Picking Up the Pieces

This morning I worked on the fugue for two hours . Got the last two pages of it smooth as silk (well, maybe not THAT smooth, but they sounded much better at the end of the practice session than at the beginning). I'm still playing it hands-separately, of course, but I can tell I'm nearing the point at which I can take the next step and actually start playing it hands- together . No time for details, as usual. But it was good to have a date with Bach. Liszt wasn't even allowed. I'm hoping for a second practice session this evening. A hot Friday night date with Franz Liszt. Sounds ideal to me. Too bad he's dead.

Practice for three hours (so far) today. Just a few minutes on scales, inversions, and arps . I'm playing them faster, so I'm actually able to play more per day and not feel like I'm spending all my time on technical exercises. About 30 minutes on the Bach Prelude . As I've mentioned before, I'm not really "supposed" to be starting on it. However, the Fugue and Standchen are both so hairy ... it's nice to have an easy ("easy" being a relative term) piece to warm up on. I've also been reviving some of the 2- and 3-part inventions that I've learned in the past as ways of warming up my hands and mind before diving into the harder stuff. About 30 minutes on the Fugue . I've spend a lot of time lately on Liszt, so I'm planning a nice, long date with the Fugue later this week, probably tomorrow or Friday. I have the entire thing hand-separately, but it's not very polished sounding. I'm going to keep working hands-separat...

Note: I've expanded significantly on this post over at my other blog, A Sort of Notebook . I am loving Liszt. I love the way my hands have to "share" the melody. I have so much to write on that, but I'm borrowing a computer and don't have enough time to do it justice. Suffice it to say that I've practiced three and a half wonderful hours today, and about two hours on Liszt alone. What I find wonderful about Liszt is that it pushes one hand hard, but not too hard. Then the other hand gets a turn to be pushed. But it's never both at the same time, and never one hand for too long. It's hard to explain. When I have more time to write, I'll word things rather more eloquently, I'm sure. All I can say now is that my fingers feel like they're dancing a wonderful, graceful dance. I've been trying to "play with my body," as my piano teacher says to do, so all of me is dancing. And Standchen, though it still need a lot of work (like, um...

I'm on a trip to my home state of Louisiana and will have intermittent internet access all week. So, I won't be posting much on this blog or my other one. However, I will be practicing for hours upon hours on the piano at a local church. I'll post a great big practice log after I get back home to North Carolina.

Today was lesson day. I'd planned to practice this evening, but I had a nasty bout with insomnia last night and am too tired to do much of anything tonight. So I just played through everything once (including Gb and eb scales at 76 and Db and bb arps at 60) and called it a night. If I have another insomnia night, I'll spend it answering e-mails and responding to comments on both this blog and my other one. But I hope to sleep well tonight. It's been a while since I've slept. So good night!

I had my lesson today. It went pretty well, despite the fact that Deborah (my teacher) and I both went into it feeling frustrated (due to non-piano matters). Scales sounded beautiful at 76. I played B-major and G#-minor for her. (I play one major and one minor at each lesson--whichever she happens to ask for. Keeps me guessing.) Played 'em without a hitch, I did. With the chord inversions , she wants me to use my arms more. I'm being all spidery-fingered, but she said to play them more as a motion of the body and not a technical feat of the hands only (my words, not hers). She's very graceful as a pianist--imagine a ballet dancer, only using all of her gracefulness at the piano--and I can tell that her use of the "whole body" movement in playing contributes to her gracefulness. So I'm really going to focus on the motion that I use to play the inversions this week--and not just getting the notes right. I'm past the point of trying to figure out the notes a...

I'm very sad about this. This is one of the times I wish I could be a music student and just say "no" to all of the other life responsibilities, claiming that music is more important because I'm paying for my education and I don't want to waste my money. Alas, music is not my vocation or my primary course of study in a conservatory. It's a mere hobby (she said bitterly)--or, as Julia Cameron writes in The Artist's Way , "fluff around the edges of life." It is difficult to feel so passionate about fluff. Commitments, responsibilities, and my own dark moods kept me away from piano yesterday, and I have several appointments this morning before my piano lesson. One is actually a lunch I'm looking forward to, so perhaps I shouldn't complain. Also, I practiced more in the past week than I was able to practice in a month when I was teaching. So I'll just be thankful for the practice time I did get. Balance. Balance. Balance. Acceptance, ac...

Spent a good 20 minutes on scales , arps , inversions , and Suzuki . I'm in Book 2 of Suzuki and am working on the fourth Bach minuet in there. It's so easy. I really don't feel like I get a lot out of Suzuki, but I'm trusting my piano teacher's judgment on this one. I learned the piece by ear and played through it a few times, paying attention to the rests, the held notes, the crescendos, and the decrescendos on the CD. Next, I spent about 20 minutes on the Bach Prelude in C# Major . This is a deceptively easy piece, but, as I've mentioned before, I'm treating it as a hard piece. It would be so easy for me to play through it quickly, learn it by muscle memory, and develop a bunch of careless-mistake-style bad habits that I'll have to go back and fix later. So I'm treading very carefully on this one. Drilled some of the trickier parts of the first 31 measures (specifically, measures 8-9, 13-17, 21-25, and 29-31). These parts are tricky because they...

