Video: Bach - Italian Concerto BWV 971 (1st mvt)

[throwawaynotreally]

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[throwawaynotreally]

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[awesom_o]

You've got the right idea, but I would be more interested to hear how you play it using the score!

[quantum]

Just curious, how much of a time span did you use to record those 60 takes?

This sounded careful, a bit too careful.  I'd like to hear more of what you would like to say with this music and less of the score. 

What did the first take sound like?

[throwawaynotreally]

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[throwawaynotreally]

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[awesom_o]

I'm sorry, I don't really understand?

In Bach's day, memorizing the written-out scores of other musicians was unheard of! The only time you would perform without the score was when you were playing your own compositions in front of other people or improvising!

[pianoman53]

In Bach's day, memorizing the written-out scores of other musicians was unheard of! The only time you would perform without the score was when you were playing your own compositions in front of other people or improvising!

This isn't Bach's days though. In Mozart's days, they didn't play right hand and left hand very much together. As an answer to how he could keep his tempo so well; It's easy, I just keep the tempo in the left hand, while the right hand plays on its own [vague quote from one of his letters]. He also used a lot of pedal.
In Chopin's days, it was uncommon to not add notes "coloraturas" (sorry, I have high fever, I can't come up with the right word right now) to pieces they played. Chopin is even said to have yelled at students who played a piece in the way he showed them.

Not everything in the composers days is acceptable in todays world. Some good, some bad...

[awesom_o]

This isn't Bach's days though.

This is no excuse for performing Bach's music in a substandard way! 

[pianoman53]

This is no excuse for performing Bach's music in a substandard way! 

That' wasn't what you said though. You said, memorizing the score was unheard of. That has nothing to do with the standard of playing.

[awesom_o]

You said, memorizing the score was unheard of.

Correct! It was unheard of.

These days, people seem to think that with Bach, the quality of the music-making is unimportant, so long as the performance is memorized!

[pianoman53]

Correct! It was unheard of.

These days, people seem to think that with Bach, the quality of the music-making is unimportant, so long as the performance is memorized!

You hear yourself right?
First you wrote "Memorizing isn't important", I said what I said. And now you reply with this.
I feel we're trapped in a circle....

[awesom_o]

It's possible to give a very good performance with the score and a very bad one from memory!
 

Harpsichordists almost always perform with the music!

[pianoman53]

It's possible to give a very good performance with the score and a very bad one from memory!

The other way is also very possible.
Still, this had nothing to do with my comment, so I give up.

[throwawaynotreally]

It's possible to give a very good performance with the score and a very bad one from memory!
 

Harpsichordists almost always perform with the music!

Sorry, I'm generally not used to playing with a score of anything in front of me. I don't think I've ever done it before, I feel like it can sometimes be a obstruction. As a matter of fact I don't think it's important at all whether a performance is memorised or not, as long as it is good - I just prefer to not use one. I'll try to play with a score next time.

 Was the music itself really substandard? How could I improve on it, besides performing with a score?

[awesom_o]

Sorry, I'm generally not used to playing with a score of anything in front of me. I don't think I've ever done it before, I feel like it can sometimes be a obstruction.

Until one gains a significant amount of experience playing chamber music,  it can be an obstruction! The sooner one can play as comfortably from the score as from memory, the sooner one becomes a professional, employable keyboard artist.
Your performance was quite respectable for a high-school student or first/second year
undergrad student. It was only 'substandard' in comparison to top-level professional renditions, like this one by Andras Schiff:

His control of texture, articulation, and ornamentation gives the music such sparkling clarity!

His sound contains an insane amount of rhythmic energy and precision without ever actually being very loud!

I think that is one of the key aspects to great Bach playing. One's tone must have an absolutely peculiar level of musical intensity that manifests never as sheer mass or mere volume!

Overall, your performance was quite respectable! It had a little too much mass in the tone, and sounded a bit sluggish. Perhaps a more brisk tempo and greater command of the trills and ornaments would help.

Your piano seems like it needs to be voiced down. It sounds pretty clangy, which isn't doing your interpretation any favours!

[pianoman53]

Why Andras Shiff sounds like he does has nothing to do if he plays with score or not! You like playing with score, but that doesn't mean everyone will benefit from it. Many people lose focus, on the music, by playing from score.


The way you can improve it, in my opinion. Is to play it in such a tempo, so that you can hear the end of every note, and how the beginning of the next one should sound. If it sounds exactly the way you want, you can continue. If it's off by just a tiny bit, you have to do it again.

This will take an immense amount of focus, so only play a few bars at the time, and don't play much more than 10-15 minutes in a row. Then take a short break, for a few minutes, and then continue.

