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...