Charles, I can't believe how much you focus on exactly what my classical teacher focused on when I was taking back in thee 70's! The focus was on interpretation, emotion & feeling.
I found this at 3 am. I printed the music, can I go back to sleep? This is EXACTLY the content I’m searching for! Thank you! Biggest takeaway, don’t sweat the small stuff. What a shame he dealt with such angst! But maybe his music would have suffered if he did not. I will be going over to your other link after some 💤💤💤. Thank you!!!
I was pleasantly surprised when you showed the Dover edition as its the book I'm learning from myself, and so relieved when you pointed out the missing tie between the 2nd and 3rd bar. That extra note was really throwing me off and I thought that it couldn't be right.
It's a fantastic and beautiful piece! If you didn't see the link to the rest of the course in the description, you can find here it as well: pianist-academy.thinkific.com/courses/Debussy-Reverie
came in for the tutorial, and stayed for the great interpretation that made me cry 🥲 ... oh God... this song means so much to me. And the fact that the composer was also in a dark place made me like this piece more. I used to be depressed for few months due to my meds' side effects. The first time I heard this song, it resonated so much with me. I memorized this piece at the back of my mind. That was around 2 years ago. Listening to this piece brought me back at those times. I'm also playing this for my grade 8 examination next year which is why I stopped by here ❤❤🩹
Beautiful, thank you so much for taking the time to comment! I'm glad you've gotten through the depression you were dealing with. Best wishes as you prepare this for your exam next year! What else are you working on?
Thank you so much for the advice. Indeed, we should have always two brains to play some pieces from Debussy! I have a question on measure 5. How do you practice it? For other pieces, I am not struggling to do 4 against 3 which may be translated as follows: together, right left, right, etc…). When I am practicing, I am counting of course out loud the tempo and slowly (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and etc…and place the pedal on the 1, as the case may be, otherwise, I won’t be able to respect the tempo…). For Reverie, I am struggling a lot to hold Bb on the left hand 1 and go further and simultaneously to do the triplets on the right hand….Measure 5 is so difficult to have it at the right tempo with both hands! I would be happy to have practical advice to master this measure 5. In advance thank you very much for your further help and assistance.
Hey there! Thanks for the question! I have two ways of teaching 4 against 3. My preferred is: first learn to feel one larger beat for the quarter note triplet. That would mean learning to count the bars as having only two beats that are fairly far apart from each other. When we have a single gap, it’s much easier to fill that gap with 3 identical rhythms (Q triplets) or 4 identical rhythms (8ths). Practice feeling the melody in 2 instead of 4. Allow both hands to play together UNTIL that measure, and then just feel the right hand alone for awhile, letting LH rejoin in the following bar. This method, if it works, usually provides more musical results in the end. The second method: both 3 and 4 are divisible by 12. Write out 12 “beats” on a separate page. Above each number, equally divide the beats into 3. Below each number equally divide the beats into 4. Now you’ll have a graphical representation of EXACTLY how 3 against 4 works. If you count each of the twelve beats slowly, you’ll begin to learn the relationships. Speed up with time and practice until, like above, you feel the movement of all 12 “subdivisions” as just one beat.
@@PianistAcademy1 thank you so much for your helpful response. I will try the second method and see if I will be able to get this triplet in the right tempo. Meanwhile enjoy your musical journey 👍😀
@PianistAcademy the Masterclass looks interesting! Will you explain the piece measure by measure or just pick out a few main topics? One of my main question is the notation in the very first measure with the full note Bb and the following notes in the arpeggio to be played. I saw that several times in other scores also but do not understand it.
Have you checked out all of the chapter titles on the course page? They will give you a very nice overview of the topics covered. I do go into the opening Bb pretty extensively, and how it can also affect our interpretation of the rest of the notes in that figure. That said, my courses are never a "bar by bar" discussion of notes and rhythms. They almost always focus on technique and interpretation, not analysis of notes. You can find analysis in a whole lot of places online for free. You can't always find out information that's "between the notes" if you will.
@@PianistAcademy1 OK, was looking at the Masterclass where you wrote Measure 1-4 Measure 5-........ So i expected this very systematic approach on the other masterclasses as well. thanks so for the special info!
