alien' bits in this piece, at least not as alien as some parts in the previous three etudes!

The trickiest bit is probably:

simply because of the fact you have to play complex 16th note patterns in both hands simultaneously!

Another sequence which deserves a special mention, which appears just before the final exit section:

Probably the most dramatic moment in the piece! The contrary motion of the hands in the first two bars, coupled with the dynamic markings, amounts to one of the biggest crescendos one can get at the piano! Especially since what follows is one of the most rageful expressive markings you can get in music: "With as much fire as possible".

Here's one of my favourite recordings of this piece, played slightly above the marked tempo (but only slightly):

I'm still in the early stages of studying this piece. I've come to the realization that, probably the best way to study the complete etudes for performance level is to first take a 'tour' through the entire two sets, getting each etude under my fingers, then to study each etude separately, but not necessarily in order. Therefore, by the time I finish reviewing each etude on this blog, expect the blog to continue for much longer!

As for now...

'Till next time!

CEP #4 - The Sadness(?) Etude

2014-11-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Op.10 No.2 - Update

Last time we left off I was in the middle of studying Chopin's Op.10 No.2 etude, the one with the "perpetual motion" scales in the upper register.

Over a week has passed now, and I am glad to say that a lot of progress has been made. However, despite this I am still not completely fluent in the piece. It turns out that there are a whole host of little tricks and difficulties in the piece, which, however much I practise, always seem to catch me out.

Where are the difficulties?

For example, pretty much the entire middle (B) section is incredibly difficult. Here are the first four bars of the section:

The right hand is tricky enough due to the way it constantly twists and turns up and down the keyboard, unlike the first bars of the piece, for example, where it's just one long swoop up and down:

But what makes this part even tricker is the left hand, which is constantly changing position. For me, playing this section hands separately does not present great difficulties, but playing it hands together is a nightmare, and almost always makes me stops in my tracks.

Later on in the B section, we get these awkward shifts in the right hand:

Very tricky to get right. It's just one of those "this-could-go-horribly-wrong" moments.

But what is, probably, the trickiest aspect of this piece is overcoming the 'strain' in the right hand you get from playing it, especially after playing No.1! I'm not sure if you can call it 'strain', but I find that by the time I get to the end of the piece, my 3 right fingers in my right hand sometimes appear to fail to respond to nerve firings!

This could be a problem with the way I'm playing the piece, or it could be simply that I haven't practised it enough.

Whatever it is, I think I should take a one or two week break from the piece. I've found in the past, with all the pieces I've learnt, that after endlessly practising a section of music over and over again, I have to give myself a longer break before I get results. I guess this is just a natural 'delay' present in the brain's learning system.

So anyway, I won't release a recording of this etude for at least a week. In fact, I think this will probably be a more likely occurence in the future, since I am expecting that, as I study more of the etudes, I will be 'layering' the study periods on top of each other, in the sense that I will be moving on to other etudes before 'perfecting' previous etudes. So, rather than giving out recordings of new etudes periodically, I will probably remain silent for a longer time before releasing a few etudes at once (approximately). Or not. Either way, I don't want to make any promises about the release dates of any of the "in progress" recordings - what's important is that, ultimately, I will be able to record all of the etudes played fluently, regardless of how I go about learning them.

With that said, let's take a look at the next, and possibly my favourite, etude.

Etude Op.10 No.3

Op.10 No.3 is, along with Op.10 No.12, one of Chopin's most famous and popular piano pieces. The melody is instantly recognizable to most.

However, I'm sure that most people who have heard the piece aren't aware that this a piano study. And rightly so! Nos 1 and 2 are certainly 'studies', that's quite clear, but No.3 sounds like anything but an etude on first hearing. It's much, much calmer, for one, but also includes an absolutely sublime melody. Chopin himself has apparently stated that, in all of his time as a composer never has he stumbled upon such a beautiful melody (although I'm not sure whether he said that when he composed this, or later on when reflecting over his work).

This etude is often nicknamed "Tristesse", which means "Sadness" in French.

But, personally, I don't see anything sad about this piece!

Many of us imagine stories when playing or listening to music. In my case, I don't 'conjure up' such stories very often, but in the case of Op.10 No.3, this is certainly not true.

For me, this is above all a very nostalgic piece. What I see when I listen to this piece is images from childhood. Not my childhood, but a childhood (I suppose it's a kind of 'reflection' of everybody's childhood).

In the A section I see a child playing in a field full of trees and grass, laughing, the summer sun high up in the sky. The child is happy, as happy as can be, with not a worry in the world.

Then the B section comes along (bar 21):

The child's older sibling is suggesting they go explore into the woods. "But our parents say we can't go there!" But the sibling insists! Eventually, they end up exploring, and stumble upon a cave or some sort of bunker. They decide to enter, then...

bar 32

"HUH! What was that?!"

The children run away, but return. They get scared once more, until eventually, they both discover the monster, who begins chasing them, and they run away screaming! (bars 46-54)

Finally, they arrive home, and are greeted by their worried parents, who comfort them (bar 54):

and back we go to section C, where everything has returned back to normal, and the child is playing in the fields again. Only this time, the ending is slightly different. It is the nostalgia the composer feels as he remembers the blissful ignorance and complete happiness of his childhood, which is represented by the beautifully moving I-iv chord sequence:

Of course, this is just my story - everybody has their own, and some don't even think of a story. But, for me, the fact that the piece is able to conjure up such vivid imagery is a testament to Chopin's creative genius.

Anyway, enough with the sentimentalisms. Let's take a closer look at the technical challenges of the piece.

As I have said before, many people who do not know much about classical music would not even consider that this beautiful piano piece which they hear in fragrance commercials and Chopin documentaries is, in fact, a study for the piano.

My reason for this is simple yet paradoxical: This etude is a study in how to take an etude and make it sound as if it weren't an etude!

