Picking Up the Pieces

Despite almost no time for practice last week, I managed to start writing in some fingering for the B-flat major fugue, starting at the end. At my piano lesson yesterday, I played through the last few measures. We talked a bit about the fingering, and she agreed that my LH fingering in measures 45 and 46 will work well. Here's measure 45: Bach said to use 3 and 2 for the C and E-flat, but I switched it to 2 and 1, which makes it easier for me to move from 5 to 3 in the bass. The thumb of my left hand just slides down from E-flat to D, and all is good. I am so excited about playing another fugue! The C#-major one was a bear (albeit one that I loved dearly), and this one has been a lot easier (so far) to pick up. For the most part, the fingering flows pretty smoothly; I've only come across a few weird/nonstandard fingerings ... like this move from 4 to 5 in the LH: Normally, you would go from 4 to 3 there, but the 3 is busy playing the B-flat above. I just lov...

Yesterday was my first lesson with my new teacher where I felt truly unprepared. Despite some good practice time over the weekend, I hadn't been able to practice more than a couple of scales (literally, a couple of scales) all week. So, it was pretty much another Week in the Life of an Adult Piano Student. It was a good lesson, though. Carol gave me a lot to think about--my practice-work is now cut out for me, you might say. I went through some scales and then a Hanon exercise, and she had me freeze mid-play, and pointed out how my left wrist had dropped. I was using pretty good technique in my right hand (as far as the palm being higher than the fingertips), but my left wrist had taken a dive. She'd mentioned something the week before about my left wrist needing to match my right wrist, and I'd thought about it ... but apparently I hadn't thought about it enough. So there was that. The other issue was that I've adopted this loose, limp, flourish-y movement wi...

I really shouldn't refer to the ben marcato  section as the "hard section." I'm sure that does something negative psychologically. Still, it's considerably more challenging than the flowing E-flat scales, and for several reasons. It's much more disjunct, for one thing, so that hands are jumping around a little. And then there are lots of accidentals, so your brain can't relax and just play what's expected for the key. For my mom (and any non-theory people), what this means is: If I'm in, say, B-minor, then I know that my fingers will be playing any combination of the following notes: B, C#, D, E, F#, G, and A (or generally, A#). Those are the notes in the B minor scale. So when I see a "C" in the music, I automatically know to play a C#. This is a challenge when you're first learning music, but I've played long enough (and I know my scales well enough), that I really don't have to think about it. My brain just automaticall...

Last night I grabbed about 20 minutes to focus on Bach. I have been playing the scale sections in swing and in rhythms of 4 (starting on a different note/beat for each run-through), all in the effort to make the scales smoother and more equal, without (in particular) my fourth finger on my left hand slipping and stumbling and making things uneven. At the very end of my practice, I made a quick recording (without the metronome) to let my many (okay, two) (I think) readers hear how it's sounding. Keep in mind that my phone recorder is very low-tech (making everything sound loud), and that there wasn't much I could do about the air conditioning and the TV in the background. There are still a few spots of unevenness, and of course I missed a note or two (which is typical for when I'm recording something!), but overall I'm happy with how it's sounding so far. Enjoy!  (If you can't access it, please let me know in the comments.)

Working backwards, I've been through several sections of the Schubert, which I outlined (a little) in some previous posts. I've been through the coda (which I found challenging) and then the E-flat minor section with all of the chromatic climbing (which I found challenging) and then the circle-of-fifths section (which I found less challenging but still challenging). After that, I came to the E-flat major theme. Compared to what had come before? EASY. Really. It just flowed right along. All that scale work I've been doing has helped. This section is little more than running up and down on the E-flat major scale. So this morning, it was time to move back to another  ben marcato section, which is similar to what we had in the coda: marchlike, a little jarring, and generally lots of jumping around. Very different from the smooth, flowing scales of the main theme. I was ready to dive into to a challenge. This section is in B minor, and it has lots of accidentals. So I dove...

I have written at length about voice on my other blog . Sometimes I ask myself why I'm doing this. It's so dispiriting to listen to recordings of myself, now a year or so into voice lessons, and still find my own voice ... less than pleasing. I feel kind of bad for my voice teacher -- I love my voice teacher, but each week he sees a student who feels frustrated and uninspired by her lack of progress. Part of the problem is that I never do well in lessons. This is an age-old problem, of course. I never play piano as well in lessons as I do at home. There's always that nervousness that comes with playing for a teacher, even though I know I shouldn't feel it. When I'm home, I listen to opera all day long and sing "Libiamo" (from La Traviata ) and "Voi che sapete" (from The Marriage of Figaro )   with as much gusto as the most confident opera singer. At my lesson? My throat feels like a pinhole and I can barely choke out "Caro mio ben." ...

This is not the greatest picture, but it's what awaited me last night while Anne played at a friend's house for a couple of hours and Dan worked on genealogy. Henry the Grand Piano I spent some more time on Chopin, but most of my efforts were on Bach, on playing the scaley parts in "swing time," as suggested by my piano teacher. I worked on keeping my LH relaxed and even took a side trip into Hanon to do some very slow exercises, focusing on just where my hand tensed up, slowing down, and playing so that it stayed relaxed. I think it was a useful (though not very interesting to listen to) exercise for my left hand. This morning I started working on Schubert at 7:00 a.m. (sorry, sleeping family). I somehow managed to spend two hours on Schubert, which included writing in more fingering. (I'm finally starting on the easier E-flat-scale section.) What does the rest of the weekend hold? I have to work today, which kind of depresses me. But this evening I hop...

