The Entertainer (from Bastien book?)
This was recorded Sept. 7th, 2023, for Jessica, one of my students. This is an arrangement of the much-more-difficult original composition by Scott Joplin. (I'm not sure where the music for this came from, but it look like a piece in the Bastien series of piano method books.) One of the most famous pieces from the rag time era, it has the syncopated "ragged" rhythms that are a hallmark of this style. I am reading the sheet music from a monitor just to my right. I tried my very best to keep my eyes on the music, glancing down at my hands only when necessary when shifting positions. You might notice a couple of small mistakes, but in general I followed the dynamics written in the arrangement, while adding some expressive use of tempo and dynamics to give the piece my inidividual interpretation. For example, repeated notes or chords are made more interesting by using crescendi or diminuendi.