Here's the idea. Generally speaking, when we imagine a piano piece with a melody, we imagine that the melody is in the right hand, and the accompaniment is in the left hand. Of course, it's not often like this in terms of classical piano literature, but when it comes to, for example, arranging pop songs or folk tunes for piano, this is often the model the arranger goes for, because it will feel and sound the most natural.

In etude Op.10 No.3, the right hand is definitely playing a melody. But it is not the only thing the right hand is playing.

Take a look at the first few bars of the etude. There are 4 voices in the bulk of the piece - two in the left hand, two in the right hand. The voicing in the left hand is fairly trivial - you can almost render it as one voice, if it weren't for the quarter notes on each beat, which must be held down.

The right hand also has two voices. In the Schirmer edition (and my Alfred edition), however, the lower voice is shown in the bass clef in the first two bars, but you can see more clearly how the voicing works in bars 3-4. The upper voice is the beautiful melody! It almost becomes lost amidst the convoluted mess of the score, because not only are there four voices playing at once but they're all very 'dense'. The bass quarter notes are sonically dense, as is the upper left hand voice, and the lower right hand voice plays constant 16th notes a few pitches below the melody.

Thus, the aim of the etude is to render the upper voice of the right hand as an expressive melody whilst taking care of the other 3 voices arranged between both hands. It becomes a bit of a game in dynamics and expression when performing. If done correctly, the piece (or at least parts of it) should sound like a natural "right hand melody, left hand accompaniment" piano piece. Like not an etude at all!

The technical difficulties in places like bars 38-41:

or the 'screaming' section are, I think, distinct from the overarching difficulty of the piece. Personally, I find these short sections the most technically demanding, especially bars 38-41, which is a bit of a hand-twister.

But it is important to understand that, when it comes to the sections where you have to play four voices, although it is relatively easy to press the right notes at the right time, it's the rendering of the dynamics and exression which is the really difficult part. And what makes it especially difficult is that this is easy for the pianist to overlook, yet it's obvious to the audience when they listen that you're having trouble with playing the piece expressively.

When I started practising this etude oh-so-many years ago, I didn't take this idea seriously at all (but then I was very young then!). I just wanted to learn to hit the right notes. Now, when I return back to this piece, I realise that this is obviously the wrong approach to take. There's much more going on here.

So yes, I do have a headstart when it comes to practising this piece. I can play sections A and C pretty much fluently. But I think there's still a great deal to be learnt about expression...possibly an infinite amount.

So I've started practising this piece a few days ago now. I'm pretty much studying the "hand-twisters" from the ground up. As for the rest...well, it's pretty much a journey of discovery. Let's see how expressive and controlled I can be with the outer section of my right hand!

'Till next time!

P.S. Here's Lisitsa playing No.3. Looking at the hands, you sometimes get the sense that you don't know where the melody's coming from, as if it's a separate track added on top of Lisitsa's playing. This is what makes the etude pretty remarkable, IMO.

P.P.S. Notice the similarities between etude no.3 and etude no.2. Namely, in the focus Chopin places on the outer right hand. In No.2, it was more about finger gymnastics, but here, it's about bringing out an expressive melody.

CEP #3 - The journey continues...(Op.10 No.2)

2014-10-31T14:31:00.001-07:00

Etude Op.10 No.2

Etude Op.10 No.2 bears many similarities to Op.10 No.1 - in fact, I always considered the first two etudes of Op.10 as a sort of pair which complement it each other.

In the first etude, Chopin played with the idea of arpeggios in a sense. He wrote a piece based on "expanded arpeggios", where the hand had to be able to span an interval greater than that spanned by a simple triad.

In this etude, Chopin plays with the idea of scales (the 'counterpart' of arpeggios I guess?). More specifically, chromatic scales. A quick glance at the score makes it immediately apparent what's so tricky about this etude. The fingering is all weird! Instead of the standard 1312313... pattern, you have 434534... a much more awkward fingering to use.

This etude is, in essence, an exercise in the dexterity of the 'weak' fingers of the right-hand (345). And no, there's no way to beat the system here, because fingers 1 and 2 have to play every quarter beat! So unless you have three hands, you can't play both clefs without using 345 fingering for the chromatic scales.

Perhaps it also exercises the lightness of touch, both in the right and left hand. Note that the right hand 'supporting' notes should only be played as sixteenth-notes. They can be seen as springboards for the scale runs, and they perhaps can disturb the flow of the piece if great care isn't taken over being very light with them.

The etude is quite short, about the same length as No.1. Personally, I think it's much less nasty than No.1 (which is ridiculously punishing!) but, as with all Chopin's Etudes, a lot of care needs to be taken when practising. Especially slow practice!

How I practised

While the piece itself is difficult, luckily it is very approachable for studying.

The etude can be very easily split into three voices:

Scales in the upper register (right hand, fingers 345)
'Supporting' notes (right hand, fingers 12)
Left hand

The obvious way of practising this piece is to start off with the upper register scales (which is more or less the meat of the piece anyway). Once this become fluent, it is simply a matter of layering the other voices on top, one by one. This is how I'm doing it!

Regarding the fingering of the right hand scales, in both my edition and the Schirmer edition it seems like, in general, when playing patterns upwards the pattern for the fingering is: 34343434... and coming down it's 5454545454... I find it easier when going up to replace the fourth finger with the third. So, in the first bar, the fingering goes: 5345 3534 5353 5345... I dunno, I suppose it's a matter of preference.

As with No.1, there are a few interesting 'tricky' sections in the etude:

Bar 21: It would be nice if the Eb could be played with the 2nd finger but, in the context of the piece, the fourth finger is really the only option. The result? - a passage that's a bit shifty!

Bars 33-4: This pattern gets easier with practise but at the beginning it felt like hit and miss! It's awkward because the normal 'scalic' pattern from the rest of the piece is broken. You need to use a completely different finger motion.

Unfortunately, I do not have a recording to provide you with today, as it's too early at this stage and my playing of the entire piece isn't fluent enough. Unless you want to listen to me playing at half speed - but I'm guessing you probably don't!

