Skip to main content

More Scales

Despite waking up later than usual, I managed to stick to my piano schedule this morning. I had maybe 15-20 minutes, so I dove right in to the scales for the day: F# through B, majors and minors.

As you might expect, there were a few easy ones and a few that were, well, not so easy.

Easy: F# major, G major, G minor, A-flat major, A major, A minor, B-flat major, B-flat minor, B major

Not so much: F# minor, G# minor, B minor

Oh, those minors! I'm actually doing the harmonic minors for each one, and I think that's part of what makes them tricky.

I'm also going to be doing Hanon each morning. I pulled out my old Hanon book when I first started playing again a few weeks ago. Before that, I hadn't played Hanon in years. I had one teacher, back in the early 80s, who assigned Hanon exercises ... and that's about it. Most of my teachers never assigned Hanon, and a few of them downright disliked Hanon.

My opinion? I kind of love Hanon. I like not having to think about the notes. That leaves room to focus on tone, technique, and whatever else I want to focus on.

So, speaking of focus: My focus with both Hanon and scales is to stay relaxed and focus on evenness of tone--and play at a tempo that allows me to achieve both of those goals. The "evenness of tone" area, in particular, is one where I can tell that I've regressed in 12 years of not playing.

This was a short little blog post, and I imagine they will all be short until my lessons are up and running. And since scales and Hanon are not the most exciting topics for most people, I'm probably doing my vast reading public a favor, right?

Until next time ...

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

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, it's not going to open the lock. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little ro
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