Good and Bad

Ever been in a situation where you fix one aspect of something and other one goes wrong, and when you fix the other one then another one goes wrong? That’s exactly what’s happening with me. For the initial three months my focus was on playing simple pieces accurately. So timing was critical. Counting was necessary. And tempo had to be good. Now I have started to move into the territory of slightly difficult pieces for my level. And as soon as I resolved some of the problems I was having with these pieces, such as many hand movements, I am now having problems with timing.

The piece Trumpet Tune is the perfect example of this. I have learnt the piece. It barely took three days for that. My expectation was, that once I have figured out the notes, am able to switch hand positions, and have worked on some tricky aspects of the piece, such as legato in RH and staccato in LH, I will be able to play the piece well. But while I am able to do all of these things, I am not able to play in time. One of the reasons is that I am not able to count. I think with hand movements and all, my focus is always towards ensuring hitting the right notes, and hence while I start counting in the beginning of the piece, I automatically stop midway.

Hence this is how the version 1 of the recording of Trumpet Tune has come out.

It sounds decent to me if I listen it in isolation. But as soon as I compare it with some else’s performance, I realise how much better it can be played. Listen to this one.

Again, I will try to improve this piece. I have actually not started to correct my timing on the previous piece Inside Out yet. Maybe I will learn one more piece and then work on the improvements for all of them. Let’s see what’s the next piece going to be like.