Picking Up the Pieces

I didn't have a very long practice tonight. I'm a little disturbed about what a challenge it's been to speeding up my scales and arpeggios . I can play them perfectly up to a certain tempo, but if I try to go past that tempo, my hands just start slapping at the keys, not even trying to hit the right notes. It's as if they're saying, "I can't do this, so I'm not even going to try. So there. Blah." I think I have some idea of the reason for this strange problem. I know the notes. I don't think it's an issue of not knowing what notes to play. I think part of the issue relates to the fact that I've been slowly, over the last year or two, adopting a new technique of relaxed hands and using my arms more and my fingers less. My hands don't seem to understand how to unite "relaxed" mode with "playing really fast" mode. My hands almost feel lazy. I worked on the Suzuki Beethoven some. Not much to report there. For the f...

I spent the day in Charlotte for the Thunder Road Half-Marathon. Didn't get to practice piano, though I did play a bit on my birthmom's keyboard that afternoon.

Only an hour or so of practice tonight. I've been feeling a little depressed and sluggish and wasn't in the mood for practicing. I fell apart on scales and arps again. I ended up spending quite a bit of time on them, particularly the scales (Gb and eb). I tend to mess up in the same spot in the LH, no matter what scale I'm playing, regardless of whether I'm in major or minor. I worked through that LH spot, worked in rhythms, played it very slowly, etc., and then was able to play the scale perfectly at 88. I still feel a little "shaky" about it, though. I played through the Suzuki Beethoven . Didn't really practice it. Went straight to the fugue and learned four new measures. Yes, four! I saved the easiest least complex page for last, and it was nice to be able to learn four measures in just ten or so minutes. I worked on tone quality and emphasizing the "leader" in the first page of the prelude . Played very slowly. I ended up picking the tw...

During practice sessions, certain questions arise regarding fingering, dynamics, etc. Sometimes I write them down on a scrap of paper. Usually I bring them up at a lesson if I remember them. But I've started to write them down in the notebook where Deborah writes all of her notes at my lesson. I used to feel like this notebook was something almost sacred, something I didn't want to sully with my dumb questions, but that's changing. I'm feeling more and more like Deborah and I are a team, rather than Wise Teacher on the Holy Mountain and Lowly, Groveling, Ignorant Student. Anyway, I write the questions on the page she'll be writing on at the next lesson so she can't miss them and I can't forget to ask them. That's how the lesson started today. Only one question was "Liszt: IT Dynamics?" And I couldn't remember, for the life of me, what "IT" was supposed to mean. On to my lesson report! Inversions sounded fine. I fell apart, howeve...

Hm. That title can be taken two ways: either I gambled with the devil, or I had a very soulful practice tonight. You can guess which one it is. Can't figure it out? Read on. Scales, Arps, Inversions, Suzuki, blah, blah, blah: Good, good, good. Everything's good. Liszt: Ahhhh. I normally save Franzi for last (read: the last 10 minutes of a 60+ minute practice session), so I worked on "Standchen" first tonight. Went back to the quasi Violoncello and focused (again) on the dynamics and articulation. Actually I played through it, s-l-o-w-l-y, a couple of times to make sure I wasn't missing any notes (in this section, I think because there is so much hand-crossing, I sometimes fail to strike the LH notes hard enough). Then I played isolated sections of the quasi Violoncello , again very s-l-o-w-l-y, really, really concentrating on the dynamics and articulation. Then I listened to the Horowitz version from the Horowitz at Home CD and followed along with the music, ...

Friends, I would not have practiced tonight if I hadn't promised myself to update this blog every day, whether I practice or not. But I did practice! And I'm glad I did. I actually practiced a total of about two hours , give or take a few minutes, today. Scales sound good. Arps sound pretty good. D Major, of all keys, gave me trouble. Hm. Inversions : I think I might be swinging too much. I've started leaning my weight into the keys. Not enough that it would be obvious to a non-pianist, but enough that I notice it. Liszt : I actually practiced Liszt several times today. Worked on the "boring" quasi Violoncello part. I started paying more attention to the accent marks (pressure marks?) and slurs, and it wasn't so boring after that. It was challenging. But I have a host of questions for Deborah now. Bach Prelude : Worked on page two. Drilled the poop out of it. Drilled the poop out of the transitions. I've been playing page two pretty well, but I get a ner...

