I had hoped to put three hours a day into piano this weekend, and I came close! I put in FOUR hours on Saturday, but then I only practiced an hour and a half on Sunday. I had dropped my daughter off at volleyball practice at 1:00, but then she got sick, so I had to go pick her up and take her home. And then I had to be back at the gym (about 20 minutes away) for a 2:30 parent meeting, and then I had to do the week's grocery shopping on my way home. So I pretty much drove back and forth yesterday from 12:30 to almost 4:00. Because I had a sick child, I made a big pot of homemade creamy chicken noodle soup for dinner, which took up a good part of the late afternoon. And then after dinner, we put up the Christmas tree and further decorated for Christmas. By the time all that was done, I only had energy to sit on the couch, pet the cats, and look at the pretty tree while we listened to Christmas music. I did practice early yesterday morning, though, and I got some good work done. I'
I suppose I should think about my weekend piano goals. It looks to be a good weekend for practicing. Technique I've been doing a smattering of different things for technique lately. I started Czerny's Op. 849 (Thirty New Studies in Technics) and have been workinng on the first exercise for the past few days. I also have my Oscar Peterson book and the usual scales, arpeggios, inversions, Hanon, and octave exercises. I've been putting about 15% of my practice time into technique this month, and I think I can already tell the difference. My main technique goal will be to master Exercise 1 of Czerny . I can play it at quarter note=80, but the recommend tempo is HALF NOTE=100. So, quarter note=200!! That will probably be impossible for me, but I'd like to get it to a nice, fast tempo. The Entertainer This one is sounding good--amazing, actually, considering I've only been working on it for two weeks, and not every day. It's come back and is pretty solid except for a