Instead, here's a link to a video showing you how a pro does it:

Till next time!

P.S. Happy Halloween!

CEP #2 - Progress on the Waterfall Etude

2014-10-27T15:53:00.002-07:00

Last time we left off with me posting a recording of me playing Chopin's Op.10 No.1 etude.

It has now been 5 days since that recording, and after spending that time working on nothing but that impossible etude I will allow myself to post an updated recording to show the progress I've made since then:

Op.10 No.1 - Take 2

(note: this recording was taken with a microphone live of me playing on a Bechstein grand piano)

Personally? I'm fairly happy with the progress. I think the playing is overall much cleaner than it was 5 days ago.

Of course, the speed is nowhere near the 176 bpm Chopin asks for. So far the highest I feel confident at is ~ 124bpm, so there's still a lot of work to be done!

I did notice one particular thing that I would like to share. I have been practising this piece with a metronome (something I've never done willingly by myself!), and I spent a lot of time playing the etude over and over again at 124bpm, trying to perfect my accuracy. However progress was painfully slow. Today, I tried playing over at a much slower tempo (106bpm) a few times, then I played again at 124bpm and...wow. There was certainly a difference! Not only in the accuracy but generally with confidence in playing. I think it goes to show that you must have patience when practising. Take it slow and get it right. Take it fast, get it wrong, and you'll end up nowhere!

The Importance of relaxation

This is another thing I think this etude tries to make you master. I have realised that you cannot play through this etude without a relaxed hand and not feel like your hand is about to fall off at the end. You cannot stress the hand in this etude. It is something I find quite difficult, especially because the action on my Kawai electric piano is pretty stiff compared to a grand piano. But, as I said in CEP #1, it seems like your hands can get used to it...as long as you put effort into consistently having a relaxed hand when practising.

And it's strange - you look at a pianist's hands and it doesn't occur to you that their hand is relaxed. You say to yourself "That hand is doing a lot of work!". But it's one of those pseudo-paradoxes in piano-playing, I guess. A relaxed hand reduces unnecessary strain (yes...it's unnecessary!) and prevents injuries. I had an injury in the left hand due to piano playing once...trust me, it doesn't feel good. At all!

So, what next? I think it's time to move on. I will be starting Op.10 No.2 tomorrow, but I will still be working on No.1, just not as often. I think I perhaps need a bit of time off to allow the music to 'bleed' into my hands.

Otherwise this etude will just become a study in masochism...and will get the better of me in the end.

Till next time!

<----- CEP #1

P.S. I present you another recording of Chopin's Op.10 No.1, this time from the indestructible and downright freaky Russian pianist Valentina Lisitsa:

CEP #1 - And so it begins...

2014-10-22T14:40:00.000-07:00

Before we begin, I have a quick confession to make...

I have already begun to study two etudes from the set. These are Op.10 No.1 and 3. I looked at No.1 for a couple of weeks a few months ago, so while I didn't study it for a long time I studied enough to memorise the notes and have the piece "in my hands", if you will. As for No.3, I have had a long history with this one as I first started practising it from a collection of Chopin pieces many years ago. However, I am proudly ashamed to say that I only studied the A section seriously, i.e. the first section containing the main melody. I deemed the middle section too difficult at the time.

I should also briefly point out which printed edition I will be using for the project. There is a lot of talk out there on which edition is the best for the Chopin Etudes. Henle Urtext, Paderewski, Schirmer, Cortot...it's enough to make your head spin!

Me, personally, I think when it comes to editions of sheet music, it's important to ask which editions to avoid. Fortunately, it's quite simple to determine which editions these are, because they almost never come up on online discussions.

Either way, I decided to go down a less conventional route and ended up purchasing the relatively new Alfred Masterworks edition. I have had a good experience with them in the past, and I liked the fact that the book was ring bound and included the 3 Nouvelle Etudes. Judging by the Amazon "Look Inside" feature, the notes themselves looked clear and nicely spaced out.

I could've referred to IMSLP for the sheet music, however I did wish to have a physical, professionally bound copy of the etudes for this project as I've found that, in many cases, sheet music which I print out ends up being written over with phone numbers or turned into paper airplanes or simply thrown in the recycling bin. Not to mention that, of course, printing for yourself also costs money!

If I ever wish to refer to a specific bar or part of the music on this blog, I will be using extracts from the Schirmer (Mikuli) edition found here on the IMSLP site. If there are any important differences between the Schrimer and Alfred edition, I will point those out.

Etude Op.10, No.1

We begin our studies with, quite possibly, the most terrifying etude in the whole set.

On the page, all it looks like is a series of arpeggios in the right hand going up and down and up and down, and the left hand playing nothing more than very basic octaves. Ha, this is the stuff of 6 year olds!

Oh dear...this is not the stuff of 6 year olds at all. In fact, even the great pianist Vladimir Horowitz once said that he wishes never to perform this etude in public due to its difficulty.

So what's so difficult about it?

First of all, it is wrong to assume that this is a study in arpeggios. The right hand is not playing arpeggios at all. Let's follow the piece note for note...

The piece starts off with the left playing a C octave in the bass, followed immediately by the right hand playing the notes: C G C E, followed by the same set of notes an octave higher...and an octave higher...until reaching the top E of the piano, and then descending with the same, reversed pattern all the way to the C at the bottom. The fingering for "C G C E" given by the sheet music is "1 2 4 5".

Try the right hand out slowly on a keyboard if you can. It feels awkward because, unlike in basic arpeggios, you are required to shift your hand across the keyboard in playing those four notes (unless you have very big hands, but that's not the point). Then, after playing those four notes, you have to shift the whole hand up an entire octave, playing the C played by the 4th finger again by the thumb.

This pattern is, pretty much, the essence of the piece. The notes themselves change throughout the piece as Chopin uses different harmonies, but the pattern pretty much remains the same throughout, with very little rest for the right hand throughout the piece.

