Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange
Musical Practice and Performance Stack Exchange

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I have been practicing a song for 3 hours straight but I keep making mistakes. How can I get it right?

There is this one song I have to play for school but every time I try to play it, I make a mistake. I did this for 3 hours straight and I sent an email to my teacher and he gave me some advice but it didn't really help. I have no idea what I'm…
Noor Tazkargy
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Is stretching my fingers on the piano healthy?

I'm currently playing a piece which requires big stretches of large intervals across the keyboard. It slightly hurts when I do so, and I am wondering if I should continue to practise like this. My piano teacher suggests fingerings with a…
William GONG
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Dynamic marking "f-p"

I know that: The dynamic marking f means forte, or play loud. And that p means piano, or play soft. The dynamic marking fp means fortepiano, or play this note loud, and play the following notes soft. I have an old music book that uses the…
Elements In Space
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How to learn piano improvisation

I am a self-taught piano player, played for about five years with shorter and longer breaks. I've never had any formal education, don't know chords or music theory. What should I do to learn piano improvisation? I don't expect it to go smoothly and…
Maurycy
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Why didn't classical music use drums?

I was wondering why doesn't most classical music use drums? For example when I type in "classical music" on youtube, most of the music I hear doesn't have drums. Take Bach, Mozart, Beethoven as an example of what I mean. I saw that some orchestras…
user34288
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LilyPond - how to write a basic makefile

During the last years I tought myself to write scores using LilyPond and furthermore to make file handling easier by using Bash scripts. Recently I started a project a little bigger than only one or two pages and once again I came across the article…
nath
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Why is it called a 9-8 suspension instead of 2-1 suspension?

I know that usually suspensions are referred to by simple intervals, and this is the case with almost all suspensions (4-3, 7-6, 2-3, etc). However, we call it 9-8 suspension instead of 2-1 suspension. Is there a reason for this, either practically…
Bad At Music Theory
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Are there any tricks to pushing a grand piano?

Are there any tricks to pushing around a stubborn grand piano? Is changing the direction of the wheels simply a question of brute force, or is there some approach I can take that will allow me to be more specific with the piano's movements? In my…
Richard
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Why is music taught by reading sheet music?

Children learn language by listening to people speaking it and then trying to repeat what they heard and making up their own sentences. In classical music education the focus has been on repeating what you read in a book with sheet music. Actually,…
user20754
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Does every piano need tuning every year?

Our upright piano has been last tuned about a year ago. (It was a major retuning, two sessions, including bringing it up from something 435-ish to 442 Hz.) I just tried to check whether it is still in tune and I couldn't find any flaw. It just…
Jirka Hanika
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Can MuseScore be used programmatically?

I wasn't sure whether to post this on StackOverflow or here, but since the pros in MuseScore should be on this platform, here it goes: I have a custom build system to create a pdf songbook using LaTeX and I want to include tablature there. I parse…
Taxel
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What do these symbols mean?

This is part of Hasse's "Mea Tormenta, Properate": Figure 1. 3 staves of handwritten music. The top staff is in treble clef and the key of B flat. The second staff is also in treble clef and in the same key. It has no notes and just contains a…
Ella L
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Genetic limitations to learn certain instruments

This is something that has bothered me for quite a while. I frequently participate in instrument demonstrations for children. My focus is on wind instruments but I'm also curious about others. What I noticed is that some children just seem to have a…
Carpid
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On a piano, are the effects of holding notes and the sustain pedal the same for a single chord?

Building from this question, I learned that it is possible to notate a tie that is held by the pedal and not the hands. To me that's a bit strange - if the pedal were not held down in that passage, the effect would be different because the right…
Michael Stachowsky
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What does this wavy downward arrow preceding a piano chord mean?

I started to play this piece today, & I came across this symbol (wavy arrow pointing downwards in treble clef). I have never seen it before in any piece, nor did I read about it in music theory so far. What does it mean? I am assuming it could mean…
Grace
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