Should one learn easy arrangements?

[gregory99]

Hello everyone

I am 30 years old and have been playing piano since about age 8 or 10 I think.  But VERY intermitently.  This puts me in a bit of a weird place.  With so much playing time and music reading under my belt I can pretty much play anything...but poorly and with alot of time.  Which brings me to my question.  My particular interest is in Beethoven.  I am good enough at reading music and patient enough that I could THEORETICALLY sit down with the actual scores and practice learning a sonata.  But it would be VERY slow going.  On the other hand, I have simplified scores that I could practice and learn an a VERSION of the piece in a few days.  However, as many of you know, these aren't just simplified versions but actually different arrangements for easy or intermediate piano.  So you don't really "learn" anything beneficial in regards to the actual score...you are learning a DIFFERENT score that sort of sounds a little like the original.

Example...take the famous Moonlight Sonata.  I could learn a easy/intermediate arrangement.  But since it is a totally different score/arrangement it doesn't really help me to understand and learn the original true score.

It is fun to learn the "easy" versions because in a few days you have a complete piece that you can play and enjoy.  But I am left with an uneasy feeling that I am in fact wasting my time. 

So I guess the question is after a lot of rambling..for an intermediate player that can read music and play pretty much anything with enough practice time...is it better to hammer away ever so slowly at the exceedingly complicated original scores of Beethoven or work through those easy/intermediate Beethoven arrangements?

The end goal is to play the originals.

Thoughts?

Thanks for your input...I hope this made sense lol!

[cwjalex]

i was prepared to say that you should just play whatever you want until i read one of your last lines of "my goal is to play the originals".  i'm a fairly new piano player myself so i sympathize with the lure of being able to play a piece after a few days.  i can pretty much play anything but it takes me a ridiculous amount of time for difficult material.  to keep satisfied i practice things of drastically differing difficulty: the hard stuff that takes me weeks to months to learn and the easy stuff that i can master in a few days.  with your goal in mind i would stay away from easy arrangements for many of the reasons you mentioned.  also, i imagine you would have less motivation to learn the originals if you already know an easy version.

just out of curiosity what does a simplified version of the 3rd movement of moonlight sound like?  how can you make it easy without completely destroying the piece?  it's a piece i have been working on since i started the piano and is a real struggle for me physically.

[gregory99]

Hi

Ok...you are EXACTLY where I am at and you said it much simpler...hopefully one of the pro's has some advice for us.  I can sit and practice for an hour on a few bars of an original Beethoven score.  Then I will whip out a easy/intermediate book and play re-arranged versions that are super simple.  So...it is weird.  I don't think this is a good way to practice...but who knows...maybe it is?  I honestly don't know. 

As to your question...some simplified arrangements sound good in their own right.  But when you play them side by side with the same passage from the original you see that they are in fact different "songs" that just sort of sound alike.  Hence my dissatisfaction with learning them.  Although like I said, some of the composers that rearranged them are talented in their own right.  But for folks who want to play the "real" piece of music...it is no substitute.

So what are tips/practice techniques/advice for folks like myself who are sort of stuck between slogging away at pieces that are obviously too difficult for them and also dissatisfied with whipping through easy arrangements?

[cwjalex]

Hi
  I can sit and practice for an hour on a few bars of an original Beethoven score.  Then I will whip out a easy/intermediate book and play re-arranged versions that are super simple. 

when i said i play easy stuff as well i don't play re-arranged simpler versions.  i play completely different pieces that are easier.  the whole "practice an hour on a few bars" for me describes the first 6 months of piano playing and really helped me improve.  if i didn't have easier pieces to play as well i would have gone insane though.  instead of the re-arranged versions why not choose completely different pieces to learn in conjunction with the difficult repertoire?

[anamnesis]

Hello everyone

I am 30 years old and have been playing piano since about age 8 or 10 I think.  But VERY intermitently.  This puts me in a bit of a weird place.  With so much playing time and music reading under my belt I can pretty much play anything...but poorly and with alot of time.  Which brings me to my question.  My particular interest is in Beethoven.  I am good enough at reading music and patient enough that I could THEORETICALLY sit down with the actual scores and practice learning a sonata.  But it would be VERY slow going.  On the other hand, I have simplified scores that I could practice and learn an a VERSION of the piece in a few days.  However, as many of you know, these aren't just simplified versions but actually different arrangements for easy or intermediate piano.  So you don't really "learn" anything beneficial in regards to the actual score...you are learning a DIFFERENT score that sort of sounds a little like the original.

Example...take the famous Moonlight Sonata.  I could learn a easy/intermediate arrangement.  But since it is a totally different score/arrangement it doesn't really help me to understand and learn the original true score.

It is fun to learn the "easy" versions because in a few days you have a complete piece that you can play and enjoy.  But I am left with an uneasy feeling that I am in fact wasting my time.  

So I guess the question is after a lot of rambling..for an intermediate player that can read music and play pretty much anything with enough practice time...is it better to hammer away ever so slowly at the exceedingly complicated original scores of Beethoven or work through those easy/intermediate Beethoven arrangements?