@@back-seat-driver1355 yes, in my classes I will go through every phrase or very nearly every phrase, but as I mentioned, I won’t talk about things like “this is a Bb, this is an eighth note, here is what that rhythm will sound like, etc”. I write my course material to go to the next level beyond that, so for example, what do the first four bars of the piece mean, what do they convey, how can we *better* execute them to show that meaning, rather than just execute them as notes and rhythms. I hope that helps you decide if you’d like to take the course!
I typically don't write in pedal marks because, when taken literally, they often don't translate to truly what we want to do with the pedal or how the fingers aid the pedal or vice versa. In the course I give pedal marks for a handful of measures, but not beyond that.
@@sayonara6301 I show some marks in measures 4 and 5 and talk about how the concept I demonstrate applies to most of the opening, and I show marks from 63 through 66 but they are more in relation to how to play the multiple voices shown with clarity.
this is really Debussy playing? 1890 ? Yes, i know, Emil Berliner invented the recording technique on a specialmaterial to scratch the sounds into that - that was around 1889 ! So ? anybody knows more?
Yes it truly is Debussy. Around November 1, 1913, Debussy recorded a number of his works onto the then new Piano Roll. The Piano Roll used paper to reproduce sounds on the same or another acoustic piano. The date that piano roll was recorded into audio would obviously be later and I'm not sure of that in particular, but you can look up the album "Claude Debussy Plays His Finest Works" and maybe learn more. Given the recording quality and my familiarity with recording technology over the last 100 years or so, I'd guess the piano rolls were recorded to magnetic tape sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s.
@@back-seat-driver1355 So crazy coincidence, but I actually learned, just this morning, that this ISN'T Debussy playing!! It's actually Frederico Buffaletti, an Italian pianist who was a contemporary of Debussy and who lived from 1862 to 1936. I'm not entirely sure when he made this recording and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find that out, but his attribution is usually either missing or hidden very well on the album entitled "Claude Debussy Plays His Finest Works." A marketing ploy has fooled a lot of people, including me, into thinking this was Debussy playing Debussy, but apparently only about half of the album is actually Debussy performing. I think we can still learn a massive amount from hearing this, including just how much more freely music used to be interpreted. And also, if you listen to the tracks in which Debussy is actually given the attribution, quite a lot of the rhythmic and dynamic "inconsistencies" or "unique interpretations" persist. So, I apologize to you for misleading you, and I will be making a post both here and in the full course explaining this at least as well as I have in this comment!
Are you referring to my playing? Or Debussy's own playing of this? While my performance and interpretation is only slightly on the liberal side of what is accepted in the current musical world, Debussy's own playing is on a whole different planet of rubato and sense of timing. He, and many of his contemporaries, greatly urged their students to explore far more with rubato than most would even consider today, and that exploration really should be a fundamental of our interpretation of their music (and the music of many of the other great composers). It's really only since the advent of the music conservatory in the early and mid 20th century that music got "straightened" out and the academic approach to interpretation and strict obedience to the score became prevalent. Unfortunately, this also coincides with the period when recorded music began as well... so nearly all representations of repertoire we hear on recording have been influenced by this phenomenon. But if you talk with most any composer, myself included, there is so much we can't notate on the page but is integral to the music. I've gotten to the point that even when I'm commissioned to write something, I request to hear the work in progress and do a little coaching because, for years, I've heard performances that were quite bland in comparison to what could have been if more liberty was taken... but students today are taught that the score is the authority, so it's only a personal experience that can change that. Unfortunately we can't ask Debussy himself anymore, BUT, we do have letters from him and a whole bunch of his piano roll recordings that really do open the door of musical possibilities that 100 years later seem so foreign, but to Debussy was the prevalent musical language of the time.
Haha, but so interesting, right? And I don't think he would have disagreed with you either, or at least not heavily... maybe from the point of view of blurring everything, but not from the point of view of having a different interpretation than he had!
i like your playing. i hate how debussy plays it. the rubato is more frantic. i also am skeptical its his recording as he didnt like the piece and the onky confirmed debussy recording i know of is his children suite and his claire de lune edit: the claire de lune is fake
What I've read is that yes, this is Debussy's recording, but that his playing of all of his work would vary wildly from day to day... and yes, I tend to agree that since he didn't particular care for this piece himself, he would be likely to add a lot of "musical" changes to keep his interest while playing, which wouldn't necessarily do the piece any favors.
