Picking Up the Pieces

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...

I was only able to practice for about 50 minutes this evening. I'd planned to spend two or three hours at the piano, but ... well, you know how those things go. Regardless, I had a very good practice session. The Scales o' Day were D major and B minor . D major is easy, so very easy. I played it through a few times, then moved on. B minor is annoying, so very annoying. From the very moment I learned "B" and "B-flat" as a child, I have confused the two. This doesn't make sense. I never confuse "A" with "A-flat." I never confuse "F" with "F-sharp." Heck, I'm playing the C#-major fugue and have yet to confuse "G" with "F-double-sharp." It is not a good habit to confuse "B" with "B-flat." Particularly when you're trying to play contrary-motion harmonic-minor scales. The first run-through of the contrary-motion scale sounded fine. Had I played it at my lesson, my teacher...

I wasn't home yesterday, but I did manage to snag about 40 minutes with a piano where I was. Did the usual warm-up with scales, arps, and inversions , then went straight to Liszt . I'm at a point right now where I really need to start learning a new section. But first, I played through the part I've already learned. There was one section in which I've missed some big notes every time I've played it through ... so I went to those measures first. Spent about 20 minutes working out the kinks and then drilling it a million times. Then I moved on to the "new" stuff (Sections 6, 7, and 8). Sections 6, 7, and 8 are not hard. They're a little tricky because of the handwiching, but they're not hard. I can play them almost perfectly when I sight-read. This can only mean one thing: Deceptively. Easy. I drilled Section 6 probably more than I needed to. But I really want to "cement" it in my brain, you know? And, as I drilled, little kinks came out h...

I usually work during the day and practice during the evening. Since I'm going to be at Brevard Music Center tonight to see Chu-Fang Huang perform Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2, I decided to work only a couple of hours this morning and spend the late morning/early afternoon at the piano. Good decision. I practiced/played for about 80 minutes . Scales sounded good. Today was Ab-major and F-minor . Of all the scales, I think F-minor and F#-minor give me the most trouble. They shouldn't, but they do. They sound pretty good now, but it took a lot of work to get there. F-minor acted up a bit, so I tried some of Robert's suggestions (see comments for this post ). It helped to do them in groups of nine. The back-and-forth effort of suggestion #4 was actually easier than I thought it would be. "Easy" is a relative term. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't quite the impossible challenge that I imagined it would be. Next, I went straight to Bach, my beloved B...

As promised, here is the second installment of my July 20 practice log! I practiced for about an hour tonight. I didn't spend much time at all on scales, arps, and inversions. I was ready to get re-acquainted with the Liszt . So, after a few minutes of a "warm up," I went straight to Liszt. The 9-against-4 is coming. Still not there yet, not completely, but it's coming. It's a LOT easier if I focus on the timing of the RH and not the timing of the LH. Much easier. Only thing is, it's not easy for my mind to focus on the RH. I don't know why this is. I consciously have to force my mind to think, "Triplets. Slow. Slower than if you were fitting them evenly into the LH notes." I played through the rest of the piece, just to see where I was weak and what needed the most work. Narrowing it down to "Section 11" (measures 79-90), I practiced it the way I've been practicing the fugue: drilling, drilling, and more drilling. This piece is ve...

I'm calling this "Part 1" because I'm planning a second practice session this evening. Spent about 50 minutes on the piano. About 15 minutes were devoted to scales, arps, and inversions. The Bb-minor scale was giving me some trouble, for some reason. I do not want to devote a huge percentage of my practice time to scales, but last week's 20-minutes-per-scale work was surprisingly helpful. So I spent some extra time drilling Bb-minor. I took about five minutes to play through the C#-major prelude , and then the rest of the session was spent on the fugue . (This morning, when my alarm went off, my first thought was, "I'm tired. I don't want to get out of bed yet." Then I thought, "But I get to practice the fugue today!" And I got right up.) I now, ladies and gentlemen, have not one and a half, but TWO and a half measures in the bag. Measures 17 and 18, with half of 19 (the end of Episode I) are sounding nice. I'm also learning th...

No official practice report for today, but I did write about the joy of learning a fugue on A Sort of Notebook .

