Skip to main content

First Piano Lesson, and First "Real" Practice

I had my first piano lesson! Followed by my first "real" practice, where I'm actually working on something that an older, wiser pianist (my new piano teacher, Carol) told me to work on!

I have been under the weather for several days and wasn't sure if I should keep the lesson appointment, but I did, and I'm glad I did. I now have "assignments" to keep me nice and busy until next time.

At today's practice, I focused on several things:

Scales

Scales! My beloved scales! I focused on the majors today, seeing which ones of those I really could play at 60. Everything sounded fine, except for Eb, Gb, and Ab. Of course, the black keys. So I spent a bit more time on those and worked them up to 60 pretty quickly.

They were all in my brain at some point. There was a time that I could play all of them at much faster than 60. Still, I was surprised that just a few minutes' focus on some trouble spots rendered nice, smooth scales at 60.

I will focus on minors tonight and tomorrow. Somehow I don't think they're going to come back to me so readily. But who knows? Maybe they'll surprise me. "Waterfall, we've been waiting for you! Let's play!"

Bach

I'm practicing the prelude very slowly, with the metronome, and I'm starting at the very end. Today my focus was on measures 20, 19, 18, and 17. In that order.


The notes really aren't that hard; they're mostly scales and arpeggios. At some point, this piece will be lightning fast, but for now I'm moving slowly, so slowly that I can't miss a note. I want to make sure I'm playing evenly, and that I have the timing right, with a good sense where things fall from beat to beat in each measure. I don't think this will be very difficult to learn, note-wise. The challenge will be in achieving a good tone, playing evenly, and ultimately getting it up to speed. I had the loveliest time working on this today.

Schubert

Note-wise, the Schubert is the most difficult piece I'm working on right now. As with the Bach, I'm starting at the very end:

There is quite a bit of repetition, which why I was able to cover eleven brand-new measures in a single sitting. For example, measures 276 through 279 are all the same thing: a downward Eb-minor scale that's missing a D. Over and over again, just different octaves. The left hand, meanwhile, is going from Eb minor to Ab minor, back and forth. And then that's all it does in measures 280-281. Then we have a Bb, and then an Eb-minor chord, and we're done

Measures 273 and 275 are a little tricky because they're similar (same chords) but different (different inversions), and they're separated by that Eb-minor measure. They're pretty easy to play separately, and they're not bad if I play them one after the other ... but for some reason, having that Eb-minor chord in measure 274 throws me off.

So I spent quite a bit of time working on the transitions on either side of measure 274.

After some drilling on that, I worked on the whole little section:


And then, all three full measures.

So now I can play it slowly, but it's even, and that's what's important. The speed will come. (And this is another piece that's going to be very fast someday!)

I also spent some time on Hanon and did a few minutes of sight-reading from my old Easy Classics to Moderns book.

I love weekends. No way will I be able to spend this much time practicing during the week. But on the weekends? I can make time for piano.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rethinking Bare Necessities

Today's breakthrough moment (there are actually two of them) focuses on "Bare Necessities." As you'll remember, I discovered Jonny May's arrangement back in early March and immediately decided to learn it. I printed out the music, started the course, and proceeded to learn the stride section, posting a few videos of my progress. Ha. I bet those videos make it look like I was making progress. I guess I was ... but not really. And I realized something this weekend that I hadn't before: Because I was thinking of "Bare Necessities" as a "fun" piece, I wasn't practicing it seriously or diligently. I wasn't treating it as something I wanted to master. This mindset might work with an easier piece, but this arrangement isn't easy. The result: despite a little progress at the outset, I wasn't moving forward. I was stalled. Breakthrough #1 The first breakthrough was realizing that if I truly want to learn this piece and play it well,...
Post a Comment
Read more

March Goals Recap/Looking Ahead to April

It's April 1, and time to revisit the goals I set for last month. I practiced a total of 50.45 hours in March, averaging 1.62 hours (or just over an hour and a half) per day. Realistically, I practice about 45 minutes to an hour a day on weekdays, and I usually get at least one longer practice (or multiple shorter practices) in on one or both days of the weekend to bring the average up. CLASSICAL GOALS Chopin, F Minor Nocturne March Goal: Have entire piece by memory and performance-ready. I have about 90% of the piece by memory, but I still have some work to do before it's performance-ready. The only two sections that I don't quite have are "The Agitation" and the "stretto" section with the seventh chords. I'll work on both this week and will have them both memorized before the weekend. April Goal: Finish memorizing, and polish, polish, polish! My focus now is really on phrasing and dynamics. I have the notes down, even in the difficult passages. Fro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maple Leaf Rag Breakthrough

Oh, Maple Leaf. Where to begin? At the Beginning I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I learned the A and B sections of Maple Leaf Rag back in the 1990s. I can’t tell you if it was early, mid- or late 90s, but it was during those 10 years after I’d graduated college, when I was playing a good bit of piano but not taking regular lessons from anyone. I don’t remember teaching it to myself at all. I just know that, at some point, the first half of Maple Leaf Rag was part of my two- or three-song repertoire of pieces I’d be able to play by memory over the next 25 years. It was always sloppy and I knew it, but people loved it, and so I played it if there was ever a piano around. Back in January, I decided to properly re-learn those two sections, and to finally learn the C and D sections of this wonderful piece. I worked on these over the next month or two, learning (and-relearning) the notes pretty quickly ... but it took time to memorize, and also to get everything to tempo surpassing a...
Post a Comment
Read more