Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Well… I had a major piano development last weekend and somehow didn’t write about it. I PLAYED BACH'S C MAJOR PRELUDE (BWV 846) IN ALL 12 KEYS! Folks, I transposed this baby. No sheet music, no written progressions, no lead sheet. Just what’s been settling into my brain over the past couple of weeks. I’d been experimenting with transposing it here and there, but the switch flipped sometime Saturday evening. I played it from memory in C, then transposed to G. Then F. Then B♭. Then E♭. Those went pretty smoothly, since I've tried transposing to those keys before. But then, at some point, I thought, “What about A♭?” So I tried it ... and it wasn't hard. So I moved on to D♭. Then G♭ (not exactly a friendly key). Still worked. Then B (even less friendly). A few stumbles, but I made it through. Then E, A, and D ... and they felt easy. Then G, then C ... full circle! I was in a serious flow state. Part of it was the prelude itself—I could listen to it all day—but a bigger part was...

In my journey through the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge at Piano with Rebecca B , I’ve reached Day 9 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . Each day of the challenge has a particular topic, and today’s topic was interval timers, so I integrated that into my work on Batches 1 and 3 today. Interval Timers There is a wealth of options (apps) for anyone wanting to use an interval timer, but I just use the timer in my phone clock. Which I guess is another app. Anyway, sometimes I use the timer for interleaving (spending just a few minutes on one section before switching), and other times it’s just to avoid losing track of time. I also track how many minutes I spend on each piece/project, so the timer is essential. Left Hand Work and Interleaving Today I isolated the left hand in both batches. I’ve been practicing mostly hands together, but this is stride. The left hand has to be smooth and steady, with little room for error. It needs to feel automatic at any tempo. I use...

It's Day 8 of the Learn Repertoire Faster Challenge in the Piano with Rebecca B community, and I'm still plugging away at Jonny May's stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . Day 8 Today's assignment focuses on two batches: Batch 1 (revisit; continue to solidify) Batch 3 (analyze, figure out the fingering, start learning) Although I had limited time this morning, I was able to spend about 15 minutes on Batch 1 and about a half hour on Batch 3. Batch 1: Transition Heck I played through the three passages slowly. They’re mostly solid, except for the transitions, of which there are four: Intro → A A → A' A' → B A'' → solo A I walk through these in the video, so just a few notes here: It really sucks when you realize you read the note values wrong the first time and have to relearn a measure. Alas, better late than never. Retroactive interference is real. Even though I worked on all four transitions today, I need to practice them separately (not all in the sam...

It's Day 7 of the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge in the Piano with Rebecca B community ! I'm working on Jonny May's stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . Day 7 Assignments Our assignments for today included: Revisit Batch 1 to see how it's doing Listen to other recordings and note what works (and what doesn't) for me Review  deliberate practice concepts and apply them to Batch 2 Revisiting Batch 1 Batch 1 is holding up! I played through it a couple of times with no real issues. Some measures are more solid than others, and I can feel the urge to speed up creeping in. Tomorrow I'll return to it (along with starting Batch 3) and will start using the metronome to avoid the speed-up-where-it's-easy, slow-down-where-it's-hard pattern. Listening to Other Recordings I found three YouTube performances (besides Jonny's). More detailed thoughts are in the video, but here are my key takeaways: If I don't deliberately bring out the melody in the A sec...

I'm continuing with Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy as part of Rebecca Bogart’s Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge in the Piano With Rebecca B community. Day 6 The theme for today's challenge is "Try Something New." Ironically, that led me back to something very old: a tried-and-true classical exercise—practicing in chunks of 2, 3, 4, and even 5 notes to smooth out scale and arpeggio passages. The "new" part was shifting into classical mode. Or at least what I think of as classical mode—that focused, nose-to-the-grindstone mindset that says, "I'm going to do whatever it takes to make this two-measure section perfect." I set aside the part of my brain that wants to analyze, improvise, and arrange, and just focused on the notes. It was refreshing. I've been doing so much improvisation and arranging lately that it felt good to sit down, look at the page, and say, "Music, just tell me what to do, and I will do it! "...

This evening I reviewed the B section from this morning and considered changing it from yellow to red (after changing it from green to yellow this morning). I kept it yellow, but it has definitely given me more of a challenge than I expected. Working on the Solo A Section After that, I moved on to the solo A section. The two passages in this batch are four measures each, and the smaller sections definitely made my practice sessions more manageable. I spent 15 minutes on each passage, using the following techniques: Practicing in tiny chunks/rhythms: Because this section has some scale and arpeggio work, it made sense to practice in small chunks, or rhythms as I call it. This is very similar to one of the techniques Rebecca recommends for speed. I'm not going for speed right now so much as muscle memory, and this technique is good for that. Memory: Because we're looking at scales and arpeggios, this section has been easier to memorize. I can't say I can play the whole thing...