As I mentioned in my last post, my piano teacher (Deborah) said it's time for me to start putting my hands together on the fugue. Sigh. I was afraid of that. And it sounded so nice hands-separately. But first ... she said to pick out the section I considered the most difficult, and to start by tackling it. OK. Not an unusual approach to learning something. So I picked out measures 17-19. It's physically impossible for me to maintain every complete held note in this section, and it will continue to be until I get my hand-stretching machine from eBay (heh). It's a scary, scary section for me; the paper is nearly rubbed through from repeated eraser marks as I changed the fingering and changed it back again (and again, and again ...). I hadn't done the hands-separately mega-drill session on this section yet, so that's what I did today. Best to ease up to that hands-together thing., don't you think? I had about an hour available for practicing. I flew through the sca...

I worked in a short practice today. Had piano this afternoon. The short practice involved the usual scales and arps, and a run-through of my pieces. It wasn't so much a practice as a review. Piano was good. She said that the Bach sounded very musical. I asked what I should do next, practice-wise--continue drilling and memorizing HS, or start HT? She said that I "shouldn't hold off any longer" on playing HT, and to keep drilling HS if I want but to begin working HT on whatever I find to be the most difficult passage of the fugue. That's easy. I don't have the music in front of me, but in the Alfred edition, it's the bottom of page two. I played the Liszt pretty well, if a bit timidly. I'm playing it with emotion and paying attention to all of the dynamics and all of that, but I'm still also trying to make sure I get the notes right in several sections. She had all kinds of nice things to say about the Liszt. The 9-against-4 is sounding much better (...

Today was a crazy schedule. I was supposed to have piano, but my piano teacher had to cancel at the last minute. Then a nine-hour editing job came up, so I was busiliy working most of the day. No practice. :(

I didn't get to practice today because I was tied up in a job all day long. I did, however, get to see William Preucil, Eric Kim, and Arthur Rowe perform Mendelssohn's D minor piano trio last night--wonderful! Also on the program were Beethoven's D major violin sonata and Brahms' F major cello sonata. Just as watching really good tennis players improves my tennis game, watching pianists improves my piano playing. Weird how that happens.

I've been going through the dark night of the soul and suffering the tortures of the damned for the past few days. (Maybe that's a little extreme, but things have been pretty bad.) Piano is the one constant I can keep going back to. I'm finding so much solace in it these days. I can't do too much of anything else, but at least I can play scales and drill single measures and repeat small groups of measures over and over again. Today I had two practice sessions. For Session 1, I worked on scales , arpeggios , inversions , and Liszt . Even though I've only just started spending more time on scales , I can already see the difference. I continue to play with rhythms. This time I played funky jazz-sounding rhythms, with lots of syncopation and odd assortments of fast and slow notes. I repeated notes and "riffs" here and there (always the scales in similar and contrary motion) ... and it was fun--A whole lot more fun than just playing up and down the keyboard w...

Here's a short video on arpeggios . I must admit that, when I first started taking lessons again a few years ago, the first thing my piano teacher did was to dispel the myth that one needs to be all wrist-twisty when playing arpeggios. My previous piano teachers had taught me to play them legato, which required a bit of awkward twisting of the wrist whenever the thumb goes under. For the past couple of years, I've been doing something like the small "leap" discussed in this video. The instructor here says that there will be a small pause during the leap, but I've found that practice makes the pause barely noticeable. Also, if I don't try to play them super-legato, the pause isn't noticeable at all. All of the practicing has contributed to a legato sound in all of my arpeggios. It's not something I worked toward, but I've noticed that they're sounding much smoother and not as "jumpy." Small goals. Little victories.

What a long day I had today. Didn't get to sit down at the piano until 10:15 tonight. I practiced for about 70 minutes tonight. About 20 minutes were spent on scales and arpeggios : Eb major and C minor for scales, and C major and A minor for arpeggios. Eb major and C minor are two of the easiest scales to play in contrary motion because they're "mirrors" of each other. I had no problem with the initial playing of either tonight, so I quickly went on to "scale variations" of all kinds. Tonight I worked on staccato/legato, plus a fun loud/soft exercise: The RH starts out soft, and the LH starts out loud (or vice-versa). As I move up the keyboard, the RH does a crescendo and the LH a decrescendo. As I move back down, they go back to the original. I'm able to do this. I have to focus on the crescendo/decrescendo to the point that I forget to focus on the notes. And I still played them correctly! The muscle memory is finally kicking in! Yay! The scales a...