Good practice tonight. Scales and arps are sounding good, even at the faster speeds. I worked on both the prelude and the fugue tonight. For the prelude, I drilled a few measures on page two, and for the fugue, I reviewed those last three measures, then went to work on a HT measure elsewhere in the piece. For the Liszt, I did a bit of drilling here and there, and they played the piece through a few times, thinking about the architecture. I think this creative visualization thing is working. Each time I play through it, it feels "bigger" somehow. What I really want to write about for this entry, though, is a tiny breakthrough that I've been observing lately. It's been a long time coming, and I really noticed it yesterday when I was playing at church. It has to do with hand positions, finger curve, gestures, etc. Ever since I started taking lessons from Deborah three years ago, she has been after me to relax my hands, to use more than just my fingers and wrists when I p...

It's that time of year again. This morning for church I practiced "Oh Come All Ye Faithful,"Emmanuel," and a few others. We're supposed to do "Go Tell It On the Mountain," but I don't have the music to it ... so I went through my old music and found a book of Christmas Carols for Level Four Piano, edited by David Carr Glover. I wrote down the chords, and voila! I now have the music. I think Christmas carols are tricky, partly because we only play them for three weeks out of the year. So it's almost like I re-learn them every December, and I never feel like I quite have them down. I've always found "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" particularly difficult to play well, since the chords change with nearly every beat. The bad thing is that everyone knows these pieces, so the pressure's on to play them exactly right--to give them what they're used to hearing. The good thing is that people generally sing Christmas carols so loudly and ...

Today's practice wasn't much of a practice. I had to work most of the day and am too tired tonight to practice. But I did sneak in about twenty minutes earlier today to play through those last three measures of the fugue. The notes are starting to feel more natural to my hands. I still have some work to do before they feel *completely* natural. The plan? Spend another 10 or 15 minutes (no more) on them, with the goal of memorizing them, and then move on to other measures. No other practicing today. Tomorrow morning I hope to get an hour in before practicing the music for church.

I hope I'm not overdoing it. I practiced for about 110 minutes tonight. I'm so very tired, but I want to post a quick report while everything is still fresh in my mind. The second-to last measure of the fugue is perhaps the most difficult complex single measure I've ever played. Deborah said to spend "about 10 minutes" learning each measure. Um, Deborah? This one took me thirty minutes. Okay, thirty-five. If there's any one thing I've learned as a pianist, it's HUMILITY. I spent the bulk of tonight's practice on the Fugue. The last line (final three measures) is a toughie complex bit of music, but I finally managed it. Each new set of rhythms was a challenge. I felt disoriented each time I started a new rhythm. Completely disoriented. Thinking, "What is this piece? Am I in the right fugue? Is this the music I thought was so familiar, once upon a time?" Once I got that last line, I realized something: I now only have a page and a half l...

Friends, you won't believe this. I actually practiced for about 100 minutes tonight. All because I knew I'd decided, once again, to be accountable to this blog. I'm tired, though, so this will be a short practice report. Scales : D major and B minor at 88. The slight increase in speed has made for a bigger adjustment than you'd expect. Here's how each scale went the first time I played them: Phase I: 2 octaves, parallel motion: Lovely. Phase II: 2 octaves, (outward) contrary motion: Not bad a-tall. Until maybe the last five notes of the octave. Phase III: 2 octaves, (inward) contrary motion: The first five notes (the same five that tripped me up in Phase II) are a problem. Phase IV: 2 octaves, parallel motion: Lovely. Except for those same five notes. Oh, and those five notes? They're a LH issue. Though they're probably a RH issue, too, since I can play the LH alone perfectly. If I add the RH and try to focus on the LH and let the RH just play, then the RH ...

Today's 1.5-hour lesson included a lot of talking, but in a good way. I love my piano teacher. It was a great lesson, even though it was mostly talking. Today's theme seemed to be "Trust Yourself." See, I have very little faith in my ability to play well. Have you ever thought you looked good in a certain outfit, then, when you saw pictures of yourself in it, thought, "Oh, horrors! Why did I ever think that turquoise jumpsuit looked good on me? My butt looks like Mars!" OK, maybe you've never had that experience. But try to imagine. I've always been very critical of myself, not just in piano. When I don't play well, I know it. When I do play something well ... I know it. I can feel it. Or I think I can. And the other week in the group piano class, I thought I played the Prelude and the Liszt well. Not perfectly, of course, but beautifully. Then ... later ... I wondered ... "What if I just thought I sounded good? What if I really sounded ...

