Goals Recap for February

Here is my goals recap for February. I didn't really start February with discernible goals, so I'll just list the accomplishments.

I have learned "Misty." It's still a little shaky in places and I don't think I'll get to the soloing element of the challenge, but I will have it solid and ready to perform/video for the PWJ Facebook group by the end of this weekend.
I can play through the nocturne. Now it is time to memorize anything I haven't memorized, and really work on getting the difficult sections feeling smooth and natural.
I can play through Maple Leaf Rag. As with the nocturne, it's now just a matter of memorizing anything that isn't memorized (i.e., the transistion sections and the D section), getting things up to speed, and working in any stylistic touches I want to include.
I've gotten pretty good at major sevenths, both playing them and understanding them. I enjoy doing the exercises, and they will now be part of my standard warmup.
The 2-5-1 progressions with color tones have come along as well. I'll keep doing those regularly, but I'm also ready to branch out into using them in lead sheets. This is a major thing I want to talk about with Quentin at the jazz lesson tomorrow night.
According to my PWJ practice log, I have practiced 34 hours and 14 minutes in the past month. I still have two more days, so that will be 36 or so hours by the time February comes to an end. I've been practicing every morning before work, anywhere between 20 and 45 minutes, depending on when I can get started. In the evenings, I'll usually practice another 30 minutes to an hour if there's time. All in all, I averaged a little over an hour a day of practice in February.

I'll be posting my March goals soon. Life outside of piano feels like a train wreck, but in the world of piano? Things are humming. I'm excited about developing my March goals and beginning work toward them this weekend.

Comments

Rethinking Bare Necessities

Today's breakthrough moment (there are actually two of them) focuses on "Bare Necessities." As you'll remember, I discovered Jonny May's arrangement back in early March and immediately decided to learn it. I printed out the music, started the course, and proceeded to learn the stride section, posting a few videos of my progress. Ha. I bet those videos make it look like I was making progress. I guess I was ... but not really. And I realized something this weekend that I hadn't before: Because I was thinking of "Bare Necessities" as a "fun" piece, I wasn't practicing it seriously or diligently. I wasn't treating it as something I wanted to master. This mindset might work with an easier piece, but this arrangement isn't easy. The result: despite a little progress at the outset, I wasn't moving forward. I was stalled. Breakthrough #1 The first breakthrough was realizing that if I truly want to learn this piece and play it well,

Maple Leaf Rag Breakthrough

Oh, Maple Leaf. Where to begin? At the Beginning I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I learned the A and B sections of Maple Leaf Rag back in the 1990s. I can’t tell you if it was early, mid- or late 90s, but it was during those 10 years after I’d graduated college, when I was playing a good bit of piano but not taking regular lessons from anyone. I don’t remember teaching it to myself at all. I just know that, at some point, the first half of Maple Leaf Rag was part of my two- or three-song repertoire of pieces I’d be able to play by memory over the next 25 years. It was always sloppy and I knew it, but people loved it, and so I played it if there was ever a piano around. Back in January, I decided to properly re-learn those two sections, and to finally learn the C and D sections of this wonderful piece. I worked on these over the next month or two, learning (and-relearning) the notes pretty quickly ... but it took time to memorize, and also to get everything to tempo surpassing a

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, it's not going to open the lock. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little ro

Picking Up the Pieces

Search This Blog