# Practising Noisy Pieces



## Polednice

_This can apply to all instruments, but there's no 'all' sub-forum_. 

This is likely to be an affliction of young folks like myself who still live with parents, but are any of you pestered by others when you need to practise an _inherently_ noisy piece?

For my trinity diploma, I've chosen to learn a bit of Rzewski - it's the first from the four North American Ballads, but this is the fourth and most famous, the 'Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues' (which I know thanks to member Arugs!  ):






Of course, when you have something loud and dissonant to play, you can try to practise quietly, but my Mum pestered and pestered me to stop after just 15 minutes because she thought it sounded horrible and didn't want me to do it! She always says it's because she's thinking of the neighbours... Such a feeble excuse. It's blatant artistic censorship!


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## Meaghan

I was working on Prokofiev's March from _The Love for Three Oranges_ (in piano transcription) over the summer, and most of it isn't _that_ noisy or dissonant, but it drove my parents crazy! There were a lot of complaints in the vein of "Why can't you just play Beethoven all the time?" But the nice thing about it was that it mostly kept them out of the living room, where the piano is. They like to putter around in there while I am practicing, which is very distracting, but Prokofiev usually drove them away.

What bothered them even more was when I was working on mastering the clarinet's highest register several years ago. But that did sound pretty awful.


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## Polednice

Meaghan said:


> "Why can't you just play Beethoven all the time?"


Rzewski is particularly bad, but my parents honestly hate it when I play _anything_! They encouraged me when I was young to pick up the piano, which I'm grateful for, but now every time I sit at the piano, they tut and point at their watches and tell me to use the quiet pedal because they want to watch the TV. Sadly, there's _always_ someone in my family watching TV, so there's no escape.


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## Ukko

Meaghan said:


> [...]
> What bothered them even more was when I was working on mastering the clarinet's highest register several years ago. But that did sound pretty awful.




Yeah, the altissimo register can be downright painful to hear. I suspect it's the last register that a student gets the 'sour' out of - if she does. I am told that many band adaptations of works written with violin parts simply pass the parts to the B flat clarinet unaltered (except for the double-stops I'm guessing). Ouch.


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## Rasa

My parents stfu, because the more I study, the faster it will be over.


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## mmsbls

Yeah, I think I'd tell you to cut that crap out and play just the middle part. Does the beginning require any special technique or just a bit of practice to get the rhythm right? Are you playing specific notes with the right arm?


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## Rasa

I would honestly love to play a piece like this on my exam recital, just to see the jury's face.


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## Polednice

mmsbls said:


> Yeah, I think I'd tell you to cut that crap out and play just the middle part. Does the beginning require any special technique or just a bit of practice to get the rhythm right? Are you playing specific notes with the right arm?


The piece starts off with specific clusters for each hand - all black notes for the right, all white notes for the left. The clusters gradually get larger - one black/three black/octave of blacks, and the same for whites. After the first couple of repetitions, you then have to play (with your right hand) an octave of black notes _plus_ a cluster of between five and thirteen black _and_ white notes in the next octave.

So, essentially, you're playing two octaves with your right arm at the same time, the first octave black notes, the second octave all notes. The black-and-white clusters are all slightly different and quite fast paced too, so you need a precision elbow technique!


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## Klavierspieler

I can't say but that I agree with her (your mother)...


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## Meaghan

Polednice said:


> Rzewski is particularly bad, but my parents honestly hate it when I play _anything_! They encouraged me when I was young to pick up the piano, which I'm grateful for, but now every time I sit at the piano, they tut and point at their watches and tell me to use the quiet pedal because they want to watch the TV. Sadly, there's _always_ someone in my family watching TV, so there's no escape.


My dad watches TV while I play too (in the same room), but he wears headphones because he watches constantly and it irritates my mother. And he watches horror movies with shrieking zombies my mom and brother want to hear even less than they want to hear me play Prokofiev. But, thanks to the headphones, the TV watching is not _as_ disruptive as when they decide to rearrange the furniture (or organize the CD/record cabinet or the bookshelves).



Hilltroll72 said:


> Yeah, the altissimo register can be downright painful to hear. I suspect it's the last register that a student gets the 'sour' out of - if she does. I am told that many band adaptations of works written with violin parts simply pass the parts to the B flat clarinet unaltered (except for the double-stops I'm guessing). Ouch.


I did get the hang of it eventually, but first I went through a period of sounding like the moment before a car accident all the time.

And I've played a wind band transcription of the finale of Mahler 7 in which the first clarinet part was basically the first violin part. It was kind of a mess.


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## tdc

I would not enjoy playing piano in some of your guys places. I don't like people hearing me practice guitar quietly for the most part even if its in the other room. When I can play a piece well I don't care as much if people hear, but when I am first learning I can't stand people listening to me. Nor can I stand performing a piece if I can't do it exceptionally well.


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## Lukecash12

This has been such a problem for me, because I have disliked playing music and discussing it with people who aren't interested in education (you could say) in the same way that I am, that when I am not playing during a recital, only my students and a few other musicians are allowed to hear me play personally. So, monsieur Polednice, your discomfort may not end any time soon, but once you are out on your own you will have the liberty of judging your performances according to whatever standards you and/or your teacher find stringent and lenient enough, as well as practicing whatever you bloody well please if it isn't done past curfew or causing an inordinate disturbance for any neighbors.


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