Blog 14: Independent Component 1

LITERAL 

(a) I, Alyssa Casey, affirm that I have completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

(b) My mentor Stacey Ulmer has helped me complete my independent component. Other books that have helped are The Library of Piano Classics 2 published by Hal Leonard, which includes my Beethoven piece and other pieces I have had to learn to build up my technique.


(c) Independent Component Log (Can't seem to put it up on the blog itself. Link is here.)

(d) I completed a Beethoven piece, specifically Sonata Pathetique, Mvt. 1, of which took a significant amount of practice to fully master.

INTERPRETIVE

The significant parts of my component were mostly me practicing nearly every day for at least two hours, mostly with breaking up the piece by playing sections at a time until I memorized it fully, slowly at first, then gradually picking up speed.

A part in the piece that has me cross my right hand over to play low notes and mordents, which are trill like notes.

This Beethoven piece requires a lot of fast notes, as depicted above.

Proper playing requires a pianist to sit forward, rather than sit back and try to reach out to the keyboard. The way a pianist sits can affect how they play.

A page from Sonata Pathetique.

Music is my life, or at least takes up a lot of it, if not my free time. Then again, it is more than just a hobby for me.

The Steinway Metronome app I have been using for the entirety of my senior project.

Hanon (yellow book) next to my book with Beethoven and other composers.

APPLIED

 The component helped me understand the foundation of my topic better because it made me take a look at everything that goes into learning classical music, the method of learning it by breaking up measures to memorize, the exercises in Hanon that help build precision, and the constant rhythmic changes that are often heard from Jazz and other forms of music. It also made me, in a sense, really understand just how important time management really is, especially when it comes to classical music. You just simply cannot rush any piece of music whenever it comes to classical music.