[blazekenny]

Why Andras Shiff sounds like he does has nothing to do if he plays with score or not! You like playing with score, but that doesn't mean everyone will benefit from it. Many people lose focus, on the music, by playing from score.


The way you can improve it, in my opinion. Is to play it in such a tempo, so that you can hear the end of every note, and how the beginning of the next one should sound. If it sounds exactly the way you want, you can continue. If it's off by just a tiny bit, you have to do it again.

This will take an immense amount of focus, so only play a few bars at the time, and don't play much more than 10-15 minutes in a row. Then take a short break, for a few minutes, and then continue.

+1 to you sir. I think playing with music today is just a senseless gimmick.
I dont know how you play in America, but when a pianist brings music to his recital here in Europe, it means he probably sh*t his pants and needs sheet to rely on.

Also, when you have that lid (simply the platform which holds music) up, you hear yourself much less....
To me it just seems awesome_o just pulls these random advices out of his ass. It needs a big authority in order to make people listen to such an obscure idea. This enraged me alot.

Same with the Chopin etudes - his only advice seems to be practicing without pedal. Yet in his own recordings he plays them under tempo and gives me the feeling he was desperate about picking up all the notes and wanted a clean recording, not really convincing me of his pianistic mastery - Not that i am myself a genial pianist, but i am not advising poor students some random sh*t

[awesom_o]

Many people lose focus, on the music, by playing from score.

Many people lose focus, on the music, by playing from memory!  

[awesom_o]

I dont know how you play in America, but when a pianist brings music to his recital here in Europe, it means he probably sh*t his pants and needs sheet to rely on.

What an ignorant comment! I've seen some very big European pianists play concerts with the score and receive standing ovations!  

Would you say what you said to Richter? 

[pianoman53]

You can think what you want of his chopin etudes. Though, they certainly didn't get that way (good or bad) simply by putting the score on the piano.

[blazekenny]

What an ignorant comment! I've seen some very big European pianists play concerts with the score and receive standing ovations!  

Would you say what you said to Richter?  

Richter played with music when he started to lose his perfect pitch and you know that..
And if the god like richter does that, doesnt mean that some obscure canadian pianist should copy this. Would you alter the notes in a piece just because Horowitz did so ?

[awesom_o]

I think what is important is to play your very best, whether or not you use the score! 

On the subject of altering notes in a piece.... it really depends upon the piece... I've never altered anything specifically BECAUSE Horowitz altered it, but I've certainly altered things for other, better reasons! 

[pianoman53]

Children, take your pissing contest elsewhere, ye?

[awesom_o]

Children, take your pissing contest elsewhere, ye?

Tell that to blazekenny, not me! I have no urine to spare for this contest.
I'm not the one who came barging into the thread with nothing to say to the original poster! 

[quantum]

I think around 3 hours. I started a new take whenever I felt unhappy with something I just did. Also, I took quite a lot of breaks.

Thanks for your feedback. This is pretty much my normal interpretation of the piece, even though it can sound quite different every time. I like to pay as much detail to what Bach wrote in this piece as possible, so that might have made it sound a bit too careful.
Don't have the foggiest idea of what the first take sounded like, it wasn't anything that I was satisfied with for starters!

4.5 minute piece x 60 takes = 270 minutes recording time (if you recorded the entire piece in each take).  That is not including any time set aside for post production (I consider file naming, transferring files to computer, file organization, and backup as post production activities).  Far more work then the 180 minute session you set aside would allow.

I find there is a threshold of diminishing returns when it comes to multiple takes.  When one reaches that threshold progress slows to a crawl.  At such point one is wise to take a break.  The break could be several minutes, several hours, or even several days.  If you are pressed for time and need to record a lot of music, switch to recording a different piece instead of hacking unproductively at a single piece.

IMO 60 takes in 3 hours is far too many for that time span.  You need to take longer breaks.  You also need to listen back to your previous takes, especially the ones you deem undesirable.  There is a lot one can learn in a short time frame by simply listening as opposed to making take after take after take without developing an awareness of what one is doing.  

[visitor]

what's the deal with so many takes? i don't get it. it's just a snapshot in time. I mean i understand if you get distracted and crash and burn 1x or something. But honestly I have found that if you need to take more than 2 or 3 takes, then just close up shop and try it another day, i.e. it's just not a good day to record (different factors into this) or you are genuinely not ready to record/perform it. i mean i have found that even recordings where i am very aware of a error or two i don't like, if i leave it alone and come back to the recording in the future (i.e months later), the mistake doesn't bother me as much and I like more aspects of the recording than i did at the time (assuming i was actually ready to perform it).

