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Hi all, quick question. Im still waiting to start with my instructor and in the mean time ive been learning/practicing. Im kinda getting bored with my scales and have started looking at other music. My question is the etudes and caprices. Could anyone recommend some of the etudes peices that a first month student should be looking at? Or all of those just way too complicated? Thanks.
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Great book.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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I have a follow up question.
With these etudes can i just change the key? For instance Wolfhart lesson #1 is key of C if i just change the key to G that changes the F to F#. Can i then go through and play this piece in G Major and still have, i think the correct term is, harmony among the notes? Or do i need to adjust the other notes as well.
* Not sure if harmony is the correct term there.
I think with lesson one its simple enough to allow for that but i guess im also wondering in the more general sense. Seems like changing the key may involve moving notes around a certain number of steps or half steps. Im not really sure.
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If I am understanding what you are saying, well, you can do that.. But you wouldn't necessarily be practising the same things as the etude was originally written to practice. To get the same patterns, you would need to transpose all the notes of the etude.
For example, let's say the etude is written to practice some pattern like (in the key of C) CDEDEFGAC. Just sharping the F wouldn't practice the same things, and you'd probably want to re-write it as GABABCDEG. Just sharping the F wouldn't have you practising the same pattern of notes with the same relationship to each other in the new key.
It is also possible that the etude was designed to build that "muscle memory", and so what the writer intends for you to practice is a certain way of moving the fingers. In that case "transposing" as I did in the example above could sound similar musically, but not be practising the same finger moves.
If any of that made sense? LOL
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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Daniel is right. You can add sharps or flats to any notes you like and it may even be a good etude with that change. It just won't sound the same because you are changing the intervals.
However, you can change the key signature and the notes accordingly (check out the circle of fifths) and the etude will sound the same (intervals) except higher or lower depending on what you did.
It is then possible that the etude has a specific purpose that is not achieved by starting on a different note. Check out how it changes the etude by adding one sharp and changing all the notes correctly.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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Thanks for the replies.
To recap, let me see if i got this right:
Daniel you touched on the idea that you first need to understand what the point of the music is. Or ask what the composer wants from you on a particular piece. I think FM said in his swan lake video, "Youre going to this note, its the top of the phrase". That would be an example of intent in the song. So simply coming in and changing the key also changes the intent. In this first etude im working on basically wolfhart is asking us to do arpaggios in the key of C. No? So simply changing that to G, lets say, completely kills the intent.
I think FM is coming from a more technical stand point, that is, in order to change the key of the song attention must be given to the intervals between notes, as this establishes phrasing i guess or something even more basic? In the example changing F to F# means going from the E to the F changes to a whole step instead of the half. Instead we would want to "preserve" that whole step through the key change if we could? Im not 100% i guess this is why they give out Degrees in music. 
Music in general i guess is the play between semantics and syntax, creative and technical. I think the whole idea you guys are driving at is, in general, you cant just change the key. You might get lucky and it sounds ok but more often than not youll change the intent of the song as well as destroy the intervals between notes, which also "takes away" from the music? Yeah?
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I'm with Kevin.
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Did i miss the mark by a long shot?
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LOL,
chorlick, these things are simple but real hard to understand at first. I like your questions. It's the best way to learn. Some things are hard to explain and I realize that when I get certain response to my answers.
An Etude is written to strengthen an aspect of learning. Could be bowing or fingering or a combination of both. Since changing key signatures means that you start on a different note it might also make the string crossings different <---- just an example. The string crossings could have been the reason for the etude to begin with. Easier to analyze each etude individually to better understand what I am saying.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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