Inquiry 2: City of Stars & Moonlight Sonata

keirathompson

In my first post I wrote about wanting to practice a song I have been working on, and I keep going back and forth between City of Stars from LaLa Land and Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. My indecision is largely attributed to my closeness in perfecting City of Stars and the easy to digest ‘sections’ throughout Moonlight Sonata. I think what would be best is to practice both, City of Stars more passively and Moonlight Sonata with more intention, this way I can avoid frustration that sometimes comes with learning something new.

My process in learning new pieces involves a heavy focus on the popular part of the song, so in both of these cases I have began the melody and need to start connecting the right hand to the left hand.

CITY OF STARS PRACTICE

I began my practice session with City of Stars, there are a few bars throughout that need work, after about 10minutes of practice here is where I am at.

I am not a very good vocalist, and sometimes having the words and music playing in the background helps me keep the right tempo. I could use a metronome but I don’t have one, and it is more fun to play with recorded song.

When listening back to this video I can definitely tell I am not as confident playing this song compared to my current repertoire, and practicing 10 minutes a day will probably drastically increase my ability to get good at this piece.

MOONLIGHT SONATA PRACTICE

I followed my semi-success with Moonlight Sonata; the first page of this song is getting there. The song is a classical piece and is very long and slow. I only show some of the first page in this clip because it was the part I was working on the most, and the first two lines are very repetitive.

As you can hear in my playing, I am playing both hands together but very, very slowly, and there are definitely a few wrong notes spread out throughout my left hand especially. This song is especially tricky because there are 3 voices, my left hand plays chords, the bottom half of my right hand plays the moving line, and the top two fingers of my right hand play the ‘melody’, so there is a lot of notes going on that have to be put together.

It is a slow process but I hope that practicing 10 minutes/day will start to bring improvement.

Here are the links to these songs on YouTube in case you wanted to listen to the way they are supposed to sound!