"Debussy's Reverie is arguably his most learned and performed piece." is it really tho? i know much better pieces like clair de lune and arebesque even tho i've surely heard somewhere the first arpeggios of this piece - i'm saying this from the point of view of one such myself who has not really explored debussy that much yet
Clair de Lune is more well known yes, but it's more difficult to play, so fewer students of piano learn it. Arabesque as well. In my own studies, I learned Reverie a few years prior to working on Clair de Lune, and I learned pieces from "The Children's Corner" set by Debussy in between. Great question though!
Hi Null Gravity! Thanks for watching! Almost all of my tutorials are deeply about technique and interpretation and don't go into or through introducing the notes one at a time because 1) when you have learned notation, that stuff is right there on the page for you and 2) there are a ton of free places you can look online to find a tutorial like that already if you are looking for one! I'd encourage you to both learn and watch from one of those tutorials (and learn notation a little at a time) that goes note by note and then also come back here when you want to learn more about polishing up the notes you've learned. Thanks for asking!
Charles, I can't believe how much you focus on exactly what my classical teacher focused on when I was taking back in thee 70's! The focus was on interpretation, emotion & feeling.
I found this at 3 am. I printed the music, can I go back to sleep? This is EXACTLY the content I’m searching for! Thank you! Biggest takeaway, don’t sweat the small stuff. What a shame he dealt with such angst! But maybe his music would have suffered if he did not. I will be going over to your other link after some 💤💤💤. Thank you!!!
Haha, sounds good!
I was pleasantly surprised when you showed the Dover edition as its the book I'm learning from myself, and so relieved when you pointed out the missing tie between the 2nd and 3rd bar. That extra note was really throwing me off and I thought that it couldn't be right.
Thanks, Matt! I hope your journey learning this piece is enjoyable and fruitful!
This is beautiful! One of my favorite pieces by Debussy! Thank you for sharing! thankyou very much!
You are welcome! Thanks for visiting the channel and checking this one out!
TY! Looking forward to the rest. I’m struggling with continuity from measure 76-82. Love this piece!!
It's a fantastic and beautiful piece! If you didn't see the link to the rest of the course in the description, you can find here it as well: pianist-academy.thinkific.com/courses/Debussy-Reverie
This is beautiful! One of my favorite pieces by Debussy! Thank you for sharing! ❤
Thanks for watching, Candace!
Thank you ☺️
Loved this video, thank you.
Jane, thank you! And thanks for signing up on my Thinkific page. Let me know if you have any questions about this video or that page! Happy to help 😁
came in for the tutorial, and stayed for the great interpretation that made me cry 🥲
...
oh God... this song means so much to me. And the fact that the composer was also in a dark place made me like this piece more. I used to be depressed for few months due to my meds' side effects. The first time I heard this song, it resonated so much with me. I memorized this piece at the back of my mind. That was around 2 years ago.
Listening to this piece brought me back at those times. I'm also playing this for my grade 8 examination next year which is why I stopped by here ❤❤🩹
Beautiful, thank you so much for taking the time to comment! I'm glad you've gotten through the depression you were dealing with. Best wishes as you prepare this for your exam next year! What else are you working on?
It's always a pleasure to hear you play!
Thanks! Great to see you on this channel!
Thank you so much for the advice. Indeed, we should have always two brains to play some pieces from Debussy! I have a question on measure 5. How do you practice it? For other pieces, I am not struggling to do 4 against 3 which may be translated as follows: together, right left, right, etc…). When I am practicing, I am counting of course out loud the tempo and slowly (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and etc…and place the pedal on the 1, as the case may be, otherwise, I won’t be able to respect the tempo…).
For Reverie, I am struggling a lot to hold Bb on the left hand 1 and go further and simultaneously to do the triplets on the right hand….Measure 5 is so difficult to have it at the right tempo with both hands! I would be happy to have practical advice to master this measure 5. In advance thank you very much for your further help and assistance.
Hey there! Thanks for the question!
I have two ways of teaching 4 against 3. My preferred is: first learn to feel one larger beat for the quarter note triplet. That would mean learning to count the bars as having only two beats that are fairly far apart from each other. When we have a single gap, it’s much easier to fill that gap with 3 identical rhythms (Q triplets) or 4 identical rhythms (8ths). Practice feeling the melody in 2 instead of 4. Allow both hands to play together UNTIL that measure, and then just feel the right hand alone for awhile, letting LH rejoin in the following bar. This method, if it works, usually provides more musical results in the end.