The end goal is to play the originals.

Thoughts?

Thanks for your input...I hope this made sense lol!

There's actually a simple solution.

Outline.

Every piece has a basic skeleton, the essence of the piece so to speak.  There's nothing wrong with simplicity.  Like all other conceptual processes, humans understand musical complexity as elaborations of simpler underlying musical ideas (see Schenkerian theory or even motif analysis).

If you don't understand the simpler concepts, you will never be able to beautifully express the elaborations. You cannot see the forest for the trees.

t=185

Examples:

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=9135.msg92643#msg92643 https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,7246.msg72307.html#msg72307

It's a bit of an art form in itself, and the reality is that there is wrong way to do it, although greater experience, a keen ear and sense of rhythm, and even theoretical knowledge will produce greater results.

Of course, not doing it at all, will never let you obtain that experience. Thus a "failed attempt" (which is not really a failure) puts you in a better position than letting perfectionism get in the way.  

This technique trains your ear to hear the longer musical line, and synchronize your larger more rhythmic motions to it.  This technique is NOT supposed to be visually oriented, although it does help the sight-reading process as you learn to see the basic skeleton of pieces. Sound should guide your movement, not your sight.  

These larger motions are important because the smaller motions are tucked in or incorporated into these larger motions.  This is the connection between your physical movement and the elaboration of complex musical ideas.  These smaller motions elaborate and are incorporated BUT DO NOT replace the larger motions.  If you do not feel these larger motions when you are incorporating the smaller, you are not doing it right.  Obvious this is difficult and will not happen in the beginning, but that is the end goal that you are always striving and refining toward. 

[bronnestam]

I have also found that outlining pieces, "skeleton playing", speeds up learning significantly. This, and the advantage of being able to play a piece before you know it, so to speak, are the upsides of skeleton playing. You also learn to handle one difficulty at a time, which is beneficial in many ways.

The downside can be avoided, but it is a pitfall nevertheless: don't change the fingering. When you make the outline, stick to the original fingering even though it might seem unnecessary. You just skip some notes, but you still make a foundation for adding them later on without changing your fingering.

 
 

[timothy42b]

I do not claim any expertise on this one, this is just an amateur opinion.

But, I hear a lot of nonfluent pianists.  I mean that they play difficult material, or easy material, but you can hear struggle, you can hear hesitation, you can hear missed notes, you can hear stuttering.

When I say a lot, I probably mean 99% of students, 100% of adult amateurs, and maybe 50-60% of "pianists," whatever that means. 

It seems to me it would be worthwhile playing simplifed pieces very very well, concentrating on fluency.  If you play fluently, 96% of your listeners won't notice it's not the real arrangement. 

[anamnesis]

I have also found that outlining pieces, "skeleton playing", speeds up learning significantly. This, and the advantage of being able to play a piece before you know it, so to speak, are the upsides of skeleton playing. You also learn to handle one difficulty at a time, which is beneficial in many ways.

The downside can be avoided, but it is a pitfall nevertheless: don't change the fingering. When you make the outline, stick to the original fingering even though it might seem unnecessary. You just skip some notes, but you still make a foundation for adding them later on without changing your fingering.

That is the main disadvantage, which is why it is far easier to do with editors or composers you can trust, such as Chopin and Godowsky.  

Also, if you are doing outlining right, many times it will tell you exactly what fingerings are needed, because it's the only one that works at top speed and "falls into place" so to speak.  

And even though it is a pitfall, I've also found on the occasions that I wanted to change a fingering, it is far easier to do because I haven't been drilling the details in yet, which forces muscle memory at the level of the hands.  Outlining you are working from the center (torso/shoulder girdle) to the periphery (fingers), and the main muscle memory you are working on involve those muscles rather than the fingers. It's only as you add the layers closer to the complete piece, that fingerings will become harder to change, but at that point you should have already figured out which ones work best.  

Hence, there are several aspects of it that can counter the fingering problem, but it still takes some level of experience to figure this out.

This technique is incredibly powerful, but under utilized for various reasons. So it's a bit difficult to come up with "best practices" from people's experience, since the pianists regularly utilizing it are so few. Instead we get the same old rehashed articles on slow practice and metronome use.  

[anamnesis]

I do not claim any expertise on this one, this is just an amateur opinion.

But, I hear a lot of nonfluent pianists.  I mean that they play difficult material, or easy material, but you can hear struggle, you can hear hesitation, you can hear missed notes, you can hear stuttering.

When I say a lot, I probably mean 99% of students, 100% of adult amateurs, and maybe 50-60% of "pianists," whatever that means. 

It seems to me it would be worthwhile playing simplifed pieces very very well, concentrating on fluency.  If you play fluently, 96% of your listeners won't notice it's not the real arrangement. 

The point of outlining is to eliminate that stuttering because you keep the rhythm of the piece going.