I forgot to write about accountability in that last post. I'm supposed to be practicing right now, so I'll make this short. I want to try to post here every day. If I fail to make time for piano, I'll write about it here. So, I'm going to be accountable to this blog, and to you, dear readers (all three of you!). I hate the idea of writing down something like, "I chose to watch "Law and Order" reruns rather than practice today." But if that's what happens, I'm going to write it down. Now I'm going to go practice. Bach is a-calling!

I've been practicing in fits and starts lately. I am so mad at myself. I don't know why I do this. I love piano and I love practicing, but for some stupid reason, I fail to make it a priority, day after day after day. Why? I think part of it has to do with where I am in each piece. I'm slogging through every last one of them. I have all the notes, and learning them was no small task. But now it's time to work on the hard stuff: tone, dynamics, articulation, articulation, articulation, and gestures, gestures, gestures. Those last ones are the big challenges for me. Oh, and pedaling in the Liszt. So, I've come a long way from the starting point, and I've thought I've seen glimpses of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. (I know. It's all light. It's the journey not the destination. But geez.) At this point, I just feel like I'm slogging. Trying to make my way through a swamp of notes and rests and pedaling and dynamics. Progress comes, bu...

Yes, I've been practicing. I just haven't been posting. So here's a quick post, then I need to get to work on my novel critiques for class. Lately I've been focusing on the Bach Prelude in C#-major. This is the "deceptively easy" piece. This is the piece that is "ridiculously easy" compared to its companion, the C#-major fugue. Thing is, a lot of things are "ridiculously easy" compared to the C#-major fugue. The Prelude is tricky. It's complex in places. It's miraculous. It's moving. It's Bach . 'Nuff said. I can play it through, at a relatively slow tempo. I know this piece very well--I've marveled at the simplicity of the chords and progressions, I've memorized the fingering as well as I've ever memorized anything, and I've played individual measures and sections a million times. If it were simply a matter of playing the notes, I would be 80% there, with "tempo" as my primary remaining goal. A...

The Center for Art and Music is a huge music store in Wintersville, Ohio (the Hubster's hometown, and my location for the next few days). On the main floor are an art studio, musical instruments for sale, gobs of sheet music and instructional materials, cheesy music-themed gifts that piano teachers get showered with every Christmas, and several "studio rooms" with baby grand piano, where lessons are taught in the afternoon. On the bottom floor is the "Piano Showcase," a room with six or eight clavinovas, a dozen or so consoles and/or studios, and about eight baby grands. Yesterday the Hubster and I stopped by to ask if I could possibly "borrow" one of their pianos for practicing. The woman seemed a little uncertain discouraging bemused at our request and said "Maybe, but you need to talk to our piano guy." Okay. So Piano Guy came out and was very nice and said, "Of course you can practice here. No one uses our teaching studios in the ...

I'm going to go practice right now. I really am. After I eat some lunch and before I go running. Piano. Priority. Piano. Priority. Practice. Practice. Practice.

It arrived via UPS today! It's published by Sikorski Musikverlage in Hamburg, Germany, so everything is in German. Good thing music is a universal language! Known as " Dance of the Dolls ," "Dances of the Dolls," or "Seven Dolls' Dances," this suite is taken from orchestral arrangements of Shostakovich orchestral works. I don't know which works ... but I will know soon. Just give me some time to research them! This is definitely an easier collection than anything I've played in a long time, and I am thrilled about that. I sight-read all 22 pages tonight (total of seven miniatures), and nothing in it seems too technically difficult. Ah ... but the interpretation is going to be the fun part! And I do mean fun . You can hear excerpts from a few of the selections here . Practiced about two hours yesterday and about three hours today (not including the leisurely Shostakovich sight-read). I'm really working on the relaxation techniques in P...