No time to write at the moment, but I wanted to put this down before I forgot. One hour of practice today. About 20 minutes on scales, arpeggios, and inversions. More time than I'm "supposed" to spend on them, but I find them therapeutic. About 40 minutes on the fugue. Lots of drilling on small sections. I played one small section probably 40 or 50 times. It sounded much better after all of that. I like this drilling ad infinitum thing. Like the scales, they're therapeutic, and that's what I need right now.

I wrote about yesterday's disastrous lesson here . I have this bipolar thing going on, and I've been allergic to the 2,381 meds they've tried, so I'm currently unmedicated. That can make for some awkward situations, and yesterday's would-be piano lesson was one of them. Luckily, I have an understanding piano teacher. Today, after a full day of editing and spending some time with my parents (who were in town for a few hours), I finally had a few free hours for piano. I'm up to 80 for my scales and 63 for my arpeggios. For scales, I did G major, E minor, Ab major, and F minor. For arps, I did B major, G# minor, F major, and D minor. Here's what I do for both scales and arpeggios: One octave, similar motion, one note per beat Two octaves, contrary motion, two notes per beat Three octaves, similar motion, three notes per beat Four octaves, contrary motion, four notes per beat Scales sounded quite good. I'm only "supposed" to do a major with its re...

Tonight's practice was abominable. It lasted all of 10 minutes. I was on the road all day yesterday and most of today. It was a very long road trip. On the way from Louisiana to North Carolina, we started out on I-10 and decided to go to Gulfport (Mississippi) and Hwy. 90 to see the damage from Katrina. I have many happy memories of weekends and holidays at the summer home of a friend's family and wanted to see what, if anything, remained of it. Well, nothing was there. A few boards of the bingo hall on the corner were still there, but only the cement foundation remains of the house. That's all that remains of anything , actually. It was a sad drive. I got back home this evening and, after a short run, decided to try practicing. Mistake. I'm too exhausted to play even a half-decent scale, much less anything by Liszt or Bach. I muddled through a couple of scales and arps before I quit. Tomorrow's a new day. I'll try and start over my practice session then. Until...

The LSU practice rooms are freezing cold. I guess they need to counteract the 103-degree heat and 90% humidity outside. I practiced for an hour this evening ... if I'd practiced any more, I think I would need to be treated for frostbite. Seriously, it wasn't that cold, but I did stop practicing when I could no longer feel my fingertips touching the keys. I pity the LSU School of Music students. I worked on Bach (again). Poor, neglected Liszt. As much as I adore the great Romantic virtuoso, my ever-bewigged Bach just has that je ne sais quoi (or would that be an Ich weiß nicht ?). Yesterday, I played through the fugue a few times, hands separately, and noted the measures that didn't feel entirely natural to my hands after playing them a million times. For today's practice, I dug into those "trouble spots." I think it was a productive practice. I'll be on the road tomorrow and Monday, so I may not be posting again for a while. I apologize for the spottines...

The great thing about being on vacation is that I've practiced not once but twice a day for several days. Yesterday's early practice was a two-hour all - Bach extravaganza!! . Actually an all -fugue extravaganza . Then, last night, I worked on the fugue for another 45 minutes . I played through the p relude a couple of times, very slowly, laying down the tracks in my brain. That took about 15 minutes . Then I worked on Sections 6-8 of the Liszt (the part where the melody is supposed to sound like a cello). Those three sections are probably the easiest of the entire piece. A little tricky with the handwiching, but I found good handwich combinations in just a few mintues of practicing. I worked on that for only about 20 minutes before I had to leave. So. My hot date with Liszt didn't happen. He was usurped by my Beloved, Bewigged, and Bejowled One. It's Saturday, and I'll spend most of the day editing a book. However, I do hope to grab a couple of hours of prac...