P#1 Stream of Praise (Piano) 赞美之泉 钢琴曲

Recorded on March 14, 2015. After having followed the Alfred’s adult piano course books for three years, I made a radical decision to learn a popular worship song called “Stream of Praise” [1]. A decade ago, I first learned how to sing this song when I was an assistant professor at New Mexico Tech, where minister Anna Tai [4] shared a Stream of Praise CD with me. I have listened this CD more than a few hundred times. The music video of this spiritual and emotional song can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIt9n2Wjlf8 [1] on YouTube.

Click the following link to download the sheet music of “Stream of Praise” from my Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/xqin....74/p1-stream-of-prai

It is worth mentioning that this song is a simple piano version of “Stream of Praise”. An advanced version of the song can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAOrSvexSJ8 [3]. It must take me at least 50 hours to learn this advanced version.

This video is a pilot project for me, because “Stream of Praise” is the first song I learned outside the Alfred’s-piano-book world. When I stayed away from Alfred’s piano books, I faced three grand challenges. First, it is non-trivial to choose a song that meets my current skill level. Second, there is no fingering suggestion marked on the sheet music. Last, no sample video found on YouTube. I tried various finger positions before finalizing my own style, which is marked on the sheet music posted in this video.

I am grateful to my colleague – Dr. Jeffrey Overbey [2] – for teaching me the correct finger positions of bars 4-5. I was amazed by Dr. Overbey’s sight reading skill; he read the sheet music for two seconds and immediately played the song. It took me over 19 hours to learn and practice; in contrast, he could play this song by sight-reading on the first attempt.

I would like to express my gratitude to Mike eKim (https://www.youtube.com/user/mbut123) [5], who offered insightful advice on how to play the first five measures. Mike demonstrated how to play these bars in a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QeTQFviE88) posted on his YouTube channel [6].

I would like to thank Sean Fox for his advice on the fingering and tempo issues. He pointed out that I should play the sixteenth notes in bars 4-5 faster.

Bars 1-5 are very difficult; I could not make them musically sound until a practice of two hours. Fortunately, Mike's magic fingering position solved this problem (see [6] for the solution). Currently, I am learning how to play and sing at the same time. Ying enjoys singing this song when I play it on our piano.

The recording success rate is 19.2%, which is slightly higher than that (i.e., 12.5%) of the previous song. The tempo of this song is 83 BPM, which is marginally faster than the ideal one (i.e., 80 BPM).

A Summary of the Learning Process:

Tempo: 83 BPM (Ideal tempo: 80 BPM)
Recording: 47 minutes (26 takes, 5 acceptable videos)
Success Rate: 5/26 = 19.2%

How to partition this piece?
Like how I learned “L3#11 Swan Lake”, I tackled this song by focusing on three measures at a time. It took me a total of 3 hours 43 minutes to learn all the measures. The difficult portion lies in bars 1-5. No pedaling issue should be addressed in this song. In the sheet music posted in this video, I marked fingering suggestions. Please let me know if you come up a better fingering plan.
(1) Bars 1-5: 1 hour and 48 minutes
(2) Bars 6-8: 40 minutes
(3) Bars 9-11 = 20 minutes
(4) Bars 12-14: 15 minutes
(5) Bars 15-17: 20 minutes
(6) Bars 18-21: 20 minutes

How to put it all together?
I follow seven steps to put it all together. It took me 16 hours 9 minutes to accomplish the put-it-all-together phase. The amount of time spent in practicing each part is summarized below.
(1) Bars 1-9: 1 hour 20 minutes
(2) Bars 6-13: 2 hours and 45 minutes
(3) Bars 6-17: 1 hour and 16 minutes
(4) Bars 6-21: 5 hours
(5) Bars 1-7: 48 minutes
(6) Bars 1-21 (Final Integration): 5 hours

Learned on: March 2–14, 2015
Hours of Learning: 19 hours 52 min
Started Playing Piano: Feb 10, 2012
Total Hours Played: 1082 hours
Piano: Yamaha P22
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References
[1] Stream of Praise 赞美之泉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIt9n2Wjlf8
[2] Jeffrey Overbey http://jeff.over.bz/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffoverbey
http://www.eng.auburn.edu/comp..../staff/faculty.html#
[3] 讚美之泉 Stream of Praise - Piano Solo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAOrSvexSJ8
[4] Anna Tai and Grace Chinese Fellowship. http://mwmissions.org/templates/System/details.asp?id=43473&PG=album&LID=11618
[5] Mike ekiM's YouTube Chanel: https://www.youtube.com/user/mbut123
[6] Stream of Praise bar 1-3 by Mike ekiM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QeTQFviE88