Goals for a Portable-Keyboard Week

Each Sunday or Monday, I sit down to think about my piano goals for the week. This week is going to be a little unusual because I'll be traveling Tuesday through Saturday night and won't have a piano handy. I'll have my Yamaha 61-key keyboard, but that's not quite the same thing. Still, I'm going to set some goals.

Chopin and Maple Leaf - Take a break. I've gone at these two pieces pretty hard over the last couple of weeks. I'm happy with the progress I've made (in fact, I'm close to being "done" with both of these), and I don't think a break will hurt. It could even help.

Dominant Sevenths - Work on improvising. I've put in a lot of work on exercises, but I haven't done much in the way of improvising on them. I have a few little tunes, plus some lead sheets, so this will be a good opportunity to just have some fun noodling around with what I've learned this month.

Blues - Continue working on blues-scale exercises, and also work on improvising with the blues scale. Since so much of blues is built on dominant sevenths, I can combine this with my dominant seventh work. Also: listen, listen, listen! I'll have lots of time in the car, which will be perfect for listening to blues and other styles.

Bare Necessities - Continue to work on memorizing. I've memorized page 1, and I'm about 1/3 of the way through page 2. By the time I get back from traveling, I should have both pages by memory and should be ready (finally) to move on to the ragtime section.

Scales - I can't practice my usual patterns when I only have 61 keys, so I may just work on those minor scales that are still tripping me up in contrary motion.

I'm not thrilled that I'll be away from the piano for such a long time, and I'm going to miss Chopin and Maple Leaf Rag, but such is life. I'll just have to make up for lost piano time when I get back!

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