Self Evaluation

The piece that I selcted for my self evaluation was Medieval Garden in the Music for Developing Musicians book that we use in class. This was the first piece that I have worked on in years that started to develop the left hand and right hand moving at separate times without block chords underneath it. Up until this point we have either been doing scale and or simple melodies with chords underneath them. While that has still been a challenge it was also quite a challenge to get left hand and right hand mobility at the same time in opposite directions.

The first task that I accomplished was playing both hands separately until I was comfortable playing them both without each other. The next thing I accomplished was playing one hand on the piano while playing the rhythm of the other hand on my lap or just tapped one note on the keyboard no matter what it sounded like with the other hand. This task was harder than I remembered doing but eventually I got it with both hand. After this I tried to put both hands together with notes and rhythms. When I did this I found that I also for the first time in a while had to figure out hand shift. Though they were not very big I did have to dive into figuring out correct fingerings for hand shifts, especially the ones that weren't marked. After this process I attempted to add dynamics and phrasing to complete the piece. I feel like the strategies that I used were what I have been taught in this class and in previous classes and though piano will always be a struggle for me I do believe that my strategies were correct and helped me learn the piece that I chose. I hope to learn more this semester on how to cope learning the piano more and look forward to bigger and better things.

Masrhall Jones