Has anyone else played this? It's *not* technically difficult at all, but its giving me fits- the melodic lines are both very strong. I play it 'hands apart' no problem, it's just when I try to put the two parts together that I fall apart.
The piece is driving me crazy! I don't have problems playing any of the other Inventions, it's just this seemingly easy one that I can't play.
Anyone have some advice that might help me?
Yes, with this invention you have the same problem you will find on bach preludes, i.e. the use of irregular syncopation
So, what helped me a lot when I was studying this piece was tapping the rythm
You should both tap the rhythm and solfege the whole piece: right hand first and then left hand
What you want to achieve is solving all rhythm problems before starting practicing the piece at the piano or it will become a problem if during the practice you have both hard coordination problem plus hard rhythm problems to deal with
When you can tap and solfege the rhythm at high speed you are assured that you have no more rhythm problems
This is an acephalus rythm: the first note of the second bar belongs to the phrase of the previous bar
if you keep this in mind it would be easy to find the musicality of this piece
Then have a look at the tonality: E Major
Before practicing the invention play the E Major scale very well in all its variations
Here's how I solved the coordination problem with this piece
First I isolated a syncopation (RH right hand) in order to learn it perfectly: how the hand moves, how it sounds, how it would coordinate with the left hand
I then learned the major beats (the piece without the "ands") of the RH hands
and the same for LH, alternating hands very often
The I'd tried to play the piece (only the major beats) hand together and I'd mark the bars with had problem that needed to be solved
Whatever problem the hard bars presented I solved it by repeating the marked chunk many time alternating very often the left and the rigth hand and alternating the speed
What I wanted to achieve was to be able to train my hands to hit perfectly at tempo the major beats; in other words I wanted my hands to know where to go next without esitation at the end of a bar
By far I had solved all the rhythm problems and my hands know perfectly the "sleleton" of the piece
So what I did next was to add (hand separates) all the notes I skipped because they were not on the major beats
It should be easy enough to add back the 32th notes, but if you have problems on some specific point, mark that point and devote your practice session to solve the problems with that marked chunks
When eventually perfecting the piece; what I find helps me a lot with Bach music is alternating a bar by bar practice session with a whole piece practice session
When you do a bar by bar practice you play each bar faster than final tempo and do a rest after each bar (or phrase)
During this pause try to concentrate and think of what comes next
When you do a whole piece practice you play the whole piece swowly (in slow motion)
If you have esitation when moving to the next bar, practice by moving fast from bar to bar (train the hand to go move quickly to the next target) but wait few second of the surface of the note, before playing it
If you still have rhythm problems when coordinating the syncompations between each hand divide the higher value note by the lower value note among the two hands
So by diving a 8th note by a 16th note (two 8th notes) you can see where each beat of the lower value note match with the higher value note
Hope this helps a few
Daniel
Topic: Bach Invention No. 6 & introducing myself