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Why not play ragtime, piano players?
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Subject: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mrrzy Date: 22 Mar 01 - 09:16 AM I have questions for the Greater Mudcat Community, in particular its pianists. I love piano. Especially I like Scott Joplin's piano rags. However, it is my experience that nobody (that is real persons I meet, not fancy professionals on TV or what-have-you) who knows how to play the piano plays ragtime. When I ask, I get either "I don't play ragtime" or "I can't play ragtime" - So one question is, why not? I mean, it SOUNDS incredibly difficult - is that it? Or is it that nobody but me likes that kind of piano music? I guess I'm asking which is more common, can't or won't... just curious, but it's musical musings so I didn't use BS. |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mrrzy Date: 22 Mar 01 - 09:21 AM Forgot to ask, but it will come up I hope, how many of you are pianists in contrast to other instrumentists? And of those, how many play ragtime and enjoy it? |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,Gern, sadly bereft of cookie Date: 22 Mar 01 - 09:31 AM I am a piano player and have played ragtime for decades, along with hot jazz, blues and a crude Harlem boogie. Yes, it is difficult, like any other challenging art form. In the last few years, for example, I have been dabbling in both clawhammer and ragtime banjo, and find each equally challenging. There is a syncopation characteristic to ragrime that some people struggle with or smooth out excessively. Just about any musical style is easy to imitate and hard to master. I am limited by inability to read music. A great many classic rags are quite complex for learning by ear, so my selection is limited by this. Nonetheless, this music is fun and appeals to nearly everyone I meet. Add some Jelly Roll Morton to your collection, and good luck! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mrrzy Date: 22 Mar 01 - 11:44 AM And another question: Under what general genre of music would you stick ragtime, anyway? |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mary in Kentucky Date: 22 Mar 01 - 12:06 PM Mrrzy, I love ragtime piano. I played some in the past, but MS hinders my quickness, so I can't play fast enough now. One teacher who also enjoyed rags told me that most people play them entirely too fast. A couple of years ago while searching the 'net for midis, I found this wonderful site, John Roache's Ragtime Midi Library. (click on "title" to get to them.) I wrote to John about a typo on this site about a month before he died. I'll always remember his gracious letter and quick wit. I'm impressed with the ragtime midis here. They must be made with superior equipment because they really are good! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mrrzy Date: 22 Mar 01 - 12:13 PM Wow, Mary in Kentucky, what I great site! I hear the Maple Leaf rag as I type (my officemates are going to hate this, I can already tell)... and I can see how ms would get in the way. Hope you're OK generally otherwise. |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Musicman Date: 22 Mar 01 - 12:59 PM I play ragtime... and love it... years ago I found a great book of Scott Joplin Collected Piano Works... Rags, Waltzes and marches.... All kinds of great stuff in it... every now and then i sit down and learn/re learn one or two of them...... For anybody who's interested, the ISBN is 0-87104-242-8. Published by The New York Public Library in 1971 |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mrrzy Date: 22 Mar 01 - 01:02 PM Musicman, what ELSE do you play on piano? Or is ragtime your "thing?" -still collecting data |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mary in Kentucky Date: 22 Mar 01 - 01:18 PM Mrrzy, you should hear musicman play Bonnie Doon on the piano. He played it for us one night on PalTalk, and I still get shivers thinking about it! It's also on his CD. Paul, that's still just about my absolute favorite! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,Pete Peterson at work Date: 22 Mar 01 - 01:26 PM My late mother started playing piano at age 5, started giving lessons at age 7 (ten cents a lesson but this was 1921) and gave her last lesson ten days before she died. She had a classical repertoire, a lot of which was religious music, pop tunes, jazz, AND ragtime. I think her favorite was ragtime, and she always quoted Scott Joplin "do not play ragtime fast. It is never correct to play ragtime fast." When I made my tape for Marimac I got her to play backup on the Vess Ossman pieces that I fumbled through. She could sight read ANYTHING up to speed on the first time through. . . anyway were she around to vote she would vote as a ragtime fan who could do other things as well (she taught me a lot of how to "read" an audience and switch your planned program to match what's going over well) . . . so one proxy vote for ragtime! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Bedubya Date: 22 Mar 01 - 03:18 PM Mrrzy No facts here - just idle supposition - so don't take any of this to the bank. I would wager that most Mudcatters who play much piano DO play some ragtime. I say this because just about every hammer dulcimer player I've ever met plays a rag or two. Also, most fiddlers and guitarists who've achieved a certain level of expertise at least try some ragtime. Ragtime is alive and well in the folk music community. It is when you look outside of the folk music community at piano players in general that ragtime falls out of favor. To put it bluntly, "There ain't no money in it!" Anyone who is going to try to make a dollar playing piano is going to go the classical/church route, the piano bar/lounge route, the band route, or some combination thereof. Furthermore, pianos, like electric guitars and saxophones, do not usually attract those with a deep sense of (non-classical) musical tradition. Of course there are exceptions like Butch Thompson and George Winston, but that's what makes them special. Ragtime is a difficult genre to master, but no more so than many others. Many pianists just don't have the interest or see enough chance of financial reward make it worth the effort. bwl |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,ngb Date: 22 Mar 01 - 10:51 PM Hey, a lot of us play ragtime on piano; some of us refuse to play anything else, and many continue to compose some truly wonderful rags, as in Galen Wilkes, Tom Brier, Hal Isbitz (sp?), Frank French. Several actually make a living (albiet a frugal one) playing and recording ragtime, as in Max Morath, Richard Zimmerman, Mimi Blais, Scott Kirby, Sue Keller, and the granddaddy of 'em all, Ragtime Bob Darch. We even have annual festivals all over the country where you can get inspired by the very best players and dance to the many ragtime orchestras. Recommend you head for the West Coast Ragtime Society's web site As for why pianists don't play ragtime? My guess is that most folks haven't a clue what ragtime is. Soon as they hear good ragtime, most pianists I know get infected really fast. |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,BigDaddy Date: 22 Mar 01 - 10:52 PM GUEST,Pete Petersen at work, sounds like we had parallel mothers. Mine was born in 1911 and started giving lessons as a child as well. Played until her death in 1995. Same eclectic repertoire. Same affection for ragtime played properly. At one time she had a job at a S. S. Kresge store where she was hired to sell sheet music by playing it on a piano in the store's music department. Occasionally, an irritated customer would return a piece of sheet music because when they played it at home, it didn't sound the same. She just frequently couldn't resist making a song "her own." She learned ragtime from fingering the notes on a player piano as a child. Cheers! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Matt_R Date: 22 Mar 01 - 10:54 PM I remember hearing Musicman play "Swipesy" on Mudcat Radio last year. I'm a big Scott Joplin junkie. Favorite rag? Paragon, definately. Then Peacherine. |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,ngb Date: 22 Mar 01 - 10:55 PM Hmm. In last message I typed in the West Coast Ragtime Society's URL but it didn't show up. Trying again: http://www.ragtimemusic.com |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: roopoo Date: 23 Mar 01 - 01:59 AM I would love to be able to play well enough to cope with rags. I'm a realist: I never ever will. But my 20 year old daughter can if she puts her mind to it. She can play Maple Leaf Rag, (she had it as a piece to learn in her lessons a couple of years ago) although she sometimes finds parts of it a little tricky if she hasn't played it for a while. She learned a simplified version of The Entertainer when she was very much younger, and hasn't got patience to sit and work through the "proper" score, because she tends to seek out pieces that she can learn fairly quickly, as she plays only for pleasure. But, along with everything else she does, it's at full gallop! (When I remind her ex-teacher of how she played "Fur Elise" the poor woman flinches and just says to make sure and tell people that she wasn't taught to play it at that speed!) I wish she would play more rags. I have bought her the dots for quite a few, and now she has her own digital piano away at uni, she may dip into them as she looks for pieces to play. She will find them easier to play on that than my old (100years) cottage upright! Andrea |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler Date: 23 Mar 01 - 03:42 AM Well I do, and boogie-woogie, but I cheat: I have a pianola so I just pedal and let Mr Bascomb or Johnson or Blake do the hard work! RtS (good for the thigh muscles!) |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Musicman Date: 23 Mar 01 - 05:51 AM Mrrzy.... I play just about anything that I can read music from... learned classical (of course), can't improvise blues or jazz (would love to), but can do some basic improvisation, like the banks and Braes I did on my album here. Don't spend alot of time playing piano much these days (too busy playing other instruments!! Whistle, concertina, guitar, mandolin....etcetcetc...) musicman |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Jim Krause Date: 23 Mar 01 - 04:32 PM Way back yonder, a long time ago when I was in school, I got bitten by the ragtime bug. Learned to play it passibly well, I guess. Anyway, I enjoyed playing it. I'd be playing it still, if I had a piano. Like you, Mrrzy, I really like ragtime too. Also like Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, and Fats. Oh, and Butch Thompson, too. Is ragtime difficult? Yes, and no. Looking at the page can be somewhat daunting. But if you take it apart and play it one hand at a time, then all of a sudden you get an understanding of how the piece is put together. After all, those old piano rags are just about as formulaic as a piano sonata from the Classical composers. I'd say ragtime is more challenging that diffidult It will sure sharpen up your sight reading skills. But once you have that first piece mastered, the next ones will fall into place a little more easily. In other words, if you can play Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag you can play James Scott's Grace and Beauty Rag. |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Kim C Date: 23 Mar 01 - 04:44 PM I studied piano for a LONG time and I always wanted to play some ragtime but that wasn't what my teachers had in mind. When I was a kid, I had the Marvin Hamlisch 45 of The Entertainer, but what really captivated me was the B-side... a really beautiful tune called Solace. From time to time I looked for the music to it but could never find it. I think one of the reasons that some people don't want to play ragtime is that some folks got Really Tired of that selfsame 45 I used to have. Thanks to The Sting, that song was all over the radio in the early 70s. It's sort of like the Foggy Mountain Breakdown of the piano. ;-) |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Lyrical Lady Date: 23 Mar 01 - 07:18 PM Ragtime is fun to listen to and SING. I love Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. I've heard Musicman play ragtime "in person" and it's very obvious how much he loves it. Any guesses how ragtime came to be called ragtime?? ! LL |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Justa Picker Date: 23 Mar 01 - 07:25 PM The idea of syncopating, staggering or sliding notes (right hand) against a regimented, stuctured tempo (left hand) became known as "ragging" the beat (around the turn of the century) hence the term Ragtime. |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mary in Kentucky Date: 23 Mar 01 - 08:38 PM Kim, if you go to my link above you'll find a beautiful midi of "Solace." In the text explaining it, John writes that only the C and D parts were used in the movie. So if you want to hear those parts, you'll have to download the entire song as opposed to just listening to a short clip. I have a music book of music from "The Sting" which has that in it. If you're interested in the name, let me know and I'll get the name for you. PS I fell in love with RR after seeing that movie! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Spud Murphy Date: 24 Mar 01 - 12:52 AM FWIW, I think Max Morath's treatment of Mssrs Joplin, Scott and Lamb is a fresher sound of Ragtime (although I like Joshua Rifkin also) and his Cripple Creek Suite is a pure delight. If you haven't done so before now, treat yourself to some of the best. Although she normally didn't play in my dad's orchestra, my mother was the best Ragtime pianist I ever heard. I guess she figured her job was to stay home and put us kids to bed. What a shame. She could do things to Maple Leaf that sent shivers up your back and raised goose bumps wherever they belong. But Solace is the best. It is the most haunting of all Ragtime compositions. That's the piece of music I want to hear when I'm dying. Spud |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,-gargoyle Date: 24 Mar 01 - 12:11 PM |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Spud Murphy Date: 24 Mar 01 - 01:34 PM G,-g: I got hyonotized watchin your post and fell outa my chair. If youda made the Rag into a Two-Step yer lines woulda balanced an I woudna wrenched my neck. Spud |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Bernard Date: 24 Mar 01 - 04:57 PM I'm a piano player who plays ragtime. I'm also a guitar player who plays ragtime. Why? Because it's fun, and it's also a little tricky to do well, so it's a challenge. What's really daft, though, is the fact that I wrote a rag myself once (around 30 years ago), and it's always been my ambition to be skilled enough to play it!! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Bernard Date: 24 Mar 01 - 05:03 PM Oh - nearly forgot - visit my website for a sample of my ragtime guitar playing... (clicky)
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,_gargoyle Date: 26 Mar 01 - 08:13 PM |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,_gargoyle Date: 26 Mar 01 - 08:19 PM VERY nicely done Bernard - The sound bite hooked me enough to want to hear the rest....at first I thought it was just another "boogie" but then it became pure. why not post the rest?