(note: I will assume throughout these blog posts that the reader has never studied the Chopin etudes, but of course that won't be true for everyone)

I initially thought, therefore, that this etude is about stretching and shifting the right hand.

But I have come to terms with the idea that, no, this etude is not about stretching at all, although it may seem like it at first due to the grouping of 10th chords. There is, counter-intuitively, no need to stretch the right hand at all in this piece!

I think this etude is definitely about being able to smoothly and efficiently shift the right hand while being accurate with the fingers.

I also think there's something to be said about the expansion/contraction motion of the right hand. You need to spread the fingers out to play the broken chords, but then you've got to bring the thumb right up to the position of the little finger when you're shifting the position of the right hand to an octave above. And vice versa on the way down, where you bring the little finger up close to the thumb.

All this might not seem so tricky at first, but that's because we haven't taken into account what makes this piece so terrifying...

The tempo.

The tempo marking of the piece is "quarter note = 176". How fast is this? In the context of this piece, that is roughly 12 notes a second. Take a look at the video below to see a performance played in proper tempo (if not slightly slower):

There are 79 bars in the piece. There are, roughly speaking, 31 notes in the right hand every two bars, for 78 bars (the last bar does not have any notes in the right hand). This means that there are:

(78/2) x 31 = ~1209

notes in the right hand in this piece, which have to be played at a rate of 12 notes per second non-stop, not mentioning that also the right hand needs to repeatedly travel up and down the keyboard range in the space of just under 3 seconds.

I think this tempo marking, with the combination of the very shifty and active right hand, is what makes this piece so frightening and seemingly impossible to play.

How I practised

The way I approached practising this etude was, naturally, by ignoring the left hand and practising the right hand slowly. The very first time I started playing the etude seemed incredibly awkward, and I wasted too much effort by stretching my right hand rather than smoothly shifting the hand horizontally across the notes. After some time, though, I gradually began to discover easier, more comfortable ways of positioning my hand, and the whole playing became more natural.

I believe that it's not very different from when a complete beginner to the piano starts practising scales and arpeggios for the first time. Everybody finds that sort of thing awkward when they've never experienced it before. But as pianists become experienced with more and more pieces, everything becomes more familiar to them, and they forget that feeling of awkwardness. However, by writing Op.10 No.1, Chopin introduced some quite alien piano techniques which I think surprise many experienced pianists out there, and push them out of the comfort zone.

Thankfully, with a bit of practice and a few nights to sleep over it, this new technique loses a lot of its 'alienness'. So while, at first sight, getting used to the hand movements of this etude might seem an impossible feat (especially after watching somebody like Garrick Ohlsson play it) your brain will naturally adapt to it.

Then comes the task of discovering the motion of the hand which makes the etude as easy as possible to play. This, I think, is the ultimate 'trick' of the piece - finding the correct motions. I feel like I'm confident with my hand motions in about half of the bars of this piece, but there are many awkwardly spaced note sequences which I still don't think I've cracked yet.

Some examples:

1. What makes this sequence awkward is the big jump between the notes played by the 2nd finger and thumb. The big jump means that it's especially tricky to create a fluid motion with the hand. I find I need to do some funny rotating motion with the hand where I start each 5321 group with the hand rotated 45 degrees to the left, and end up pointing 45 degrees to the right, meaning that when I bring the pinky back to the D# I need to make a quick, 90 degree rotation with the hand to the left. It's bloody difficult!

2. This passage would be quite simple if it weren't for the E-flats! The trickiest part is the need to 'reach' the Eb at position 5 from position 4 while you've got the Bb in the way. It feels almost impossible to play this smoothly.

Anyway, let me show you what I can make so far out of the piece. Here is a recording of me playing the etude on my Kawai MP6 piano at home:

Op.10 No.1 - Take 1

Few things I noted when I listened back to this:

Tempo is much slower than it should be - this is as fast as I'm willing to showcase at this point. I should also quickly mention that, this being a study, you do not need to be able to play at 176 beats per minute to learn something useful from it. But, of course, I would quite like to reach the marked tempo at some point!
It sounds like I'm generally quite uneven with my playing - perhaps I need to undergo more slow practice, or practise using something like a dotted rhythm for the right hand. I have a slight suspicion that the recording capabilities of my electric piano aren't entirely accurate, but it's best to be on the safe side and assume the unevenness is entirely due to my playing!
Accuracy is not the greatest at the moment, but hopefully this will improve over time.

Op.10 No.1 is, I think, quite an easy piece to 'get on top of', but it is an absolute bitch to master. It's perfect for technique-philes - you can get away with not putting in a lot of emotion, but it requires a ton of work to play at the right speed with 100% accuracy...enough to drive anybody mad!

I will give this piece one more week of practice, and post my progress. After that, I plan to leave it temporarily and turn to the next etude, Op.10 No.2.

Till next time!

<---- Introduction

CEP #2 ------>

The Chopin Etudes Project - Introduction

2014-10-20T16:23:00.001-07:00

I'm awesome.

Dear Readers,

Many years ago, I made a pledge to myself.

I told myself that, before I die, I will learn and be able to perform Frederic Chopin's 24 Etudes, Op.10 and 25.

Now I'm ready.

Maybe.

The ultimate aim of the Chopin Etudes Project is to learn Chopin's Etudes. However, instead of doing it all by myself, I will post regular updates on this blog, writing my thoughts and comments as I study each etude, and posting audio recordings every now and then to showcase my progress.