I say that my blog sabbatical is over, but the truth is, I'm going to be computer-less and piano-less all weekend. I'm posting tonight and I hope to post tomorrow, but I won't be able to practice or post again until Monday. So I'll write a really long post now ... to make up for my dismal lack of posts recently, and to give my huge audience (ha) something to chew on for the next few days. :) Enough of that. On to the combined lesson/practice report. My lesson was yesterday. Deborah played me a Ginastera piece she is working on. She's exhilarated at how everything has unfolded regarding her upcoming concert in Asheville. The local NPR station is now sponsoring it as a benefit, and they're going to take care of a lot of the marketing. She's playing an all-Spanish program (composers from the Americas and Spain), with an emphasis on tango. Just a couple of days ago, the Asheville Citizen-Times ran an article on the growing popularity of tango ... so the local N...

I'm really tired tonight, so I'm just going to write a quick log for today's practice. I only got to spend about 45 minutes at the piano tonight. I mostly worked on adding another couple of measures of the fugue . I did a lot of drilling, but it didn't seem like my mind was registering it. I was just really tired, possibly because I did a longer-than-usual run today (5 miles). I'm rearranging my schedule tomorrow so that I practice the Liszt first, and during the day rather than at night after dinner. I hope to devote the after-dinner practice to JSB, and then have another practice on Wednesday before my afternoon lesson. Time to get some sleep!

Practiced for about 80 minutes. The usual warm-ups, plus some of the fugue and a lot of the Liszt with no pedal and much exactitude. It was a good practice. Went longer than I'd planned, which was nice because I won't be able to practice again until Monday at the earliest.

Good lesson today. Deborah and I usually chat up a storm before we get around to music, but that didn't happen today. We just dove right into the lesson. Scales and arpeggios were fine. When we got to Suzuki, I told her I didn't want to do Suzuki anymore, that I felt that the time required wasn't equal to the benefit it was giving me. I knew she wouldn't be happy to hear that. But it's true--I hate taking valuable practice time to work on something that I believe is, honestly, not challenging enough. Particularly when I have a Liszt transcription and a fugue to work on. She compromised. She said, "OK, maybe some of these pieces are too easy for you, but I want you to try the Beethoven sonatina at the end of the book." At two pages and with two movements, it's the longest piece in Suzuki Book II. So I guess I'll get started listening to that. I played my twelve and a half measures of the Bach and she basically said to keep on doing what I'm doin...

I only managed about 30 minutes at the piano today, but I did work on the Liszt. I'm posting this on Thursday morning and my piano lesson is this afternoon, so I'll write more about my progress after my lesson.

I was able to squeeze in 30 minutes of practice-time tonight, but I'm afraid I didn't make very efficient use of my time. Normally I'm Little Miss Efficiency when it comes to practicing, since I normally have so little time as it is. I planned to work on the Liszt tonight. So, naturally, I walked into the Inner Sanctum, plopped the Bach fugue onto the piano, and began practicing. There's something wrong with this picture, isn't there. Folks, I am a fugue-aholic. The fugue is like a big, juicy zit, and I can't stop picking at it. OK, maybe that's not the best simile for it. Zits are gross, infected, pus-filled things. The fugue is transcendent. Divine. A work of genius. Yep, the fugue went and got transcendent on me again tonight. I worked on the two "end pieces" of the section I've been working on HT for the last hundred years few weeks. Measures 14 and 15 were still good, but the measures at the end needed work. So I worked. Got the kinks ...

Spent 80 minutes practicing so far today, and I'm hoping I'll be able to grab another hour at the piano this evening. Scales sound good. OK, so g# gave me some trouble, but I did a little bit of 9-8 and did a little bit of playing in rhythms, and voila! it sounded fine after that. Arpeggios sound pretty good, too. I've always been better at scales than arpeggios ... maybe that's just the way it's supposed to be. As always, they sound good but not great to my ears. Inversions are becoming much smoother. Triad inversions (plus the 4-note dominant seventh) are easy enough to play, but I've started playing the triads in octaves (4 notes). That makes it a little harder. The familiar focus has to shift. Sometimes the results aren't so great. I can now play twelve and a half measures of the fugue ! It doesn't sound like much, but it's a nice little chunk of music. I started with mm 25-26, then went back and worked on mm 14-15 (the two measures before t...