[forte88]

In Bach's day, memorizing the written-out scores of other musicians was unheard of! The only time you would perform without the score was when you were playing your own compositions in front of other people or improvising!

In Bach's day musicians would improvise a fugue as well....My theory is inflation's to blame. Like the monetary equivalent the individual value goes down when inflated. In Bach's day there were maybe a billion people on the planet at the moment that figure is ~7,2 billion. So one person today could never be as genius as Bach or Mozart and even in the unlikely case there was one that had 1/7 th of the talent you'd still need to find 6 other individuals with the same 'genius' and have the work together as one.

So please don't even try and compare with Bach's day even a mediocre composer from that time would be a genius today.

Anyway, not that I'm an expert but IMO to really get a feel for the music you have to close your eyes when playing and this obviously works better when you dont have to sightread

[throwawaynotreally]

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[throwawaynotreally]

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[throwawaynotreally]

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[throwawaynotreally]

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[pianoman53]

Sometimes, especially since you can be completely anonymous here, is to do no more than 5 takes, and then just tell that you upload the best one. To record something for hours will never be constructive. You could learn so much more from recording it once, and then listen to it (as someone already pointed out). Then you either notice that the mistake you heard actually wasn't as big as you though, or you do a retake. Or you could even just wait a few days, and then listen again, when you've "forgot" how if felt to play it.

The thing is, if it's not goof after 3 times, it probably wont get that much better, and you'll probably keep cutting for even smaller things, until you tense up and fail to give something that's more important than details that no-one will hear.

[awesom_o]

The comment about my piano: do you mean I should play quieter, or it's the instrument's problem? I'm still experimenting with different camera/soundboard placements. It sounds quite warm in person, and a lot colder in the video.

Thanks very much for your comment, I've just finished my third year at secondary school, which is something like 9th/10th grade over in the US.

So like I said, your performance is quite admirable for where you're at in life right now!
I think there were bits you could have played with a lighter touch, but overall it sounded like the piano was making it difficult to control quieter passage work.
It probably needs to be voiced.

Have you started on the 3rd movement yet? It's the REAL killer. The first is a piece of cake compared to it!

[throwawaynotreally]

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[throwawaynotreally]

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[awesom_o]

Sorry to be sounding like such a noob but what do you mean by voicing a piano, and what does it do? It's the first time I've encountered such a term.

There are different voicing procedures according to the type of hammer and the condition that it is in. Voicing changes the tone, or voice, of the piano. As pianos get older and more used, the hammers get harder, and their tonal spectrum decreases. Eventually, old hammers need to be replaced. However, having a good voicing done regularly drastically extends the working life of a set of hammers.

[throwawaynotreally]

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[awesom_o]

Honestly, it's impossible to diagnose that simply from watching a video. Next time you get your piano tuned, ask your technician what he thinks. How old was the piano when you got it?

The sound quality of your video camera isn't that good (they almost never are). It's always easy to spend money on a home piano, the question is whether or not it is worth it.  It's not usually practical or possible to maintain concert-quality sound and touch in your living room.

[throwawaynotreally]

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[awesom_o]

Piano was brand new.
The piano sounds quite different in person than on camera.

The problem is definitely your camera then, rather than your piano.
Home recording is tough. 'Good microphones' mean different things to different people, and professional-quality stuff costs thousands rather than hundreds.

For under $200 I recommend the Zoom Q3. It's a video camera, which isn't exactly HD, but it has pretty decent quality sound. 

[derschoenebahnhof]

The problem is definitely your camera then, rather than your piano.
Home recording is tough. 'Good microphones' mean different things to different people, and professional-quality stuff costs thousands rather than hundreds.

For under $200 I recommend the Zoom Q3. It's a video camera, which isn't exactly HD, but it has pretty decent quality sound. 

The Zoom H2N (audio recorder) works pretty well too (about $150). With a video camera you have to make sure automatic gain control is off, if the camera has the option. Otherwise, with AGC on, the camera will flatten the dynamics.

[derschoenebahnhof]

The Zoom H2N (audio recorder) works pretty well too (about $150). With a video camera you have to make sure automatic gain control is off, if the camera has the option. Otherwise, with AGC on, the camera will flatten the dynamics.

Looks like Q3 = H4n microphone + camera. Neat. I don't know how I didn't hear about this one before. But now I already have the H2n :-p

[awesom_o]

I also have the H2, but I prefer the Q3.

[outin]

EDIT: This was not the thread I thought I was posting to, moved to
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=55631.msg600819#new

[throwawaynotreally]

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