Why Chopin's Etudes? Well, they are my favourite set of pieces for the piano, and Chopin is also undoubtedly my favourite composer for the piano. I find his pieces contain some kind of brilliant quality found nowhere else in the piano repetoire, the kind of thing that makes you go "Aaahhh...Chopin" and makes your heart melt. But there aren't only personal reasons. Chopin's Etudes are widely regarded as some of the most innovative, imaginative and, perhaps most of all, challenging pieces for the piano repetoire out there. I suppose you can call it the ultimate course of Romantic piano playing ("etuder" means "to study" in French, so "etudes" are "studies")

Before I move on, a few words on this word "learning". I was purposefully being careless with my word choice when I said that I will try and "learn" Chopin's Etudes. I believe that it is not actually possible to "learn" any piece of music. You can throw the word around and people will understand what you mean, but strictly speaking it makes no sense. Me personally, I have "learnt" a fair number of piano pieces in the past, however, whenever I end up performing them in front of an audience, I always hit a bum note somewhere and I never play it with the same confidence I have when practising at home. So my playing is not perfect. And what does "learn" mean in art, anyway? What does it mean to learn to play an instrument, or to learn to dance or learn to paint? I believe art is something you study, not learn.

So what do I mean when I say that the ultimate aim of the project is to learn Chopin's Etudes? I initially foresaw it as this: I will be able to walk up to a piano in front of an audience, play all the etudes (without sheet music!) and receive a generally favourable, genuine response. It might sound slightly egotistical when I put it that way but that's essentially what I mean by "learn".

Unfortunately, I quickly realised that I doubt I will have the opportunity to ever perform for one hour straight in a piano recital. So I'll have to make do with plan B, which is: I will post a video on Youtube of a recording of the complete Chopin etudes, played by me, including good old fashioned scrolling sheet music, and if people "like" it, I'll be happy with that result.

OK, so we've established the end point of the project. Now some more details on the process:

Firstly, I can't guarantee that I will learn the etudes in order. I might skip about here and there, just to spice things up a bit.

Secondly, sadly I can't guarantee that this project will ever become finished. It's easy for me to sit here in front of my PC and ramble on about learning 24 of some of the most difficult pieces for piano, but stuff might come up in the future and I can't tell whether any success will come out of this or not. All I can say is this: this is not a "in-the-spur-of-the-moment" idea, I have been thinking about doing this for some time now. As for the etudes themselves, they have fascinated me ever since I was a child, and I find it difficult to imagine that that this fascination will ever stop, particularly when studying them. I might grow sick of them, but I know I will never stop loving them. Gosh, that sounds so cliche, doesn't it?

Thirdly, I have no teacher. The only teachers will be my conscious, the internet, and Chopin. While this is a risky move (and some of you will probably think of me as arrogant because of it!), I have decided that it will be part of the project. I would love to have a teacher but for now, getting one would be problematic and I'm willing to take the risk of diving in solo.

Now, the question that some of you will undoubtedly have on your mind: Who the hell am I?!

My name is Thomas Kobialka. I am 18 and I study Physics. I started playing piano at the age of 5 and, with help from three fantastic music teachers, finished the Grade 8 exam in the summer of 2010. However, I only started actually liking the damn instrument by the age of...10, or so. I started a Youtube channel (tomekkobialka) where I posted audio + sheet music videos of mostly piano pieces, including some of my own compositions. My passion started off as a fascination of mainly classical piano music after listening to my Dad's CD called "Piano for Dummies" but has since grown into a fascination of all sorts, from avant-garde to jazz to pop to opera. I occasionally compose music for video games and short films.

I am not a professional musician, in the sense that I don't make a living out of it, and I'm not a student of music. My completely formal music training finished with the grade 8 piano exam.

Simply put, music is a strong hobby of mine, and while my brain loves science, my passion ultimately lies in music. But, above all, I am deeply fascinated by Chopin's Etudes, and while part of the purpose of the project is to 'learn' Chopin's Etudes, the main purpose is to investigate the etudes mysteries and decode its difficulties, and share my findings on this blog. I like to describe myself as a musical explorer, a musical wanderer. I love discovering new things. I see musical performance as a side effect of this exploration, a kind of 'lab report', if you will. Don't get me wrong, I'm not demeaning musical performance in any way. But it's not the reason I love music.

Oh, one more thing. If you are unfamiliar with Chopin's Etudes, I recommend you look them up. I uploaded a complete set of videos on my Youtube channel, with audio and scrolling score. You can find more info on the Etudes' Wikipedia page. As far as recordings go, Pollini's Deutsche Grammophon recording is very good all-round. If you prefer to watch somebody play, Vyacheslav Gryaznov's recital performance is simply outstanding, as well as slightly terrifying. And finally, you can find the complete, free sheet music for the Etudes on Chopin's IMSLP site.
OK, best get practising now. I hope to put in at least 1 hour a day of piano practice. I will be posting updates on this blog hopefully at least once a week, summarizing what I've learnt and will also try to often provide audio recordings...maybe even videos.

I hope that, through doing this project, we can all together learn something...

Till next time! :D

I really should've taken that course in improvisation...

Happy birthday Alkan!

2013-11-30T14:45:00.000-08:00

Today, 30th November 2013, is the 200th anniversary of Charles-Valentin Alkan's birthday (1813-88), one of the greatest yet most overlooked pianinst-composers of the early 19th century. This was the pianist whom Liszt allegedly described as having "the finest technique I had ever known", the pianist who shut himself away from the public for 20 years and, among other things during that time, produced both a symphony and a concerto for solo piano as part of a set of 12 etudes in the minor keys (Op.39).

You don't wanna mess with Alkan.

The first time I came across this composer was...whew, some 4 or 5 years ago now? The first piece of his that I discovered "consciously" (i.e. I was aware that I was listening to Alkan) was a video of a performance on Youtube (but not the video below) of the 5th etude from his Op.35 set of etudes in all the major keys:

For some reason, however, the "Allegro Barbaro" didn't quite click with me at that time, at least not enough to make me want to listen to more works by the composer. It was indeed "etude-y", and I came away with the wrong impression that Alkan's writing is difficult, but dry and not particularly interesting to listen to.

A few weeks later I came across the following video:

That first C octave in the bass, and what came after it, changed my life completely.

Well, OK, maybe it wasn't that dramatic, but...boy, was I impressed! It was like I just stumbled across something I had been searching for for a very long time. The melody at 0:07 was catchy, but I really liked the C# in the bass at the start of each bar, almost as if the piano had become some sort of demonic percussion instrument.