Digging for sheet music for the Gypsy/lyr. req. question...I uncovered a fun piano piece - but I've never had an accompaniment. Hysteric Rag - A Trombone Fit The bass line full of some wonderful slides that can only be implied on the piano.
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,_gargoyle Date: 26 Mar 01 - 08:22 PM Whooopsss....getting rusty Hysterics Rag - A Trombone Fit By Paul Biese and F. Henri Klickman |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Bernard Date: 27 Mar 01 - 02:08 AM Simple answer, Garg, it's on my CD! Limited space on my website is another good reason... you could email me via my website, and I could send you the track as an MP3... |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Mrrzy Date: 27 Mar 01 - 09:09 AM THis is great, y'all! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: GUEST,Rag Date: 28 Mar 01 - 07:05 AM Loads of good ragtime players around - on guitar... Try Ton Van Bergeyk whose done loads of very fine Joplin arrangements keeping all the syncopation and most of the harmony. Also the Welsh master of 70s ragtime guitar, John James, though more recently he seems to have steered away from the rags. He did a cracking version of the George Botsford tune Black and White Rag. Then there's the Stefan Grossman stuff though I found a lot of that pretty inaccurate and often incomplete. I spent loads of time trying to arrange Joplin for guitar, figuring out bass lines I then couldn't play. But it's great fun and lively music. It's becoming more popular again at folk clubs and sessions - which is nice. |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Auxiris Date: 29 Mar 01 - 05:43 AM A few years ago, I was a member of the Maple Leaf Club and obtained a copy of Richard Zimmerman's collection, "101 Rare Rags". It gathered dust for several more years until I laid hands on computer software for composing and copying sheet music, as I cannot read music and do not happen to play piano (!). I have deciphered a number of these rare rags now, some of which are real gems---was glad to see that someone mentioned George Botsford, by the way. There are a couple of his compositions in the collection that are cracking good tunes. Long live ragtime music! cheers, Aux
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Bernard Date: 29 Mar 01 - 08:50 AM Yes - George Botsford wrote the Winifred Attwell classic 'Black & White Rag', also used on British TV for the snooker program 'Pot Black'. I can't just remember - did he also write 'Powder Rag' which was adapted (and significantly changed!) by Aurora Block for guitar? I play the original version, 'cos it's better! I'm glad that Ragtime is making a 'comeback' in folk clubs - I learned most of my stuff over 25 years ago, but found people didn't appreciate it. Nowadays I get thunderous applause - they seem to know, now, that it's hard to play even though it looks easy if played properly. I'm not keen on the 'mechanical' players - note perfect, and metronome accurate. It's too clinical, and loses some of the spontaneity that is the very essence of ragtime. Yes, the bass line and accompaniment (generally piano left hand or guitar right thumb) needs to be rock steady, but the syncopated melody needs to have a swing to it - it needs to 'float' independently of the bass. When ragtime is written down, the notes are an indication of how to play it, but the performer needs to add in the 'soul' - his/her own interpretation. At least, that's how I see it!! |
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Subject: RE: Why not play ragtime, piano players? From: Auxiris Date: 29 Mar 01 - 10:10 AM Several other George Botsford rags worthy of note: Hyacinth, Honeysuckle and Texas Steer. cheers, Aux
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