Grieg: Morning Mood - Project

[candlelightpiano]

Hi guys:

I've only sight read thru this piece but I'm totally in love with it since I heard it recently.  And I thought it would be a wonderful breather from the other pieces I'm working on. 

Grieg's Morning Mood is the music I would love to hear when I wake up in the morning.  I wouldn't complain if my alarm clock played this piece!  I can feel the rising of the sun as the piece grows in volume and the awakening of the birds and their trilling in the trees.  It is nature at its most gloriest.  So when I have learned it, it will be the first piece I play when I wake up in the morning.

I hope some of you will decide to join me on this little project.  I will post videos of my work in progress as often as possible.  If you've played this piece and have some tips, I welcome your participation. 

Choo

[candlelightpiano]

I hope to play it as beautifully soon!

[costicina]

Of course you will do it!!!!!   

[49410enrique]

good luck! i hope to see this in the audition room.  just a quick question before you invest a lot of time on this, what about exploring something from a different era of the common practice period? i.e. between the Chopin, Liszt, and now-Grieg, I think you've gotten a lot of exposure to more 'romantic' writting, perhaps a little  time with baroque or classical? i find that my later pieces (romantic/post romantic etc) get better after I wrestle with the control and texture challenges of earlier works, seems early Beethoven (or Mozart, or Bach, etc) pays divedends even after you move on to perhaps styles you feel drawn to a bit more.

just a thought, i'm still sure you'll find lovely challenges here and you'll be a better pianist because of it, afterall the best learning pieces in the world doesn't really do you a lot of good if you're not committed to it, and if you just don't like it that much you won't really practice with all your heart, still i'd consider broadening your horizons some for 'project' purposes at least.

edit-i failed to mention you can certainly keep this on the radar and just read through it daily as warm up etc. if you decide to 'study' a different work, i do this quite a bit with works i will focus on later and find that by the time i'm ready to really practice them they are pretty much memorized and worked out.  either way, excited for you. i hope to jump on one of these once i clear several pieces off my plate (i've got about 20-25 minutes of music i'm finishing up right now so i need to get some performances out of the way otherwise i'll essentially be carrying a small recital load, and with no real solo recital in the horizon, it's more work than it's worth to me but i'll keep watching/reading  )

[candlelightpiano]

Thanks, Marg, for your constant support and confidence!

Welcome, Enrique!  Good to see you on one of my threads.  Thanks for your advice.  I used to play a good deal of pieces from the Baroque era way back when.  They were never my favorite type of music.  Now I just like to play pieces that I'm wildly passionate about.  I love Beethoven, though, and will definitely take on one of his sonatas for a future project.  It's just that they're long and will take a lot more time and commitment and I'm still working on FI.

I hope you'll continue to join us here.

[candlelightpiano]

Here's where you can get free sheet music for Morning Mood:

https://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/MorningMood.html?tab=pdf&pdfloc=86116166/MorningMood&multiflag=&fromsel=&tk=&rt=&frds=

[candlelightpiano]

I've been working on the first two pages and have two questions and I hope someone can help me with them:

1.  I've had difficulty with the RH span in bar 5 and 6 with the large chord of G#, E and B.  I roll the chord but still find that the span between the G# and E stresses my thumb, which I sprained about a week ago.  Is there another way of getting around this?

2.  Bar 1 LH chord and similar chords:  I've experimented with two different fingerings: 5 2 1 and 5 3 1 for the E, B, G# chord.  Which would be a better fingering to use?  Also, do I hold the B and G# once I roll the chord or just the G# for the entire bar?

I've posted the link to the free sheet music in the post just before this one, if you need to refer to it.  And thanks in advance for your assistance. 

[costicina]

Hi Choo,
I looked at the score: for RH stretch, I'm  afraid I can give you useful advices, since my hands are very small, and I would be forced to rolle the chord and to release immediatly the thumb in order to play E and B. As for LH, I tried  both fingerings,  and for my hand 125 is better...

I'm glad you have started the new piece, it's lovely!!!!

[candlelightpiano]

Thanks, Marg.  I really appreciate your help.  I sprained my right thumb again.  No doubt, the stretch between G# and E didn't help it so I'll have to give it a few days rest but I have a lesson tomorrow and I'll ask my teacher if she can help me with the RH chords, especially the stretch between G# and E, which is causing me problems.  I really, really want to learn this piece but the large stretches are a major problem.  Fortunately, the stretches are only on the first two pages but still, if I keep spraining my thumb over them, I won't be able to work on this piece.   

[ajspiano]

can you play the G# and E as a chord?

refer to fink to understand supination/pronation of the forearm/hand

consider the diagram showing legato stretches somewhere around page 97 i think..

does varying levels of supination/pronation affect your ability to comfortably play the G#/E as a chord?

[candlelightpiano]

Thanks so much for coming to my aid, AJ!!  I just PMed you about it and you must have read my mind because you posted before I sent my PM!  You're incredible!

I can play G# and E with my thumb and index finger but it's causing pain in my thumb and the area between thumb and index finger.  I'm not sure if this is because I had sprained my thumb last week or if it's because of the stretch. 

