Picking Up the Pieces

 How have I managed to go a week without posting here? The good news is that I've been practicing. I've also been working from home for the last few days. At work, when it's time for a break, I open Notepad and work on my next blog post. At home, I practice piano (or do laundry). I've made a few tweaks to the November goals over the past week. Here are the original goals, compared to the updated ones: Below is a summary of the changes. Taking Jingle Bells Rag Out of Maintenance I had moved this one to maintenance, thinking I would just play it a few times every few days and move on. But then I found that I really wanted to work on it, and I needed to spend a lot more time on it than I'd allotted. So I pulled it back out of maintenance, made it a main piece, and gave it a 15% goal. Decreasing Other Percentage Goals To give Jingle Bells Rag that 15%, I had to decrease my percentage goals for The Entertainer, Blues, and Maintenance. The Entertainer: A 5% decrease was a

It really helped me to write yesterday's blog post . I was feeling frustrated with my lack of progress this month, despite having some good, intense practices, as well as a few days where I worked over two hours at the piano. Laying everything out and seeing how truly all-over-the-place my priorities have been, it made sense. So I felt better. Most importantly, I'm able to make changes for November. Below are my goals, broken down by project. I still think I may be a little too diversified this month. If that's the case, I will set The Entertainer aside until later. (But I hope I can keep all of these plates spinning.) Liszt, Liebesträume: 25% This is going to be a major focus for November. This is one of my dream pieces, and I think I'm ready to start working on it. It's a brand-new piece for me, and I may end up having to adjust this one's percentage to 30%. I'll know in a week or so. Blues Theory and Practice: 25% As I wrote yesterday, I've felt very

Time to do some serious thinking about my November goals. October was pretty much a wash. If I look at where I was in my October goals post from a few weeks ago ... I really haven't moved forward all that much. Granted, we had a hurricane and I lost a week of practice. But, even with many days of an hour or more at the piano, I really didn't make any significant strides. Even after I took "Liebesträume" out of the running. Why? It's the Fire Hose, Dummy It's the age-old problem: I have too many projects, and not enough time. I've been drinking out of the proverbial fire hose. Even if I average 2 hours of practice a day (currently, I'm averaging about 1.5), I can't make the kind of progress I want to make. So, I need to either (a) increase my practice time, or (b) lower my expectations. Or (c) limit my projects even more. Realistically, I can't increase my practice time all that much. I can shoot for an average of 2 hours a day, but I'll be

When I went to Facebook this morning, I saw that a pianist and singer named Gordon Mote will be performing at a local church tomorrow night. I'd never heard of him, so I went to YouTube to see if I might be interested in seeing his performance. Wow. I'm going. Not only is he a great pianist, but he's hilarious. And he's blind. How can I miss this? I may drag my teenage daughter with me because I don't want to go by myself. Here is just one of his videos. There are many more. I've watched about three so far, and will be listening to him as I work for the rest of the day.

I don't have many words to type today. This morning I decided to return to Bare Necessities, which I haven't really worked on for a couple of months. I've worked on my stride piano technique a lot with Jingle Bells, but I've purposely kept BN in the background, thinking it would be good to take a break from it. I had it to a good tempo, but not the goal tempo. So what better than to let it marinate, or maybe simmer, for a while on low while I worked on other things? So, I returned to it this morning, and it was one big practice session of frustration. Did the practice do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. Am I on the verge of a breakthrough, in the deep darkness that comes before dawn? Maybe. Probably not. I don't know where I am, or what to think, or what to do. There is very little piano-playing in this 5:39 video. It's mostly me whining and being frustrated. I'd planned to make a series of videos this morning of my progress in getting BN back up to speed ... but

I started the major blues scale course at PWJ a few weeks ago, and I (sadly) haven't given it as much time as I should. It's also been challenging. In this video, I'm playing a few different versions of the scale, all using the same I∆-vi7-ii7-V7 progression in the left hand: swung 8th notes with chord shells/Charleston rhythm in the left hand 16th notes with chord shells (I was thinking in triplets with Charleston, but the result sounded like 16ths Weird.) 16th notes with whole notes in the LH accompaniment (Note: I recorded this at 5 a.m., so I had the piano volume on low ... which is why you can hear my fingers thumping on the keys.) Why This Was Hard I: The Scale This was not easy to learn! First, there was the matter of the scale. The C major and minor scales are very automatic for me because I've been playing them for years. The C minor blues scale has also become very automatic, as I've been improvising on it every day for the better part of a year. But the