My first 30 minutes on a new piece!

Hey guys! Today I’m doing an unedited, very raw video showing you the process of me practising a new piece! – (disclaimer: sorry the video cut out at the end) Hope you enjoy!

I’m very excited about this, the piece is so beautiful! It’s called Maureen’s Waltz, by Catriona McKay.

During the quarantine time Catriona has been writing out some of her arrangements – making one’s she’s never done before available! I just love her music, so that’s been very exciting. I ordered three of them, one I’m already well-along the way with, and this one I’ve started with. I’m also excited because Catriona is about to release a new album (available for pre-order here).

You can listen to snippets of Catriona’s album here

All I’ve done so far with this piece is listen to a recording (I needed to decide which pieces of hers to buy) a few times, and I got the first page as a sample to work with before deciding. I think I played like four notes and thought WAIT! I HAVE TO SHOW THIS ON
CAMERA

So this is really the process of me practicing a brand new piece. A little disclaimer, I am very good at sight-reading, so I don’t want you to compare yourself to me. I am also a very quick learner…so this process is going to be a different pace for everybody. But just because my learning and sight-reading is quite quick, that doesn’t mean I don’t need to practice thoroughly. I thought it would be interesting for you all to see my own process of learning fingering, getting a feel for the piece, and starting to put it all together.

If you’d like to follow along, you can:

Watch my video on fingering rules here

We’ll see how much I’ll manage to do in 30 mins. Hopefully it will be interesting for you to watch. Let’s see how it goes!

Responses

Venessa Hart 7 May, 2021

What a pleasure watching you learn this lovely song. Great choice of songs for “the first 30 minutes of a song” I will never get tired of this Secret Love Song!

Valerie Kolb 21 May, 2021

Thanks so much for this! It is interesting to me to see a fellow harpist attack a new piece with enthusiasm. I am not near your level of accomplishment, but realize the journey is different for everyone… ( I am not a good sight reader! Working on it!)