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Playing Catch-up

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 after working so hard to establish a different one, but my hands' discomfort with the original fingering (after trying it in dozens of drills) was a message that I had the wrong fingering for me. So I changed it, drilled the new fingering about five times, and had no problem.

It's still a tricky measure, so I'll need to work on it some more later.

Measures 21 and 22 were easier to play HT than they were HS. These are the first two measures I've found in this fugue that are actually easier when played HT.

At my lesson on Wednesday, by the way, Deborah said that my snippet of the fugue sounded really good. I expressed some mock-frustration at how long this is going to take me to learn it (mock-frustration because I'm not really frustrated; just amusedly overwhelmed, if one can be that). She said not to worry about it, and that the way I'm learning it (memorizing while making sure the fingering is correct every time, as well as the holds, staccatos, etc) will necessarily take longer than just learning to play the notes.

I've saved tonight's practice for Liszt. It'll be tempting to go back to the Bach, though! The time flies right by when I'm working on that fugue.

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