An Approach to Practice
Playing music is like a lot of other things, it is really important to be in the right place at the right time. For playing music that means pressing the right finger at the right time in the right place.
So notes become either a clump of buttons (a handful of buttons) or a sequence of buttons (fingers walking and jumping). Sometimes a piece of music seems difficult at first, but after playing through it a few times, you discover that the notes fall into a series of hand positions and finger sequences.
I found that "Horo Staccato" is such a piece.
The Music
The story behind the piece
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hora_staccato
The music (it seems intimidating)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hora_staccato
The Performance
(it seems even more intimidating)
On violin (Jascha Heifetz) – the gold standardOn violin and B-griff CBA – fast
On B-griff CBA
On C-griff CBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qocCd726WQc
On piano accordion – relative hand torture compared to CBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fNSWV_wfw
On piano accordion – relative hand torture compared to CBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fNSWV_wfw
The Practice
Another
life lesson that applies to music performance is preparation is everything.
For
music performance that means having the fingers in place just before they
need to play the notes.
So
performance is a continuous cycle of position fingers, play, transition to next
finger placement, position fingers, and
on and on. So playing is more than just playing, it is position and transition.
So
to achieve accurate playing, perform accurate practice. Correct practice means correct performance. Preparation
is everything. So
let us break down Horo Staccato into finger clumps and finger sequences.
