![]() ![]() Solace is a very difficult piece, even on piano. (I never should have let all that get away, but sadly I can no longer play piano.)Īnyway, that is just background for what I'm about to say. ![]() I could sit and play Scott Joplin rags for a couple of hours from memory. I'm not a mandolin player, but I played piano when I was younger, and for a few years from high school through college and beyond, I studied and learned many Scott Joplin tunes. And it is certainly faster than I can play it clean right now. It is faster, I think, than it should be performed. Oh, and yes, and I know I am playing it too fast in the video. Is it worth putting the Pinky work there? I think I should be alternating between Index/Pinky and Middle/Ring in those measures, but I find it more natural to play it by going between Index/Ring and Middle/Ring. Particularly the 2nd and 4th measures of the second line of the first TAB page. Also, any advice on alternate fingerings would be very welcome. I just like to be prepared as much as possible. Any spot that jump out to any of you that I out to re-asses? I imagine this will become a bit more clear once I actually get together with a bass player to work on the song. Related question, since the planned second instrument for this arrangement is to be a bass, should I be looking to cover some of the chords that are happening in the left hand part, that the bass will not be able to play? I think there are a few places where I am already playing a phrase that would be played by the left hand. In listening back to recordings, I am starting to wonder if I should simplify a few of the parts, to just double stops. My goal was to play as much of the right hand of the piano part as possible, there are a few notes here and there that I just found to be impossible to play, but I have most of the right hand part covered in the arrangement. First, I am wondering if I have gone overboard on the 3 and 4 note chords in the arrangement. I am looking for advice on the arrangement and fingerings in a few places. I downloaded the sheet music from IMSLP, and tabbed out an arrangement for the mandolin.Īnd here is where I am in learning to play the song: We haven't started practicing together yet because I am still learning my part. I am planning on working this up with an upright bass player who will cover the left hand, or the important parts of the left hand at least. I am playing, or trying to play, the full right hand of the piano for the mandolin part. His version was more of a single note melody, with double stops here and there, arrangement. It looks like someone else posted a thread on this song a few years ago. I am including the TAB as well as the link to the original sheet music below, in case anyone get the bug to learn it. I stumbled across this version on YouTube and just had to learn it. But I also like it because of the deepening sense of melancholy that builds up as each of the four distinct sections are gradually unveiled.I have been working up Solace (A Mexican Serenade) by Scott Joplin. That may be why I like this piece, because the cross-rhythms appear more natural than the somewhat four-square, march-like rhythms that lie behind the syncopations of most rags. Habanero is the quaver rhythm 123 123 12 played against a pulse of four beats in the bar. The “Mexican serenade” Solace, the only piece Joplin wrote in tango, or more specifically “habanero” rhythm, remains my favorite example. ![]() It needed a performer such as Rifkin to come along to bring out the lyrical nature of the music. Did the Scott Joplin revival brought about by the classical pianist Joshua Rifkin in 1970 (intensified shortly afterwards by the use of Joplin’s music in the film The Sting) do the same thing for ragtime? I don’t think so – Joplin deliberately pushed ragtime forms towards classical piano style, to the extent that it’s been suggested that he did for rag what Chopin did for the mazurka (a folk-derived dance from Poland). That got me wondering when I chose this next piece for the blog. (It’s a more complex argument than that – I recommend the book highly). Classical music’s appropriation of folk in the early years of the 20th century, while it inspired some great music, is nevertheless criticized for turning “authentic” folk songs into something safe and polite, more suitable for the drawing room and concert hall. I’m currently reading and enjoying the book Electric Eden – Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young, and in it Young highlights various waves of folk music revival.
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