I'm looking at my Fink book, which I was planning to study tonight as I can't practice.  I guess you're talking about Chapter 8A: Pulling Arm Legato - Pronating and Supinating Circles?  I'll also read 8D: Multi-Note Arm Patterns - Finger Stretching.  I haven't read the book at all. I've only been watching the DVD and haven't completed it but I've been doing most of the primary arm movement exercises. 

[ajspiano]

Firstly, I have not read this guys book, or watched him extensively, so I'm not vouching for this in general - however, at 6:37 in this video he demonstrates how you can reach significantly further when supinated.

I wouldnt expect you to reach as far as him, he has fairly large hands, but you should feel an obvious difference..  you will have to translate it to the individual situation of the Grieg piece though and test to see if it helps.

^ Same idea as in fink - different person explaining with different words.

[candlelightpiano]

Thanks so much, AJ.  I watched the video (great video, by the way, and I'm ordering the DVD tonight and will watch his other videos on youtube) and it's what Fink talked about too but I think Fraser demonstrates the supination and rotation better. 

So anyway, I can now stretch to those keys with rotation of my wrists and hand and a bit of supination (not much supination and a lot more rotation) without pain, at least, with the little bit of practice on the first 6 bars just now.  I'm staying off the keys for a few days, except for my lesson tomorrow, then when I return to practice, I'll find out if it works for sure.  I didn't think of rotating my wrist and hand when I was stretching to get to those keys.  Thanks so much for your help.  I feel so much better about getting back to this piece now.

[ajspiano]

Thanks so much, AJ.  I watched the video (great video, by the way, and I'm ordering the DVD tonight and will watch his other videos on youtube) and it's what Fink talked about too but I think Fraser demonstrates the supination and rotation better. 

So anyway, I can now stretch to those keys with rotation of my wrists and hand and a bit of supination (not much supination and a lot more rotation) without pain, at least, with the little bit of practice on the first 6 bars just now.  I'm staying off the keys for a few days, except for my lesson tomorrow, then when I return to practice, I'll find out if it works for sure.  I didn't think of rotating my wrist and hand when I was stretching to get to those keys.  Thanks so much for your help.  I feel so much better about getting back to this piece now.

Watch out - keyboardclass will tell you fraser is a maniac!!

You're misunderstanding supination I think - supination/pronation are both rotation - they define the direction of the rotation.

[candlelightpiano]

Now why on earth would ANYONE say Fraser is a maniac?!?      I watched a few more of his videos on legato playing, etc. and he made complete sense to me!  What do you think of his technique?  Don't you think what he says sounds very Fink-like? 

I get mixed up with the use of the words supination and pronation.  I watched Fink's DVD many times and still don't understand those terms. 

[ajspiano]

I get mixed up with the use of the words supination and pronation.  I watched Fink's DVD many times and still don't understand those terms. 

[candlelightpiano]

How did you do that so quickly? You amaze me!  That's a great picture. I can see that together, they make a rotation.  You're one of the finest teachers I've ever known.  Thanks for clarifying all these things.

I forgot to add that when Fraser talked about grasping, didn't Birba also talk about it in one of his videos?

[ajspiano]

How did you do that so quickly?

I'm a trained ninja.

Seriously though - pronation/supination are terms used by the medical profession, its used in the discussion of physiology, and the study and application of such motion is a big part of sports science. Good pronation for example is a major factor in a powerful tennis serve...    consequently it was pretty easy to find the picture in googe images.

Yeh birba did talk about gripping kind of - he called it a 'prehensile motion' ..rather than the finger going straight up and down poking into the key, it actually pulls back toward the palm, bending at the top knuckle - fink calls this the pulling finger.

[costicina]

Only that accentuated supination motion allows me to play Chopin 25/1 LH arps. The wrist should be as supple as possible....

[danhuyle]

Just reading the music from bar 1,2,5,6. I roll those chords.

In bar 1 and 2, you could redistribute the G# and play G# and B in the right hand and play E and B together in the left hand. No strain there.

[candlelightpiano]

Thanks, AJ, Marg and Dan for your assistance. 

Dan, if I redistribute the chord and play the G# with the B in my RH,  I will be letting the G# go as it's too large a stretch to hold with the high B so the pedal will have to sustain it.  Do you think that will work okay?

Otherwise, I could just roll the chord with a rotation of my wrist and hand and hold the G# for the length of the bar.  The rotation helps a lot to prevent strain.

[candlelightpiano]

I've been working on this piece for a week now and I have some problems with it.  My RH thumb gets quite sore and I'm wondering if I'm playing the stretches incorrectly, not rotating my wrist enough, etc. in bars 5-6 and other similar measures.

Also unable to sound the RH octave loudly when playing the two grace notes before it on page 2, bar 6 and other similar bars on that page.  So how do I play them and still be able to sound the octave clearly and loudly?

Here's the link to the free score:

https://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/MorningMood.html?tab=pdf&pdfloc=86116166/MorningMood&multiflag=&fromsel=&tk=&rt=&frds=

Should I record a video showing my problems with these measures?