First of all, my lack of posts doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of practice, though my summer-glut of monster practice-sessions seems to have tapered off a bit. Thursday night, I went to a cocktail party and met Russian pianist Konstantin Soukhovetski. Friday around 1:00, my parents came over. My dad went off to play golf with the Hubster while my mom and I visited and made a cobbler. That evening, we all had dinner and dessert to celebrate my dad's birthday. (Though I later got a message from Konstantin's host asking if I wanted to hear Konstantin practice Friday afternoon ... argh! Too late!) I did get to practice for about an hour on Friday night, but most of it was devoted to the music I would be playing on Sunday morning at church (though I also did the usual scales, arps, and inversions, plus a couple of play-throughs of the Liszt). Saturday wasn't a day for practicing. I made chocolate truffles for part of the day in preparation for the "Classics and Choc...

I practiced for about 60 minutes tonight. I'd had a glass of wine with my husband at dinner to celebrate the bonu$ he got today, so I was feeling a little woozy when I sat down tonight to practice. I didn't expect a very good practice because I wasn't feeling quite alert enough for a good practice. Went through scales, arps, and inversions with my eyes closed. Literally. Just resting my eyes, I was. And the inversions sounded a lot better than usual. Usually, I'm scurrying to get the four fingers in the right place each inversion, and tonight I just played through them with a Zen-like calm. Weird. Wonderful, but weird. I played through Suzuki a couple of times, then moved on to the fugue . What a great practice. It started off rather slow, but it ended up ... transforming. My goal for the night was the tail end of measure 24. This is shortly after the bass voice has rejoined the soprano and alto. It's tricky, with the bass holding a note while the alto plays, an...

I sneaked into the Inner Sanctum for about twenty minutes this morning to play through Standchen a couple of times. Ahhh ... it is sounding good. If a person who knew nothing about piano were to listen to me, they would be impressed. It still needs a lot of work, but I've definitely moved up a rung with this piece in the last week or so. No time for Bach ... I'm hoping to make time tonight.

Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be nice if I had a million dollars, too? :) I practiced for 120 minutes tonight. The time flew by. I started at 8:00, took a break from the Liszt at what I thought was 9:00, and realized that it was already 10:00. You know what they say about when you're having fun ... Actually, it was a frustrating but ultimately productive practice. Scales and arps sound great. OK, the scales sound great and the arps sound pretty darn good but not great. I need to spend more time doing them in rhythms and focusing on what I'm doing. At a certain speed, it just seems like my fingers are landing where they may, and if I hit the right note it's because I'm lucky. I usually hit the right notes, but I don't feel confident about them. Hm. Then it was on to the Liszt . Yes, friends, I resisted fugal temptation. I didn't even look at my WTC 1 book. I went straight to Ständchen. Tonight's focus was measures 5 through 26, and more specif...

Yes, it has been a very long time since my last practice. I worked for about 70 minutes tonight. Did the usual warmups--my, but those scales and arps sounded good! I flew through two sets of each, worked on Suzuki for about two minutes, and moved on to the fugue . I kid you not. I played my six and a half measures from memory, perfectly, five times in a row. After five times I started to make little mistakes here and there ... but five times ! I think I kept replaying it because I didn't believe my ears. I worked on two and a half more measures tonight. I now have nine measures of the fugue. The material I worked on tonight wasn't quite as difficult because one of the voices steps out for a short while, and I'm only working with two voices instead of three. But even when the third voice comes back in, it's not too bad. I played those nine measures through about fifteen times. They sounded OK the first time, pretty good by the tenth time, and great by the fifteenth t...

I have no idea how long I practiced today. I had a rare leisurely day and managed to practice on and off all day ... I probably got about 150 minutes in, give or take a few minutes. I didn't do Scales O' Day today. I just went through all of 'em, major and minor, four octaves, parallel and contrary motion--kind of like I used to do in college every day , minus the contrary motion. For arpeggios, I did a G major and Eb-minor. The arps sound great as long as I keep the metronome at 60. When I go above 60, the quarter-note contrary-motion arpeggios don't sound so good. I have to "warm them up" at 60 before I can play them well at 63. This morning, I worked on the C#-major prelude for about a half-hour. I need to quit telling myself that piece is easy. It's not that easy. It's just easy when compared to the fugue. I devoted the bulk of my today's practice time to Liszt (finally!). I can now play through the whole piece. I also spent quite a bit of t...