Learning easier pieces is helpful in the sense that it helps you learn the basic structure of music, so that you can understand the more complex elaborations later.  So to a certain extent, you can only outline pieces to the level of your musical experience. 

[hammeroffelt]

I have a strong aversion to playing arrangements, for a variety of reasons, some of which you have elucidated. I make an exception for Christmas music (I may never be able to play Tchaikovsky as written). There is such a wide variety of music that is more suitable to less experienced players that it makes more sense to me to start that way. Sure, I fiddle about with the third movement of The Moonlight Sonata and Brahms' Hungarian Dances, but they are WAY beyond my ability to play in any coherent way, and my personal belief is that you have to work your way up to pieces of that difficulty in order to develop your piano technique. Trying to run before you can even walk well is a guaranteed way to not only fall on your face, but to take a much longer time gaining any proficiency at walking.

To address your other point regarding learning arrangements: I think it's more a matter of personal preference. If your arrangement is in the same key, you are learning to play with the same notes, just fewer of them, and in the same time signature. For that reason, I never buy an arrangement of any sort in a different key than which it was written. I would think that given enough time, it becomes relatively easier to fill in the missing parts.

[chopinlover01]

Skeleton playing, or outline practice as I used to call it, is a good thing. Playing easier arrangements thats completely different than the score drives me bonkers.
If you want to play Beethoven, play his sonatinas first. Then perhaps an easier sonata, maybe the G major op 14/2? (if that's one of the easier ones. My Beethovian knowledge is rather primative)

[slane]

My goal is also to play the originals. My strategy is to piece them together movement by movement.
As chopin lover says, start with the sonatinas anh 5. There are two and they are cute.
Then hmmm...
op49#2 second movement and op49#1 first movement.
scherzo and trio op2 #2 which is fun
allegretto from op14#1 which I looovee... lots of drama
andante from op14#2 which is also fun, but maybe on the hard side.
rondo WoO48 .. which he wrote when he was 13 and is a bit ... but hey! its still beethoven.
That's year one. Of course you are also learning lots of other people's work too.

Second year ...
op49#2 first mov. Now you can play a complete sonata! 31 to go!
OP13 adagio ... everyone looves the pathetique!
Op22 Minuet (very prett)
Op7 3rd movement, very dramatic
Op26 scherzo and trio
op49#1 2nd mov. That's another sonata completed. 30 to go!
Op79 2nd mov.


etc. etc.
next year you'll learn the 3rd mov. of the pathetique. Almost got the whole thing then!
The first mov. of the moonlight.
adagio from op 22 ... now you know 2 movements.
allegro from op2 #1 ..another sonata with 2 movements down!

and on and on ... most sonatas have 4 movements, 4*32=128, 6 movements / year.
21 years to go.

You might want to look at pianosyllabus.com to get an idea of the order in which to learn the movements. I'm referring to the AMEB syllabus. The NZMEB syllabus is similar.

Oh and spotify is great for listening to different renditions of the sonatas.

[j_menz]

I have a strong aversion to playing arrangements, for a variety of reasons, some of which you have elucidated. I make an exception for Christmas music (I may never be able to play Tchaikovsky as written).

I hate to shatter your illusions, but "Tchaikovsky as written" in this context is an arrangement. Unless you are an orchestra.

[liszt1022]

Didn't Tchaikovsky prepare the solo version though? It's an arrangement, but it's also original Tchaikovsky.

[Bob]

Yes, but I wouldn't "engrain" it too much unless it's really that good.  Awareness is good.  Engraining something that's underpar or different than the real original (if it's got a piano original) version might not help later.

[slane]

And watch Jonathan Biss's lectures on the sonatas
https://www.coursera.org/learn/beethoven-piano-sonatas
really worthwhile.

[j_menz]

Didn't Tchaikovsky prepare the solo version though? It's an arrangement, but it's also original Tchaikovsky.

It's actually Tchaikovsky's revision of Sergei Taneyev's transcription of Tchaikovsky's original.

[anamnesis]

It's actually Tchaikovsky's revision of Sergei Taneyev's transcription of Tchaikovsky's original.

Say that ten times fast.

[hammeroffelt]

I hate to shatter your illusions, but "Tchaikovsky as written" in this context is an arrangement. Unless you are an orchestra.

Well, that's very special. But other than massaging your own breast over your superior knowledge of music history, how does that further the conversation?

[chopinlover01]

Well, that's very special. But other than massaging your own breast over your superior knowledge of music history, how does that further the conversation?

He furthered the conversation by clearing up an example of what is and isn't an arrangement.
Also, he didn't show off his knowledge of music history until his next post, he simply stated a fact. You quoted the wrong post

[j_menz]

Well, that's very special. But other than massaging your own breast over your superior knowledge of music history, how does that further the conversation?

By pointing out that there's a difference between an arrangement and a transcription, though sometimes there's a blurry line.

And, when you are a better pianist, you will find that there are some excellent concert arrangements of pieces that are very much worth playing.