#tbh why else did i slave away on the piano for almsot a decade if not to play i need u right

[nako-doodles]

u seemed to have played some really really really really difficult piano pieces teach us ur ways senpai ✨❤️💍

wow anonie this is so sweet of you I actually blushed so hard I’m surprised you didn’t see me from across the galaxy kwndidndkendhdj anyways this is a long answer so it’s below the cut.

in regards to difficulty, I really do believe that ‘difficulty’ is in the eye (or I guess hands?) of the player. for me, when I was testing for my RCM level 10s back in high school, I picked up my romantic piece selection (Chopin’s polonaise in g minor) and my substitution piece for contemporary/late 20th century (Chopin’s polonaise in a flat major) within a month each, but my selection for Baroque (Bach’s prelude and fugue in f minor) (read: picked under much protest, whining, and duress before flipping through Bach’s well-tempered clavier and randomly flipping to a page) took me almost 4 months. Some people could argue that WTC is easier than the two Polonaises, but my brain just doesn’t mesh well with musical structures and voices of the baroque period. Chopin and other romantic pieces are a lot easier for me to understand, break down, and interpret in terms of melodies, harmonies, chord progressions, rhythms etc etc…than whatever hellhole Bach and Handel took their music from

even the piano professors don’t necessarily agree with the plethora of different ways to determine the ‘difficulty’ of a piece since there’s so much at play here (haha get it). There’s ofc the usual: time signatures, tempo, length, number of cadenzas and large jumps and chords etc etc, but there’s also the music structure, technique, rhythmic and composition complexity etc etc an example I can give off my head is Liebestraum no. 3 by Liszt is a level 9 (of 10) piece under RCM when I was testing (they bumped it up to the associate diploma in 2015), but is only a level 6/7 (of 9) under the Henle system (which is what my old piano teachers taught me out of). Music is in and of itself is a subjective thing, and it’s hard to really pinpoint the difficulty of a piece, which is how, when my mom asked my piano teacher my progress when I was preparing for my level 8 exams in middle school, my piano teacher replied that I had a near level 10 understanding in romantic pieces, but a level ‘6ish….if I’m being generous’ in baroque.

anyways what I’m trying to get at is dont be too caught up on the ‘difficulty’ of a piece, practice lots, loot your piano teacher’s giant library of music, keep your mind open, and have your goals very clear to yourself. You can certainly ‘learn’ to play a ‘difficult’ piece like mendelsohn’s song without words without any understanding of melodies or musical composition or anything, and still claim to know how to play difficult pieces. However, if you want learn how to play the piano, I suggest taking it slowly (don’t do what I did and straight up skipped 4 levels the first year you started and then you hit a road block and stop enjoying playing until you reach the most showcase-y pieces) and really learn how these pieces are constructed and hammer home your technique (this is a lesson I learned with my blood don’t be a fool like me). If you want to learn to play jazz, then you ~really~ need to learn your music theory and ear training.

anyways tldr; fuck Bach (but don’t let me prejudice cloud your ability to like his pieces — he’s a renowned composer for a reason, I just personly hate playing his work), ‘difficult piano pieces’ are really just subjective, and just because I can play a bunch of notes really quickly doesn’t mean I’m a good piano player. (*stares at all the 5 yos playing flight of the bumblebee way past the tempo*)

on a separate subject: It is a lot of fun running your hands up and down the piano really quickly or banging out really robust chords from the piano, highly recommend!! My mom once said I had a diabolical grin on when I was first mastered to bang out the last passage of Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto no. 2 mvt. 1 (OT: it’s the same last phrase from my fave Asada Mao step sequence from her 13/14 FS though I learned it years before that skate), and the final cadenzas to chopin’s ballade in g minor. Looking like youre summoning the demon while banging out pretty music is like the best feeling ever. I mean I can never get to Lang Lang’s level of ‘demon possession’ but grinning maniacally is the way to go. You are playing and controlling the instrument of a thousand voices.

(PSA: please don’t actually bang on the piano pls treat it with the respect that it deserves it’s ur friend not ur enemy. banging really hard on the keys doesnt necessarily give you a large sound an can really damage the keys and the structure of the piano)