Spent a whopping 10 minutes running through some scales and arpeggios . It was an impromptu practice session because I didn't have time for a "real" one. I worked on F, Dm, C, and Am for the scales--easy ones. Along with scales, I also do chord inversions in octaves. That's kind of new for me (the octave part, not the inversion part) and has taken some getting used to. Arpeggios are easy, whether I'm playing them in similar motion or contrary motion. I don't know why I don't have more trouble with them. The only keys that I'm sometimes sloppy with are, strangely enough, Bb major and B minor. I'm headed to a music performance this evening (which will include a pianist!). If I'm not too tired, I'll have a "real" practice when I get home. Who knows--maybe I'll be so inspired by the performance that I'll want to practice into the wee hours of the night! Update: The performance was wonderful, but now it's 10:17 p.m. and...

I don't plan to do a lot of linking between here and my other blog, but I thought some of you might be interested in " Cursed Animosity ," a somewhat humorous little post I wrote last year on learning contrary-motion scales. I've come a long way since writing it, though the minors can still be rather ... contrary.

A new weekly practice log begins tomorrow. Rather than update existing posts (as I've been doing), I'm going to make each "practice report" a separate post. That way you won't have to scroll halfway down the blog everytime you want to see if it's been updated. I'm new to this kind of a blog, plus I'm a writer, so I'm still trying to figure out the best way to present the information that I share here. Bear with me! And please, let me know if you have any suggestions! Several people have already commented here, and I've received a few very nice e-mails regarding this blog. Thank you so much! Your feedback means a lot to me ... and I love the idea of "meeting" other amateur classical pianists. I believe in responding to comments on my blogs, and I'll do that a little later today, when I have more time. Thanks for visiting!

You may have noticed that I have a countdown to my "big recital" in my sidebar. I've never had my own piano recital. I played in student recitals, from about 1977 until 1991, but I've never done my own thing. I was supposed to have a recital in 1992, my senior year of college, but I lost my mind that year and didn't find it in time for the recital. I had planned to play some Debussy, Dett, a Beethoven sonata (Op. 10, No. 1 in C minor), Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, two Schubert impromptus, a Rachmaninoff prelude, and theKhatchaturian Toccata. So much for that. As many of you may already know, I didn't play piano much after 1992 (graduation from college) until a couple of years ago when I moved to the Asheville area. I started taking lessons again, decided I wanted to take piano seriously again, and ... got the idea for a recital. I'm thinking of it as a music school audition. No, I'm not planning to go to music school. But I'm looking at the typ...

I'm not planning to have much of a blogroll here, since I primarily go through Bloglines from my other blog. I have, however, added a few blogs to the sidebar that I think are particularly relevant for the type of person who would be interested in this blog--i.e., amateur musicians. If you know of other "practice blogs" or have one that you'd like to see included here (hey, it might just move you up in the TTLB ecosystem!), let me know, and I'll be happy to add it here. Enough fiddling with the template. Time to go practice!

This log will be updated daily, whether I'm able to practice or not. If you want to access the week's practice log quickly, simply click the link beneath the piano icon in the sidebar. Last week's completed log can be found here . Practice Goals for the Week 1) Scales at 76 and arpeggios at 60 2) Suzuki Minuet 4 (by ear) 3) Play through Bach Prelude once a day 4) Learn Fugue hands-separately 5) Work on tone and voicing for Sections 12 and 13 of Liszt; begin learning Section 9 Sunday, June 11: Spent 70 minutes on scales, arps, Suzuki, the Prelude, and the Fugue. Scales and arps are sounding really good. When I write "scales and arps," I mean scales and arpeggios in similar and contrary motion, at increasing speeds. Also included are full-octave inversions for each. Today's scales were B major and G# minor, and today's arpeggios were Gb major and Eb minor. For Suzuki , I played through Minuet 3 and "learned" the right-hand notes of Minuet 4 by e...

It's time to revive my practice-logging system. I'll be logging my practice hours, as well as my own comments, observations, and reflections about practice sessions, here. If you want to share your own practice notes or read mine, feel free. If you don't, then you can simply ignore any post that begins with the piano image at the top. If you want to access the week's practice log quickly, simply click the link beneath the piano icon in the sidebar. So let's get started! Sunday, June 4: Approximately 90 minutes of practice. I warmed up with the usual contrary-motion scales; today was E major and C# minor. Then I did arpeggios (Ab major and F minor). For Suzuki, I'm working on a Bach Minuet in G that I first learned when I was about eight. I have the whole thing by ear, so Deborah now has me focusing very intently on articulation. I'm also supposed to be listening to the next Suzuki piece so I can learn it by ear, but I haven't been listening. Bad, bad pi...