Picking Up the Pieces

For the past three years, the period from mid-November to late March has been devoted, in part, to volleyball, as my daughter played on a club team. She’s never been a power player, but she enjoyed being part of the team and making friends along the way. My husband and I loved it too—the parent friends, the travel, the memories, and, of course, watching our kid play! And as a volleyball enthusiast, I always looked forward to the games. My #34, on the court with her 15s teammates last season. A Time for Change This year, I knew things would change. I’m now on the coaching staff for her club and had asked to be the assistant coach for whatever team she was on, provided she decided to try out (which was uncertain) and made a team. She had been waffling all year about whether to try out. A bad experience with her coach last year made her swear off volleyball, but a good JV season at school gave her some renewed interest. When two of her good friends said they were trying out, she decided...

I'll be playing my Liszt at the next performance workshop on the Piano With Rebecca B platform. The workshop is November 1, and I'm happy with this piece is for now. My focus between now and then will be on practicing to perform . I think I know what to do, but I'm still going to review Molly Gebrian 's  chapters on performance, as well as Rebecca's own video . I'm sure there are tips I've forgotten. For now, here is the "progress post" I shared with the PWJ community today. It's not perfect, but I still think it sounds beautiful. What's the Beethoven quote? "To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable"? I do play this piece with passion. And love. Listening dispassionately right now, I see a few spots I'd like to improve (aside from the missed notes), so I'll work on those as I prepare for the performance. Can't wait!

(Warning: Cheesy Metaphor Below!) This weekend was glorious for piano. Despite my wrist hurting, I managed to put almost four hours into piano on Saturday and Sunday. I never spent more than about 30 minutes on a piece/project, and most of my sessions were just 10 or 15 minutes. In other words, I practiced in bits and pieces. With several projects this month (including three new ones), I'm taking the approach of planting seeds and watering them regularly. The Cheesy (or Flowery) Metaphor It doesn't take long to plant a seed, and it takes even less time to water it. Yet, with sunlight, good soil, and regular watering, the plant will grow. The good soil is my foundation of music and piano knowledge and experience. The sunlight is the goals I'm working and growing toward. And the watering? Those are my short but focused practice sessions. The invisible growth of the plant is my brain working on everything when I'm away from the piano. In my non-piano life, I trust that the...

One unexpected benefit of this little practice blog? It’s like having a time machine. Sure, I can hear how much I’ve improved (always encouraging on those days when progress feels invisible). But the real surprise is this: I can stumble across ideas I once played, loved ... and then totally forgot about. Case in point: today. I uploaded yesterday's take on the You Are My Sunshine Rag to YouTube. Then, out of curiosity, I went back to my version from two months ago , just to check that I wasn’t repeating myself. (Before yesterday, I don't think I'd touched the piece since then.) Here's what I found: The rag roll section is much more solid now. The little curlicue ending ... still shaky. The best part: I had completely forgotten that, in August, my right hand arpeggiates up an octave halfway through the chorus. It is delightful, and I can't believe I'd forgotten about it! So I'm going to bring back that little arpeggiation next time! For now, here’s yesterday...

September had a slow start, but I still logged 37.1 hours of practice, averaging about 1.2 hours a day! My top projects were Liszt (7.1 hours), Bare Necessities (6 hours), technique (6 hours), America the Beautiful Rag (3.1 hours), and the PWJ Lead Sheets course (3 hours). I also kicked off Honky Tonk Women and worked on St. Louis Blues/G blues improv. September Highlights In the past month, I managed to: Prepare Liszt for my upcoming Piano With Rebecca performance this Saturday. Master Jonny’s St. Louis Blues Challenge. Keep my maintenance pieces performance-ready. Start reviving Jingle Bells Rag for the holidays. Be seriously inspired by Chuck Leavell’s live performance ! Realize I want to shift focus away from " playing by the dots " and more toward improvising, arranging, composing, and playing by ear. Revive Bare Necessities to near-performance level—check out this video of the first section! (Apologies for the weird angle!)    I also hit my percentage goals and made sol...

As October approaches, I’m already thinking about which Christmas song to add to my repertoire this year. (I’ll share a September recap and October goals soon, but today’s focus is on my holiday project.) Last year, I tackled "Jingle Bells Rag," which I started learning in September. It was a challenging piece, but I managed to have performance-ready by Christmas. Here it is, in all its glory, including one charming flub at the end: This year, in my efforts to get away from complicated reading-by-the-dots pieces, I'd like to do something a little simpler, and a little more flexible--something that allows for creativity and doesn't demand hours of passage-drilling. Sadly, this rules out my initial idea: Jonny May's "Silent Night Rumba" in the style of Dr. John. It's delightful (listen to it here ), but it's too intricate and challenging for my timeline, especially if I want to balance other projects. Instead I'm considering three options for m...