So there is a magic, invisible cord in my body. Two cords, actually. They're relatively sturdy, they lead from my brain to my fingertips, and there's enough cord for some slack. If you loosen the cord, the body can put more weight into the keys. If you tighten it, the fingers "pull away" and play more lightly. So that's what I imagine. The weight in the fingers comes from the body, from the core--not from the hands. When it's time to lighten up, the hands shouldn't tense; the core should control how much weight is used to strike the keys. So last night I worked on a measure of the Chopin that, in all the years I've played this, I've never given much attention to: measure 83. Here's what it sounds like, without the dynamics. In this measure, you have an accelerando  in the first half, and then a diminuendo  in the second half. The measure starts at something like fortissimo . So there is this rushing that is simultaneous with a dyin...

I've named my left thumb Archie because he arches when I play piano. Do you see that? Do you see how Archie isn't looking rested and relaxed? That, friends, is what a tense thumb looks like. Oh, yes. That is not a happy thumb. Why am I arching my left thumb? I don't do this on my right hand. Just the left. In this case, I was playing the fifth Hanon exercise. Archie is perfectly relaxed on the way up the keyboard, but he arches right up on the way down. On the way up, the thumb leads off and my weak 4 finger doesn't have to work very hard: Not so on the way down. On the way down, the 4 finger has a bigger role. And the 4 finger is weak. This weakness throws off the balance of my whole left hand. And what does Archie do? He arches. He's overcompensating. My whole hand is overcompensating, I think, by becoming tense and stiff. Gotta get that 4 finger to do its job! But this isn't good. My left hand needs to be relaxed. Archie needs to c...

I got an unexpected 20 or 30 minutes with Henry (and Schubert) tonight. Anne snapped a picture of what is "typical me" on a late evening. If I ever become a concert pianist, I think I will have to perform with a pencil in my mouth. I'm not sure whether I know how to play without one.

Yes, life has returned to what it was before, now that my "fall break" (two days off from work) has ended. Yesterday morning I spent about 20 minutes at the piano, going through scales and a bit of Schubert. This morning, I had about 12 minutes, which I devoted mostly to scales and Hanon. I started to play through the Bach but I was distracted and playing too fast. So I played it through slowly, just so my brain wouldn't have those fast mistakes be the last thing it remembered ... and then I was done for the day. And that, friends, is a slice of life as an adult piano student. Now I'm at work. I've actually been at work for a few minutes, but no one is at the office yet, so I figured I could take five minutes for a quick piano blog post. Work has been really hard lately. It's been difficult to think. My mind lacks its usual focus, and I'm struggling to get through the simplest tasks. When I finished work yesterday, I was so completely exhausted. I to...

I slept fitfully last night, periodically waking in a kind of panic, my head pounding and my jaw aching. I do not like where my life is right now--not personally, not spiritually, not professionally. I'm just very unhappy, and I don't know if it's legitimate unhappiness or if a cloud of capital-D Depression has descended on me, coloring everything. It could quite possibly be legit unhappiness: It seems that every day I see or hear an announcement that someone I know has died, including a number of people who have died tragically young. So this cloud of sadness won't seem to go away, and I think music is serving as kind of a coping tool, or maybe an escape, for me these days. This morning I woke up with a sense of dread. On top of the emotional stuff, I have too much to do, I'm behind in work after a couple of days off, and I've taken on far too many volunteer responsibilities than I can handle. I really feel like I'm heading for some kind of a mental bre...

I actually said that as I started to type the title to this post: "Schlowly." I'm not good at tongue-twisters. Tonight I worked on some of the Schubert. I've completed the coda section (meaning I've learned the notes and can play it through at a relatively slow pace), and I've moved on to the dozen (or two?) measures prior to that, starting at measure 212. Here are measures 212 and 213, for reference: I am playing this section sooooo s-l-o-w-l-y. I was lucky to have a good hour for practicing tonight, and I spent the entire hour on measure 212 to right before the coda. I don't even know how to explain how slowly I played it. Basically, each note of each triplet was played on a beat of the metronome, starting at something like 52. Here's how it sounded by the time I'd notched it up to 72: Click here for slow Schubert . Note that that little section is a minute and 22 seconds. In this recording from Horowitz, the same short passage takes a...

Ever since I learned the notes of the Bach Prelude (BWV 866), I've been playing it at a snail's pace. In this recording (click) , I've sped it up to the furious pace of ♪=50. The suggested tempo is ♩=72, which is about three times faster. Here's András Schiff playing it a more typical tempo: So you can see that I have a long way to go. A couple of days ago, one day into my "staycation," I began inching up the tempo. I have been determined not to rush the tempo increase. I want my fingers to be strong and my mind confident by the time I get to the goal tempo. So I inched up to ♪=52. And then ♪=54. And then ♪=56. And on and on, playing it several times at each tempo. It sounded good! I wasn't just focusing on hitting the right notes; I was intent on making it sound smooth, not plodding or "punching," keeping my fingers light. ♪=58. ♪=60. ♪=63. ♪=66. It was easy. I wasn't sure if I should speed up so many notches in one practice sess...

I'm technically on vacation for a couple of days. I was supposed to go to Shenandoah National Park with a group of ladies for a camping/backpacking trip, but a number of things came up that left me too broke and exhausted to make the trip. I considered having these few days be regular work days, but I truly needed the time off ... so I took it. It has been heavenly, which has helped heal (somewhat) the disappointment of not going to Shenandoah. I've had to do a little bit of work for my job, but I've also had plenty of time for music. Yesterday at noon, I went to Augusta to see a chamber music performance that was part of the Westobou Festival. My piano teacher, Carol, accompanied mezzo-soprano Diane Haslam, who did a mix of songs and poems about love. It was quite enjoyable, and I'm hoping to take more opportunities during the week (when I can) to attend music performances. After that, I came back home and settled down in the music room for a few hours of practic...