From 0:20, my jaw just dropped.

But what struck me the most was not so much the pure difficulty of the piece, or M.A. Hamelin's virtuosic skills, but the fact that this sounded like something that Liszt or Chopin might produce. This wasn't some "New-Age" obscurity, it was obviously a piece that has been around for at least 100 years...so who was the composer?! I already knew Chopin's music well enough to know that it probably wasn't something by him, because I would've known about it already. I knew Liszt much less well, so could it be something by him? I guess the real question was: What do those Japanese characters mean? Alas, I found myself in the same position as the video uploader (who posted this video to find the name of the piece Hamelin was playing).

A quick scroll down to the comments section answered my question: it was Hamelin playing the ending of the 3rd movement from Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano, Op.39 No.10. The composer was the same dude who wrote that white-key etude I listened to just a few weeks ago!

And so I have officially entered the weird and wonderful world of Alkan and his music.

The rest of this post will be made up of a few commentaries on some more of Alkan's pieces which really stood out for me. Although I am sure that some of you who are reading this post are already well accustomed with Alkan's musical output, I wanted to share what I think are Alkan's really greatest compositions. After all, it is Alkan's 200th birthday!

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Op.39 Nos. 8-10: Concerto for Solo Piano

OK, this is just nuts. A concerto for solo piano? For solo piano? A CONCERTO?!

Although this isn't the first example of a piano concerto written for the solo piano (I think Bach's Italian Concerto BWV 971 was the first), this 3-movement work by Alkan certainly takes piano writing to the next level. It is about 50 minutes long (apparently the longest single work for the solo piano written during the Romantic Period) and is, to put it simply, epic.

Some of the piano writing in there you've never seen before, demonstrating that not only was Alkan a great composer but he was also a creative genius. He also makes a great job of separating the "orchestral" sections from the solo piano sections - you can clearly hear these transitions. Besides, the "orchestral" sections really do sound orchestral, and this is largely thanks to Alkan's creative 'orchestration' of certain piano passages. It's almost like a piano transcription of an orchestral work...but that would be an understatement. It is much more elaborate than that, because at the same time, it is clear that this work was written for solo piano.

The video above is the first part of Hamelin's performance of the complete concerto at Casals Hall in Tokyo. If you haven't listened to it yet, I strongly recommend you give it a try now. There are other, better quality recordings of the concerto on Youtube for you to listen to if you so wish.

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Op.39 No. 12: Le Festin d'Esope

This piece also comes from the Op.39 set of minor-key etudes - Le Festin d'Esope is a set of 25 variations based on a simple theme, with each variation acting as a sort of 'etude' in itself, which all flow one after another in a smart and logical fashion. I love this piece just because of the sheer creativity present within it. Some variations which really stand out for me (even though each one of them is highly interesting in their own right):

Var III: That 7th chord permeating this variation adds a uniquely humorous touch to the Aesop theme, not to mention those two bass "punctuation marks" on every 4th bar, which are also pretty funny!

Vars IX-X: Really beautiful writing here. The harmonies themselves make you sink into the music.

Var XIII: Awkward, but original and hilarious!

Vars XIV-XV: These deserve a special mention simply because of their difficulty (mostly in XV).

Vars XVII-XVIII: Again, these are especially difficult - the right hand in XVII is a killer, and the left hand becomes one too in XVIII. Alkan is known to write passages like this where the music is not simply "crazy" but bat**** insane.

Vars XXI-XXII: "Alkan the Clown". These variations invoke a cheesy kind of happiness, especially in XXII, where the chromatic runs jumping across the keyboard really shows us Alkan's great sense of humour. No need to mention the penultimate bar, where Alkan obviously wanted the player to resemble somebody bashing on the keyboard...

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Op.33 Grande Sonate 'Les quatre ages'

2nd movement "30 ans"

The 2nd movement from this unique four movement 'sonate' is, in my opinion, one of Alkan's most beautiful compositions. No other piece of music has been able to fill me with quite so much nostalgia. 1:50 to 2:48, for some reason, brings me right back to my childhood (even though I have nothing to link my childhood with that melody, let alone Alkan!), and I really think this has a lot to say about Alkan as a composer.

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Op.31 Preludes, No.8: "La Chanson de la folle au bord de la mer"

And finally, we have this eerie and haunting piece from the Op.31 set of 25 preludes. Some of Alkan's pieces of music are able to evoke such vivid imagery, and I think this particular prelude is one of the prime examples of that. It's a calm, misty morning at the seaside, and somewhere amid the fog you begin to hear...

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In my opinion, Alkan is truly one of the most overlooked and under-appreciated composers from the Romantic period. Today I entered Waterstone's, went over to the magazine section and took a look inside the BBC's Classical Music magazine, expecting to find some article on the subject of Alkan's 200th anniversary, but I couldn't find a thing.

Shame, really.

Hopefully this post gave any new-comers some insight into Alkan's work and influence as a composer, and perhaps some of you will become inclined to further explore Alkan's rich and wonderful works (try the Symphony for Solo Piano, or Le Chemin de Fer).

Happy 200th anniversary!

An apology

2013-11-19T11:26:00.004-08:00

Some of you will have no doubt realised that this blog has been a bit silent recently.

Well, OK, by "a bit silent", I mean totally abandoned, and by recently, I mean for the past two years.

You see, things have been pretty busy for me in the last few months (as things sometimes are), and although things are about to get a whole lot busier, I've decided to pay more attention to this poor blog of mine. Because, you see, the fact that things have been busy for me isn't the real reason why I haven't been posting; no, the real reason why I haven't been posting is because I am a very lazy person.

I apologize for being a lazy person.

So, let's just say that I will be paying more attention to this blog in the future. It's been idle for too long now...I feel like I need to write something about something somewhere on here.

Most of the topics I'll post on will be music-related (though I can't guarantee that; all topics might be music-related). E.g. I'm willing to offer some insight into my composing process (there hardly is any!) and talk about some of the tools I use. I might insert an 'oddball' here or there, but I won't worry about that now...I need to get something written in the first place!

Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

As for my Youtube channel, nothing has happened much on there, and I'm afraid that things aren't looking too hopeful. A few days ago I wanted to upload a video containing two tracks from M.A. Hamelin's latest album release: "Busoni: Late Piano Music", the two tracks which are included in Hyperion's November free 'sampler' (i.e. tracks 7 & 36), along with the sheet music. Unfortunately, this 6-minute video barely had a chance to breathe before it was blocked worldwide due to Youtube detecting material possibly belonging to Hyperion Records Ltd. I mean, OK, technically you're right, but I chose those free tracks for a reason! :S

Hence I've more or less given up with uploading other people's works. Unless there's a lot of demand I could head back to Cziffra (whose recordings are relatively 'safe'), or do something new altogether.

I may be able to compose something and upload it on Youtube, but 99% of the time I end up hitting a brick wall...for reasons I'll cover in another post (and trust me, I have been trying!).

That's it for now! And watch this space - hopefully this place will get more interesting in the future.

Hopefully.

Friedrich Kalkbrenner

2011-06-12T01:31:00.000-07:00

I've recently been reading Chopin's biography, and as I'd expected, the bio mentions Chopin's musical friends while in Paris (Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Mendelssohn etc.). I also came across a name I'd never heard of before: Friedrich Kalbrenner, a pianist. According to the biography, Chopin thought very higly of Kalkbrenner, and Chopin even said once that he 'felt unworthy of untying his shoelaces'.

I grew interested about this guy, so I looked him up on the internet, and was astounded to find that he had written more than 200 piano works, piano concertos and operas of which a few have ever been recorded. He was also the first pianist to introduce rapid octave scales into the piano repetoire.

I think it's time to revive Kalkbrenner on Youtube! I'm currently transcribing his Brilliant Variations on a Mazurka by Chopin (Op. 120), and hopefully I'll finish it someday.

How To Train Your Dragon Two Piano Transcription

2011-06-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

John Powell is, along with Hans Zimmer, one of my favourite film composers of today. While Hans scores in a very simplistic, self-taught 'German' style (nothing wrong with that of course, just makes you wonder why you never thought of his melodies in the first place), John Powell's extreme flexibility leaves you wondering what type of soundtrack he will compose next (in other words, he can compose electronic music just as well as orchestral).

Therefore, as I have already done transcriptions of some of Zimmer's works, I decided to do something by John Powell. Immediately I went for his HTTYD score, which not only is WAAAY better than the score to 'The Social Network', but is easy to listen to and would be doable as a two-piano transcription.

I then decided which piece to do. I was thinking of doing either 'Test Drive' or 'See You Tomorrow', but as the spirit of tomekkobialka goes, I had to choose something that would be almost impossible to play on the piano. So I took the 10 minute battle music and decided to do that.

My main point in doing this transcription was to experiment with how different orchestral techniques can be recreated on the piano. Powell's orchestra contains more than 100 players:

· 2 Flutes

· 1 Piccolo

· 2 Oboes

· 1 Cor Anglais

· 3 Clarinet

· 2 Bassoons

· 1 Contrabassoon

· 12 French Horns (yes, 12!)

· 4 Trumpets

· 4 Trombones

· 2 Bass Trombones

· 1 Tuba

· Timpani

· Tubular bells

· Piatti (cymbal)

· Sustained cymbal

· Anvils

· Gong

· Tam-Tam

· Chinese Cymbal

· Snare Drum

· Bass Drum

· Piano

· 2 Harps

· Full SATB Choir

· 30 Violins

· 12 Violas

· 10 Celli

· 8 Double Basses

You can imagine what I felt like when I saw this. How can you convert all these voice parts into two pianos??? Well...you can't, so I had to leave stuff out. (I also thought to myself how does John Powell get his head around so many instruments? He obviously had a lot of orchestrators at his disposal, in fact, he had 10, probably because it took one orchestrator a week to orchestrate one track!).

N.B. - unlike many lucky musicians out there, I don't have perfect pitch, so I can only rely on the original orchestral score :(

For example, have a look at this page from the original conductor's score (this bit comes from between 5:40 - 5:48 in my transcription) (click on image to zoom) :

I mean, where do you start?! It takes a long time to decipher which instruments are being doubled and which ones to include in the transcription etc... in this case, I felt tempted to take the harp part, the horns and trumpets playing the melody and the...bass clef of the piano part (if the pianos already in there then why not use it again? :) ) So it all went well, but after two bars I could see that the flutes play these slides up. Now how do I add that into the transcription, it seems almost impossible!

This kind of problem solving was very common. Here's another example (between 6:25 - 6:34):

This time, the problem is the strings. Those lines tell the string players to slide their fingers from one note to another, while playing a continuous bow stroke. And on top of that you have the double basses 'slapping'. Now how do you recreate this sliding effect on the piano? To solve this I had to use lots of pedal and chromatic notes going up and down to create the general idea of chaos. You may also notice that in the second bar, the piano and bass woodwinds play a B-flat, but the main melody, played by the tuba/trombones and cello/DB, is a B natural. You can't hear this in the recording, as there is so much going on, but if I recreated this clash in the piano, it would be very evident. So again, I had to point these mistakes out (and there are actually quite a lot of these in the whole score, some of which I doubt were intentional...)

So there! I hope you enjoy my transcription, and I hope maybe someday some duo will be brave enough to play it.

Toccata Grottesca - Hamelin Etude No.5

2011-03-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

My next video is an audio + sheet music one of Hamelin's recently-released complete Etudes (which he has been composing for over 20 years!). It is the beginning of my next project which is to finish off Hamelin's etudes so that an audio + sheet music of every of his etudes will be available someweher on Youtube.

Please comment and rate!

What IS musicality?

2011-02-04T12:34:00.000-08:00

A very broad topic, of course, but one in which I am interested in.