The second method: both 3 and 4 are divisible by 12. Write out 12 “beats” on a separate page. Above each number, equally divide the beats into 3. Below each number equally divide the beats into 4. Now you’ll have a graphical representation of EXACTLY how 3 against 4 works. If you count each of the twelve beats slowly, you’ll begin to learn the relationships. Speed up with time and practice until, like above, you feel the movement of all 12 “subdivisions” as just one beat.
@@PianistAcademy1 thank you so much for your helpful response. I will try the second method and see if I will be able to get this triplet in the right tempo. Meanwhile enjoy your musical journey 👍😀
Able to give discount code for this tutorial ? Thanks
@PianistAcademy
the Masterclass looks interesting!
Will you explain the piece measure by measure or just pick out a few main topics?
One of my main question is the notation in the very first measure with the full note Bb and the following notes in the arpeggio to be played.
I saw that several times in other scores also but do not understand it.
Have you checked out all of the chapter titles on the course page? They will give you a very nice overview of the topics covered. I do go into the opening Bb pretty extensively, and how it can also affect our interpretation of the rest of the notes in that figure. That said, my courses are never a "bar by bar" discussion of notes and rhythms. They almost always focus on technique and interpretation, not analysis of notes. You can find analysis in a whole lot of places online for free. You can't always find out information that's "between the notes" if you will.
@@PianistAcademy1
OK,
was looking at the Masterclass where you wrote
Measure 1-4
Measure 5-........
So i expected this very systematic approach on the other masterclasses as well.
thanks so for the special info!
@@back-seat-driver1355 yes, in my classes I will go through every phrase or very nearly every phrase, but as I mentioned, I won’t talk about things like “this is a Bb, this is an eighth note, here is what that rhythm will sound like, etc”. I write my course material to go to the next level beyond that, so for example, what do the first four bars of the piece mean, what do they convey, how can we *better* execute them to show that meaning, rather than just execute them as notes and rhythms. I hope that helps you decide if you’d like to take the course!
i view this piece as very aquatic
Do you show the suggested pedal mark in your tutorial ?
I typically don't write in pedal marks because, when taken literally, they often don't translate to truly what we want to do with the pedal or how the fingers aid the pedal or vice versa. In the course I give pedal marks for a handful of measures, but not beyond that.
Hi if you don’t mind pls reply to my question
@@sayonara6301 I did, didn't I? Let me know if there's a part I didn't answer and I'll chime in!
@@PianistAcademy1 yes I finally saw it . Which bars do you have the pedal marking ? Thanks again
@@sayonara6301 I show some marks in measures 4 and 5 and talk about how the concept I demonstrate applies to most of the opening, and I show marks from 63 through 66 but they are more in relation to how to play the multiple voices shown with clarity.
this is really Debussy playing?
1890 ?
Yes, i know, Emil Berliner invented the recording technique on a specialmaterial to scratch the sounds into that - that was around 1889 !
So ? anybody knows more?
Yes it truly is Debussy. Around November 1, 1913, Debussy recorded a number of his works onto the then new Piano Roll. The Piano Roll used paper to reproduce sounds on the same or another acoustic piano. The date that piano roll was recorded into audio would obviously be later and I'm not sure of that in particular, but you can look up the album "Claude Debussy Plays His Finest Works" and maybe learn more. Given the recording quality and my familiarity with recording technology over the last 100 years or so, I'd guess the piano rolls were recorded to magnetic tape sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s.
thanks@@PianistAcademy1 good to know!
@@back-seat-driver1355 So crazy coincidence, but I actually learned, just this morning, that this ISN'T Debussy playing!! It's actually Frederico Buffaletti, an Italian pianist who was a contemporary of Debussy and who lived from 1862 to 1936. I'm not entirely sure when he made this recording and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to find that out, but his attribution is usually either missing or hidden very well on the album entitled "Claude Debussy Plays His Finest Works." A marketing ploy has fooled a lot of people, including me, into thinking this was Debussy playing Debussy, but apparently only about half of the album is actually Debussy performing.
