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Pine Apple Rag is also a similar length to The Entertainer and most rags. The left hand has that jumping chord pattern that is characteristic of Ragtime, and the tempo is marked “Slow march tempo”. Pine Apple Rag is a similar level of difficulty to The Entertainer.
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I chose Joplin’s Pine Apple Rag, and submitted my programme request, which they accepted! So in their eyes, Pine Apple Rag was an appropriate standard for the ATCL diploma. I put together a programme consisting of mainly approved pieces from their repertoire list, but I decided to see if they would let me play a rag piece at the end of my programme. They would make a case-by-case decision whether your overall programme was at the ATCL difficulty level, and therefore whether you were allowed to use that programme for your exam. When I did the ATCL performance diploma, they had a repertoire list of pieces to choose from to perform in the exam, but they also allowed you to submit a programme request containing pieces not from that list. When learning this piece, thought will need to be given to making sure both hands are as relaxed as they can be, to produce a better sound. Not only is being tense bad for your hands, but it negatively impacts the quality of the sound produced as well. Why The Entertainer Could Be Considered Harder Than Grade 8 StandardĮven though the notes of The Entertainer could be considered around a grade 8 level, to play this piece with as little tension as possible presents an additional challenge.īoth hands are required to be at an octave span quite often during this piece, so it could be tempting to let them lock into that position at times. The Cascades is a similar length to The Entertainer, and the first half is in the same key (C major). Secondly, there are a number of passages with consecutive octaves, in this case sometimes in the left hand as well as the right hand. The Cascades is similar to The Entertainer in a number of ways.įirstly, as expected the left hand has a lot of comping chords that jump up and down the piano each quaver/eighth note. It is one thing when the bass notes are single notes that can be played with the little finger, to minimise the jump up to the chord, but it is another step harder when the bass notes are actually octaves themselves: Scott Joplin’s The Cascades Was Set for Grade 8Īnother of Scott Joplin’s rags, The Cascades, was set for the grade 8 Trinity College London syllabus 2015 – 2017. A lot of left-hand-only slow practice is needed to make sure all the jumps are secure.Įven though the tempo marking for the entertainer is “Not fast”, the continuous nature of the comping in the left hand demands a lot of practice to ensure it is accurate. You need at least some of your brain to be thinking about the right hand at any point, so you can’t dedicate 100% of your concentration to making sure the left hand hits all the right notes. Having a really good awareness of where all the keys are without looking is necessary to play this piece. The big challenge with the left hand of The Entertainer is the almost constant comping chords – a bass note is played on the beat and then there is a big jump up to a higher chord on the offbeat. This is quite a big stretch for most people, and challenging to play up to speed and in a relaxed way.
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These are difficult enough in themselves to play at a reasonable speed, but often a third or sixth is added into the octave chord as well. There are many passages in The Entertainer which have consecutive right hand octaves. There are a couple of reasons why it is at least a grade 8 level of difficulty: The Right Hand Octaves The original version of The Entertainer has never been set on a piano grade syllabus, at the time of writing. Why is The Entertainer Approximately Grade 8 Standard? There are also many simplified arrangements which have been set for lower piano grades on different exam boards, including grades 2, 3, and 4. The original version of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer is at least piano grade 8 standard (ABRSM/Trinity College London). Almost every pianist has played an arrangement of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer at some point in time, but what grade level is it?