Here's a link to the song: Rhapsody in Blue
I can't even tell you how good it feels to say I am done working on this song. The only person who might be even happier is Brian-- he's heard it so much that he can literally sing the whole thing to you. I have spent months and days and hours working on this song since I bought the sheet music for it (which was more like a 7 page book) back in September. Is it perfect? Far from it. But I am satisfied with how far I have come working on what turned out to be a 15 minute song in only a few months. And it's definitely time to be done with it.
I've been itching to work on another "project" for a while. I graduated in December 2009 with a degree in music (for those who are confused, I also majored in business, which is how I'm making money.) I was a music major from day one of my freshman year and so for four and a half years I spent hours and hours playing piano. And for the majority of my time there, I mostly worked on one song-- Danzas Argentina's by Ginastera-- which is about 10 minutes long and takes so much energy that I literally couldn't play it through more than once without taking a break. When I finally had my senior recital a month or two before I graduated, it was the best feeling to play it and be recognized for it and to finally be done with it. I even won an award (although there was only one other person I was competing with, so it wasn't too much of a feat.) But once I was done, it was incredibly weird. It was like I focused all this energy on finishing this one thing and suddenly I had all of this free time. And to do what?
It was even more weird after I graduated because I didn't even have a piano. At first I still lived in an apartment close to school, so I could visit the practice rooms from time to time, but eventually I moved and also worked about 30-40 minutes away and it became a lot more difficult-- especially during rush hour traffic right after work. It was almost never worth it to make the drive. My lovely friend Jeannie, who was also my roommate at the time, was thoughtful enough to buy me a piano off of craigslist. The problem was, neither of us had enough money to hire someone to move it up to our second story apartment, so we kept it in the garage. Because of this, I was able to play one. But every time I did, the neighbor kids would sit outside the closed garage door and clap after every song. It was fine, but it was kind of awkward and I didn't play as much as I used to.
Around that time I started dating Brian, who had a beautiful keyboard he used for his band. I didn't really have many opportunities to play it for the first year or so we dated because he kept it at his band's practice space. But for a small period of time he worked on a side project in another room in the space, and he let me play it while they practiced. Soon after he told me his band never used the keyboard anyway (they only had a couple songs with piano parts) so he brought it to his apartment so I could play it. I'm sure he's regretted that decision many times since then, because I play it ALL the time. :) Then again, he plays his guitar all the time, so I feel like we're about even.
Around the time he moved it to his apartment, my grandparents invited my parents, Brian and me to come to an orchestra concert that was entirely Gershwin music. Gershwin lived around the 1920s and played kind of a mix of jazz and classical and modern music. He wrote musicals and symphonies, but his main instrument was piano. It was all right down my alley-- which is probably why they invited me in the first place. I hadn't played much jazz music in the past, but I always wanted to. I asked Brian if he would be impressed if I could play the music they were playing in orchestra hall and he said yes. So I decided Gershwin would be my next project. And, soon after, I bought the sheet music for Rhapsody in Blue.
This song was SO difficult for me to work on. I'm normally very good at sightreading, but the first time I sat down and tried to play through it, I could hardly even play through the first page (and there were 7...) The rhythm was way more complex than I was used to, there were several difficult runs, and a lot of the chords were dissonant and sounded like mistakes-- but they weren't! I tried to find a recording on the song, but I could only find the orchestra recording (which isn't the same), a few medleys, and some self recordings on youtube. I tried to base what I was playing off of a combination of all of them, which was difficult because they didn't really sound like each other. So if I didn't play parts of the song the way they should be played, that's why.
What's really insane is that it took me nine months to learn to play this song, but Gershwin wrote it in a couple WEEKS. Paul Whiteman, a jazz band director, was trying to put together a jazz concert in New York City and asked Gershwin to write a piece for it. Gershwin agreed to it, but forgot about it until he and his brother opened the New York Times and read an article about the upcoming concert, which of course had his name in it. The concert was five weeks from that day. He wrote the piano version in a few weeks, gave it to another composer who translated it into a band piece, and it was finally finished about a week before the concert. Gershwin didn't have time to actually transcribe the piano part until after the concert, so the conductor was told things like "wait for nod." Despite all of this, it ended up being one of the most popular songs he ever wrote.
I will never be a Gershwin, but after a lot of work I was finally able to play it! And I eventually memorized the whole 15 minute song. Here is what I was able to put together. :)
(I'll give you another link to the song. Maybe someday I'll be smart enough to figure out how to put it on my blog...) Rhapsody in Blue
Congratulations! good work--Laurel
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