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  Jai Jeffryes, Pianist - NYC

Togetherness

10/29/2011

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I like to participate in the piano technique forum at Alan Fraser's The Craft of Piano Playing. I recently shared a tip I learned from Steven De Groote for fingering parallel scales.
Steven liked to finger parallel scales so that the thumbs play together. The big problems in scales are to get them smooth, without bumps, and to keep the hands perfectly together. The turn over/turn under in scale playing is hard. If you align the fingering to play both thumbs together, it gives you a little more of a fighting chance to smooth that out.

In the traditional fingering of a B-flat major scale there is no meeting point of the thumbs. However, you can make the thumbs meet if you wish to. In a parallel B-flat major scale, Steven would put his left thumb on C and F. 

C major would have the left thumb on C and F, D major on D and G, etc. This isn't dogma. It's just a choice if you have a passage that has a long parallel scale or even a fragment that could benefit from getting the thumbs together. 

It's not traditional. I don't teach children, and I don't know when it would be appropriate to introduce them to such an idea. I learned that in college. 

It's another choice. Maybe someone else will like it, too. 
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El Brown

10/14/2011

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Louis Brown says that after opening his recording studio, L. Brown Recording, he began receiving calls from people who presumed he was Mexican. He wondered why. They asked, "Well, aren't you 'El Brown?'"

I recorded my first session at L. Brown Recording.  The piano is glorious. It's a rebuilt 1881 nine-foot Steinway D Centennial Edition concert grand, painstakingly maintained by Marc Weinert. And the studio is in the Film Center Building in Hell's Kitchen, steps away from my home.

Louis knows what he's doing. He doesn't merely "roll tape." He is a producer who collaborates in the creative process, and the results are better for it. We recorded Schubert's Op. 90 Impromptus. Next up, either the Sonata in A Major, D. 664, or Debussy's Images, Book 1. We're targeting a CD release for the middle of next year.

Here is an interesting formula. 30 minutes of recorded music equate to 3 hours of studio time. That allows for discussion, listening back where appropriate, and multiple takes.
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