My Youtube uploads have covered a vast area of music, ranging from Liszt to Finnissy. And I cannot help but notice how so many people comment on Finnissy's videos (I have uploaded some of th English Country Tunes) quite negatively. On one video, otovioandradas writes:

"the funny thing about the people who seem to enjoy this music is that they HAVE TO LOOK at the score to actually say things like: wow, it 's so complex!", or "wow, this must be so difficult to play!". These people seem to ignore the very basics about music: that it is SOUND. And as far as SOUND goes, this music is DULL."

marcphilos writes:

"If dog vomit had a sound, this would be it."

JianyuTheLegend writes:

"theres actually people who think this is music lol
they must be insane"

And it is clear when you listen to the video (at the bottom of this post) that there is a significant difference between the melody and harmony in it than the melody and harmony in e.g. Jingle Bells or the Beautiful Blue Danube.

And so what is musicality? Why are some pieces of music 'less musical' than other pieces? Why is banging seemingly random chords on the piano considered as 'dull sound'? There seems to be some strange perception in everyone's brain where a C major chord sounds much more pleasing than the bottom two keys of a piano played together.

To be completely honest, I think that there is no such thing as a piece that's scientifically more musical than another. Musicality is an illusion in our brain that we were born with, which gives us emotion based on a series of sounds which somehow fit so well together. A piece of music cannot be totally proven to have a certain level of musicality. You can say that a piece in G major is more musical than a dissonant, Finnissy-type piece, but why does the major scale fit so well to the ear? What's so special about WWHWWWH that makes the music feel happy? Why not sad?

Musicality is an illusion in our brain, that's why.

Miklos Rozsa - Ben Hur

2011-01-21T09:25:00.000-08:00

Almost all of us have heard of the 1959 film 'Ben Hur', the 11 Academy Award winning biblical epic. But not a lot of people would be able to tell you who wrote the dramatic score to the movie. Well, the answer's Miklos Rozsa. He was a very popular Hollywood film composer back in the mid 1900s, but today seems rather forgotten. I recommend people to listen to the soundtrack of Ben Hur as it really is fantastically composed and includes a lot of 'upbeat' music (ie. roman marches). Below is the music from one of the rowing scenes in the movie:

Epic music and D Minor

2010-12-30T06:32:00.000-08:00

What's with epic orchestral music and D minor? Whether it's in a film or a video game, most music is played in the key of D minor. Perhaps there is a 'composer's secret' where the key of D minor gives a more epic feel to the piece. Or maybe it's just the easiest key for the orchestra to play in (notably for the violins, as one of their open strings is a D4).

Good examples of such epic music include the soundtrack to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (just look them up on Youtube). And, of course, who could forget Chevaliers de Sangreal?

Sounds from Space

2010-12-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

Who would've thought that spacecraft can hear what is going on in a planet's atmosphere? Some years ago the Voyager spacecraft passed by Jupiter and recorded using special instruments the electromagnetic vibrations emitted by the largest planet in our solar system, which were converted into sound waves (as sound, despite not being audible in a vacuum like space, can still be detected). The results are staggering - it sounds so out of this world yet somehow familiar to us...

Not only Jupiter has been recorded, but Saturn, Saturn's Rings, Miranda, Uranus, Ring's of Uranus, Neptune, Io and Earth have also been recorded, and their full 30 min tracks can be found on the album 'NASA Voyager Space Sounds'...probably one of the only albums ever published by NASA!

Oh well, that's enough of me ranting about the solar system and next time I promise I'll post something more musical!

Scary Piano Pieces - Fantasy and Fugue on a Theme of B-A-C-H by Liszt

2010-12-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

Go up to a piano and play the notes B-flat, A, C and B. Sounds scary, doesn't it?

This is a frightening piece by Liszt which explores the theme of B-A-C-H on the piano (or B-flat, A, C and B). My favourite thing about this piece is the fact that this theme is used pretty much everywhere, whether it's in a slow, sinister passage or a fast turn. Above you can find the first part played by Marc-Andre Hamelin in the Canadian TV channel 'Bravo'. I apologise for the poor audio quality!

Please like and comment!

Chevaliers de Sangreal - The Da Vinci Code

2010-12-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

I recently came across the soundtrack for 'The Da Vinci Code' written by Hans Zimmer, and was particularly amazed by the beauty of one of the tracks: Chevaliers de Sangreal, which is the main theme of the film. The strings really bring out lots of emotion and I love the 'epic' way in which the track was written. You can listen to the track below:

Experimental Pieces Explained

2010-12-17T02:39:00.000-08:00

Not many people seem to be getting the point of my experimental pieces. They're not designed to sound beautiful, but they're just experimenting with the features of Finale, and therefore probably don't come out sounding too pleasant.

The first experimental piece deals with the glissando tool on Finale. After a short introduction made out of C major chords, I wanted to find out what fast, MIDI glissandos sounded like on a piano. The result: something between a laser beam and Beethoven's hell. Of course, it sounds awful, but I hope that people can see my aim in this piece and that I wanted to introduce incredibly fast glissandos to the ears of curious Youtubers, not create a romantic piece.

The other experimental pieces follow in a similar way, each time looking at different musical effects, including: pedal effects, block clusters of notes, fast scales and arpeggios, dissonance/improvisational jazz and octave chromatics with seemingly random notes playing in the background.

Please view my experimental pieces and comment! Below you can find my first experimental piece:

Oh yeah, and please don't laugh! :)

Alkan's 'Concerto for Solo Piano', 1st Movement Analysis

2010-12-16T11:34:00.001-08:00

Alkan's 'Concerto for Solo Piano', 1st Movement Analysis

This is an analysis of Alkan's 1st Movement of his Concerto for Solo Piano that I wrote. It is a very difficult piece for the piano.

You can listen to it on Youtube; kastlesucksTDOTS has uploaded the 1st movement in three parts, played by Marc Andre Hamelin. You can also find a live performance by Hamelin of this movement uploaded by rcaterina: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuxcI7nyKl0