Characteristics of "easy"?

[m1469]

I'm curious what characterizes "easy" for people?  Can you pinpoint what those characteristics are that make something easy?

[rachmaninoff_forever]

If it's not Bach.

[nanabush]

For me, it's familiarity.

I worked on four Rachmaninoff Preludes this year, and the four pieces Op.119 by Brahms.  Generally, the Rachmaninoff would appear to be more difficult (D major, Bb major, G minor, B minor), but in all honesty I was MUCH less used to Brahms' harmonic language that the first two pieces in Op.119 caused me quite some grief when working out voicings.  Because I have already played a bunch of Rach, the LH at the opening of the Bb prelude, and the big heavy octave/chord stuff in the other preludes actually seemed easier to approach and practice.

When I took the b minor Klavierstücke... it was a mess of harmonic analysis, finding voicings, and a lot of struggles with pedalling!  It was not nearly as technical as the Rachmaninoff, but I have gotten to a point where technical difficulties are a lot more straightforward than musical difficulties.  If a passage does not work at a fast tempo, I work out the fingerings, do some rhythmic practice, and keep it slow for a while so I can adapt.  If there is a passage where I am asking myself "what the hell is this supposed to sound like?", and after hearing different recordings, you hear people play it all differently, I find it leaves me with so much more work to do.

I find technical challenges more exhilarating to practice because I can see steady progression, so I find pieces with these elements a little easier.  Pair this idea with Debussy/Rachmaninoff and I'm good to go!

I'm going to try working on Op.118 this summer... I can tell it's going to be mostly work on interpretation, which I really do not find easy!

===

Anyways, I kind of link 'easy' with "familiar" and "something you can work at progressively".  Going to the extreme, if I was asked to play some Schoenberg, I would have a VERY hard time finding a coherent way of working it out and really getting to the root of the piece.  So 'familiarity' kind of goes along what type of harmonic language you are used to, and also (in the case of Liszt/Rachmaninoff) what pianistic feats you have already conquered - so when they come up again, there is the mentality of "Oh, I've already seen this before!".

It's 2AM here, and I was actually thinking about this earlier today (just finished my recital, and am starting some new rep soon!); I was flipping through books, and just found it interesting what I considered to be 'easy' versus what looked 'hard' (and most of the time I was disregarding sheer technical difficulty).

[birba]

Hammerklavier is hard.  Chopstix is easy.

[j_menz]

Chopstix is easy.

Depends on who's doing it

[birba]

Where do you find this stuff?  That is the ugliest thing i've ever heard in my life.  Liszt my arse!  That was maestro digital at his electronic pianoroll!!
However, i must say it adds a bit of class to Ms.  's "meaningful" thread.

[lufia]

Where do you find this stuff?  That is the ugliest thing i've ever heard in my life.  Liszt my arse!  That was maestro digital at his electronic pianoroll!!
However, i must say it adds a bit of class to Ms.  's "meaningful" thread.

I think my ears just bled 

[lonelagranger]

Maybe Listz on crack.

[jj5594]

Playing is the easy part, interpretation is the hard part

[gvans]

I'm in agreement with Nanabush's response. I'm working on lots of things right now, Brahms, Beethoven, Faure, Chopin, Liszt, Alwyn, Debussy, Schumann, some are very virtuosic, but the hardest piece I'm dealing with is this damnable Delius Cello Sonata. It's not terribly notey or fast, but it's strange, full of accidentals and odd, unique harmonies.

I played it over and over and didn't get it. Finally, after much labor, I'm starting to understand his weird chromatic/jazz language. It's like immersion studies in Japanese without a teacher. Takes a while.

[wnlqxod]

Technique-wise...
Easy pieces are slow. The faster you have to play something, the more practice you need because you need reaaaaal good muscle memory to play something quickly AND accurately.

Easy pieces fall under your fingers easily, and facilitate control. Compare the difficulty of Chopin's Etude Op 25. No. 2 versus Op. 10 No. 1. Op. 10 No. 1 is DOWNRIGHT AWKWARD, and your fingers want to go everywhere initially.

