How's this for reduction? Mound and Bernhard, for you...

[mosis]

The piece I speak of is the Prelude in C# minor 3/2, but Rachmaninoff. I'm specifically talking about the wonderful fff cadenza of interlocked chord triplets right before the first theme is reintroduced.

With my trusty sidekick Finale, I have outlined these bars in the following ways:

1) A score dedicated to just the "melody" chords; that is, the first note of each triplet, of the right hand.

2) The same for the left hand.

3) A score for both these parts, hands together.

4) A score with the "non-melody" notes of the triplet, right hand.

5) Ibid. left hand

6) A score for both these parts, hands together.

7) A score for the entire right hand part

A score for the entire left hand part

9) The entire score re-written.

I won't be practising this until one or two weeks from now, but is this a good start? Finale also lets me playback all of this, so I can hear exactly how each and every part sounds like.

Of course, I plan on learning it in the ways indicated by the scores I used.

Also, is it better to use a program like Finale, or re-write it by hand?

Is there anything else I should (or shouldn't) do?

Thanks!

[mound]

wow, it sounds like you've become as obsessed as me 

I found I liked using Noteworthy composer better than Finale. but whatever! Nice, I hope you didn't too *too many* various reductions, but I'm sure you have the entire score memorized at this point!

[mound]

oh PS-
my teacher was pleasantly confused when I showed him a print-out of my 3 voice seperation of the Bach Sinfonia #9 and told him my next step was to determine fingering for all three voices (appropriate to playing them together that is, not as if they were standalone pieces)

he asked me if I wanted to start trading piano lessons for lessons in time management

[BoliverAllmon]

well, just come back to your teacher in a couple of weeks with it completely memorized and blow him away. then ask him if he needs time management.

boliver

[mound]

oh I plan to!

haha.. I think you mis-understood, he was asking me for lessons in time management because between a full time job, a girlfriend, practicing Taekwondo and practicing piano for 2-3 hours a day, and then he sees me come with a beautifully printed out seperation of the score, he's like "how the hell do you find the time for all of this?!"   

[mosis]

Indeed, writing out a score takes a lot of time with a notation program. It would be much faster writing it out by hand, but then you wouldn't get to listen to what it sounds like, and that's a nice advantage.

[mound]

Not me. I have horrendus hand-writing (a byproduct I guess of typing 120 words a minute and never using my hadnwriting skills. )

I did sit down with score paper and a pencil to write out my Sinfonia seperation. It took a while, and none of the voices were lined up vertically and it was difficult to read. I then tried to do it again by hand, and trying to line everything up was such a pain in the a** ..  I learned the key-combinations for entering notes into Noteworthy pretty quickly.   Using the arrows, numbers, enter and spacebar I got to the point where I could just read through my real score, and enter notes very quickly.  Not blazing fast or anything, but I had the whole thing in Noteworthy in just about the same time it took me to write it, and it was legible, and as you said, it plays back!  Plus, you can easilly erase notes and add notes to make the different reductions and outlines.

[BoliverAllmon]

oh I plan to!

haha.. I think you mis-understood, he was asking me for lessons in time management because between a full time job, a girlfriend, practicing Taekwondo and practicing piano for 2-3 hours a day, and then he sees me come with a beautifully printed out seperation of the score, he's like "how the hell do you find the time for all of this?!"   

yeah, i guess i did misunderstand.

boliver