I grabbed about 10 minutes early this afternoon to play through mm 20-22 of the fugue . It didn't sound great, but it didn't sound bad, either. That's good news. This evening, I sat down for my real practice, which lasted about 80 minutes . The scales o' day were Gb-major and Eb-minor . I love Gb-major. I think it's my second-favorite scale, after Db-major. Eb-minor has given me problems in the past; that 3-1 crossover in the LH always gets me. I did 9-8 and used the C-major fingering and did rhythms. It sounded pretty good after all that, but truth is, I really didn't want to spend that much time on scales tonight. Oh well. I'm obsessive. What else can I say? I know, I know, I know I was supposed to start with Liszt, but I yielded to temptation and started with Bach . The next few measures after measure 22 are a little easier because one of the voices drops out for a bit. I worked on those measures, and while I won't say they were easy , they were ...

I put in another 60 minutes or so tonight. Started with the usual scales and arps . I know I don't need to start every single practice session with them, but I choose to do so. It gets me "in the mood," so to speak. Yep. Think of scales and arps as the appetizer, or a pre-dinner glass of wine. I was supposed to practice Liszt tonight. The Bach was still open on the piano, though, so ... I decided to play measures 16-22 through once, just once , before moving on to the Liszt. Well, what do you know? Did I practice earlier today? Didn't I? I thought I did. But you wouldn't have known it by listening to me. It was like I'd never even learned measures 20-22! Back to the drawing board. After all that drilling of measure 20 using the former fingering, my LH was confused about the new fingering. So I had to re-drill it all, as if I were drilling for the first time. I put my nose to the grindstone and my fingers to the keys. I was a woman on a mission. I was goin...

Yes, I'm pathetic. I had a lesson last Wednesday, and it went quite well, but then I didn't practice piano again until today, Sunday, many days after my lesson. I did practice some gospel stuff for church. Playing big chords and octave-scales as accompaniment can be lots of fun, and that's what I did at church this morning. This afternoon, it was back to Bach. I practiced for about 90 minutes . Played scales and arpeggios for the first time since last Wednesday and ended up having to do the 9-8 for F major. F major, always the weird one among the white keys. Not much of a problem, though. I'm doing 9-8 whether I feel like I really need it or not because it really helps . Then I moved on to Bach . Played mm 16-19 a few times to reacquaint myself with the fugue , then moved on to mm 20-22. Whew. Measure 20 is a butt-kicker. I drilled it many times (too many to count), and I still wasn't comfortable with the fingering, so I changed it. I hate having to change fingering...

My piano teacher is a Suzuki piano teacher. The Suzuki Piano Method was developed at Shinichi Suzuki's Talent Education Institute and is an extension of the Suzuki Method for violin . It's basically a pedagogical approach, generally for small children, in which the child learns to play music by ear before he or she ever learns to read a single note. Now, I would probably have loved Suzuki, if I had found such a teacher at the age of four, when I already had a handful of learned-by-ear tunes in my "repertoire." And now, although I read music quite well, I still depend on my ear a great deal. I like to hear pieces before I ever learn them. I don't have to hear them, but I prefer to. Once it's in my head, it's easier for me to play. Makes sense, doesn't it? In fact, and this is a little embarrassing, I was horrible at reading time signatures until about two years ago. I was fine if something was in 4/4, but 3/4, 6/8, 5/8, etc., just confused me. I could...

I worked all day, and poor piano couldn't be the priority. George only got 60 minutes today. First, I worked on Suzuki . I do not like Suzuki. I find it boring and not very helpful. My piano teacher, on the other hand, loves Suzuki and swears that it's improving my technique. So I'm doing Suzuki ... even though it bores me to tears. It's like bad medicine that I have to take a couple of times each week before my next piano lesson. It only takes about fifteen minutes each time, but those are the longest fifteen minutes of my entire practice session. After an interminable fifteen minutes, I moved on to scales . First, I played last night's challenge: B harmonic minor in contrary motion, four octaves at 80 on the metronome. Perfect! Just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I played it through a few more times. Perfect! Tonight's official scales were E-flat major and C minor . Both normally pose little problem for me, but just for fun I did the 9-8 thing for both...