Easy pieces do not have gigantic leaps. Trust me, leaps take PRACTICE. If you can play Chopin's Etude Op 25 No 3 or Lisztian octaves without any practice... you're a somebody.

Easy pieces do not pound on your naturally clumsier fingers. Something like Chopin's Etude Op 10 No 2 is hard for this reason.

Music wise...
Easy pieces tend to not assign more than one role to your hand at a time. Example of a piece that demands more than one role from your hand at the same time: Chopin's Etude Op 25 No 1.
You play the melody with 4 and 5 while playing accompanimental arpeggio with your 1, 2, and 3.

Easy pieces tend to feature straightforward voicing. As a counterexample, Rachmaninoff's pieces often have hidden voices here and there all over the place. You gotta REALLY KNOW YOUR VOICING if you're gonna play Rachmaninoff successfully. J.S. Bach's "real" works (i.e. something that is not in the 30 Inventions and Sinfonias set) are also hard for this reason.

Easy pieces tend to be musically straightforward, almost shallow. Chopin's Ballades are hard because of this reason.

I wonder if this was helpful .

[m1469]

Well, there is some point when even difficult works become truly easy for some individuals.  So, I am curious how individuals might characterize the qualities of what that is for them, not necessarily the types of repertoire, though that may give some clues.

[nanabush]

Talking to a few of my friends at the university over the years:

For some:
-easy is something that looks easy on the page (slow moving, familiar key, short)
-familiar composer, or a piece they've heard

...so, if they were given a piece by Prokofiev after never having played Prokofiev (and lets say it was intermediate), because it is new territory, there is this 'complex' that comes out of nowhere, and the people in question build the piece up into this monster 

...this did happen to me when I looked at the Tcherepnin Bagatelles; I was SHOCKED to see that they are all around a Grade 7-8 RCM level in the syllabus; I would have bought it if someone told me that "any four" would be an ARCT choice (Diploma, after Grade 10).

For others:
-if it just fits their hands; one of my friends has very small hands (can play an octave), but she practices scales religiously and has an insane technique.  She learned the Chopin Op 10#2 in just a few weeks, and was never bothered by it.  She just said it took 'serious' practice in small chunks, but that it wasn't overly hard.

...On the other hand, because I have larger hands, and gravitate towards 'chords', I find that chords (slow or fast) are easier, and that I don't have to meticulously work out fingerings like my friend would have to (or decide which chords to roll, or leave out notes).

...So for this, it's really dependent on what size your hands are, or just what technique you are more solid with.

[piano6888]

In the most simplest terms, easy piece of music would be a piece that is either not too technically demanding, not too much musicality needed to play it, and not too complicated.

Technique wise:
Not many leaps
Intense passages
Slower tempos
No complex Scales and arpeggios
No ornaments within the piece.
No complicated fingerings just straight forward ones.
No complex rhythms

Musicality wise:
Not a lot of changes in tempo
Not a lot of changes in keys
Not a lot of changes in pieces
Usually a simple melody with maybe easy accompaniment on the Bass Clef.
Not much changes in dynamics
Easy to read time signatures and notes.

Examples of easy pieces are: Fur Elise, Mary had a Little Lamb, Minuet in G.  Most pieces in the beginners' books, basic major/minor scales (one octave).

Examples of hard pieces are: Beethoven's Sonatas (entire works, not just single movements),  Bach Inventions, Mozart Sonatas, Chopin Preludes and Etudes, Prokofiev's Concertos, etc.

[ted]

For me, "easy" firstly implies most physical considerations have been relegated to the subconscious. That is not to say I might not experiment differently in minor ways, or take care at certain points, but generally physical technique will not be a concern.

Musicianship isn't quite the same, because "easy" there might simply mean I have arrived at a stable, facile interpretation, which is a long way from optimal, or what I would be capable of with more thought.

In improvisation I never play anything which is not "easy" for me in the first above sense. To be completely honest, I am not a natural musician, nothing is ever "easy" in the second sense, and I usually finish a long improvisation feeling like a limp rag.