I think we can still learn a massive amount from hearing this, including just how much more freely music used to be interpreted. And also, if you listen to the tracks in which Debussy is actually given the attribution, quite a lot of the rhythmic and dynamic "inconsistencies" or "unique interpretations" persist. So, I apologize to you for misleading you, and I will be making a post both here and in the full course explaining this at least as well as I have in this comment!
Finally! This is awesome Charles thank you so much
You're welcome, Haydar!!
It sounds very pulled around in tempo. Rubato yes but over rubato no.
Are you referring to my playing? Or Debussy's own playing of this? While my performance and interpretation is only slightly on the liberal side of what is accepted in the current musical world, Debussy's own playing is on a whole different planet of rubato and sense of timing. He, and many of his contemporaries, greatly urged their students to explore far more with rubato than most would even consider today, and that exploration really should be a fundamental of our interpretation of their music (and the music of many of the other great composers). It's really only since the advent of the music conservatory in the early and mid 20th century that music got "straightened" out and the academic approach to interpretation and strict obedience to the score became prevalent. Unfortunately, this also coincides with the period when recorded music began as well... so nearly all representations of repertoire we hear on recording have been influenced by this phenomenon. But if you talk with most any composer, myself included, there is so much we can't notate on the page but is integral to the music. I've gotten to the point that even when I'm commissioned to write something, I request to hear the work in progress and do a little coaching because, for years, I've heard performances that were quite bland in comparison to what could have been if more liberty was taken... but students today are taught that the score is the authority, so it's only a personal experience that can change that. Unfortunately we can't ask Debussy himself anymore, BUT, we do have letters from him and a whole bunch of his piano roll recordings that really do open the door of musical possibilities that 100 years later seem so foreign, but to Debussy was the prevalent musical language of the time.
Sorry Claude, but I prefer the amorphous blur but not at a snail’s pace. 😊
Haha, but so interesting, right? And I don't think he would have disagreed with you either, or at least not heavily... maybe from the point of view of blurring everything, but not from the point of view of having a different interpretation than he had!
@@PianistAcademy1 if it gets too blurry, yeah I definitely change pedal. Let your ear be your guide, right?
@@jowr2000 Yup!
I agree
i like your playing. i hate how debussy plays it. the rubato is more frantic. i also am skeptical its his recording as he didnt like the piece and the onky confirmed debussy recording i know of is his children suite and his claire de lune
edit: the claire de lune is fake
What I've read is that yes, this is Debussy's recording, but that his playing of all of his work would vary wildly from day to day... and yes, I tend to agree that since he didn't particular care for this piece himself, he would be likely to add a lot of "musical" changes to keep his interest while playing, which wouldn't necessarily do the piece any favors.
"Debussy's Reverie is arguably his most learned and performed piece."
is it really tho? i know much better pieces like clair de lune and arebesque even tho i've surely heard somewhere the first arpeggios of this piece - i'm saying this from the point of view of one such myself who has not really explored debussy that much yet
Clair de Lune is more well known yes, but it's more difficult to play, so fewer students of piano learn it. Arabesque as well. In my own studies, I learned Reverie a few years prior to working on Clair de Lune, and I learned pieces from "The Children's Corner" set by Debussy in between. Great question though!
That is nothing what debussy looks like in the thumbnail. Debussy is very handsome compared to that thumbnail depiction.
he prob just search up realistic debussy face and pasted it on the thumbnail giv him a break 😂😂
lol yup, that's what I did... Google'd 3D mockup of Debussy and this was one I found!
Very good pianissimo pp. Thank you.
Thanks, Chanh! I hope to continue to see you in the comments around the channel!
I'm very new to piano. I would like to buy your tutorial. Do you show exactly how to play the song? I don't know how to read sheet music
Hi Null Gravity! Thanks for watching! Almost all of my tutorials are deeply about technique and interpretation and don't go into or through introducing the notes one at a time because 1) when you have learned notation, that stuff is right there on the page for you and 2) there are a ton of free places you can look online to find a tutorial like that already if you are looking for one! I'd encourage you to both learn and watch from one of those tutorials (and learn notation a little at a time) that goes note by note and then also come back here when you want to learn more about polishing up the notes you've learned. Thanks for asking!
@@PianistAcademy1 thanks 👍🏻🙏🏻