Skip to main content

Practice Update, 1/31/24

Dear readers,

After blogging about the F minor nocturne for a few weeks, I finally have the first two pages to share. My playing isn't perfect -- I miss a note (and add a beat) right after third instance of the main theme, and my grace notes and trills aren't exactly as they should be -- but those are minor issues, and I'm happy with how the recording turned out. The biggest negative is that I stop at one of the more dramatic moments of the piece, and I probably won't have the next page ready to play for another week or two, at least!


I had a piano lesson yesterday with my in-person teacher, Eric. He gave me some good feedback on fingering and articulation. I had fallen into my tendency to play the treble too softly. It's a problem related to my hearing aid, which amplifies higher sounds over lower sounds, so what sounds fine to my hearing aid sounds too soft in reality, and I'll often play the LH and the RH at the same volume when I think the right hand is louder. For this reason, I often prefer to play without the hearing aid ... but then that opens up the potential for other listening/hearing problems.

My lessons with Eric are only thirty minutes, so we never got around to "Maple Leaf Rag" yesterday. I'll still put a little work into that one every day (of courses), as well as work on the next page of the Chopin.

I've also been working on my jazz chord progressions and shell chords every morning. I'm hoping to spend some time tonight on some lead sheets, practicing playing tunes with the different rhythms in the left hand.

That's about it for now. I'm planning to make another video soon, probably of ragtime (maybe page 2 of Maple Leaf), possibly of something jazzy. Stay tuned.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

old lady said…
Nice!
9:36 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Thursday, July 13

I worked in a short practice today. Had piano this afternoon. The short practice involved the usual scales and arps, and a run-through of my pieces. It wasn't so much a practice as a review. Piano was good. She said that the Bach sounded very musical. I asked what I should do next, practice-wise--continue drilling and memorizing HS, or start HT? She said that I "shouldn't hold off any longer" on playing HT, and to keep drilling HS if I want but to begin working HT on whatever I find to be the most difficult passage of the fugue. That's easy. I don't have the music in front of me, but in the Alfred edition, it's the bottom of page two. I played the Liszt pretty well, if a bit timidly. I'm playing it with emotion and paying attention to all of the dynamics and all of that, but I'm still also trying to make sure I get the notes right in several sections. She had all kinds of nice things to say about the Liszt. The 9-against-4 is sounding much better (...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Need an Intermediate Piece

Deborah wants me to pick out an intermediate piece to start learning next week. I went to the ARCT Syllabus guide that Robert so graciously sent me and looked up all of the pieces that I considered "intermediate." They were mostly Grade 6 and Grade 7. Not intermediate enough. I looked up my Beethoven Sonatina in G, my most recent intermediate piece. It's a Grade 3--a very early intermediate. So I'm looking for something in the Grade 4-5 category. And I'd kind of like to work on one of those pieces that everyone loves to hear--Fur Elise, Chopin's Em prelude, the Brahms waltz in Ab--all pieces I learned in junior high, but pieces that I'd like to re-learn, and learn to play well , and not like my junior-high self, whose heart wasn't in the music. And they are pieces I love, and that others love hearing as well. Hmm. Fur Elise is Grade 7. The Chopin Prelude is Grade 8. The Brahms Waltz is Grade 8. Too advanced for an intermediate piece? I'll talk it ...
3 comments
Read more