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Breakthrough Weekend

I had the most amazing weekend. Each member of our family did their own thing: The husband went to Ohio to see a rock concert with some old friends, the kid went to Atlanta to visit a camp friend, and I stayed home to cuddle the cats, do some spring cleaning, and (mostly) practice the piano. (According to my piano journal spreadsheet, I put in a total of about nine and a half hours between Friday night and Sunday night.)

And it was glorious. I also had a number of breakthroughs this weekend. This blog post is more of a round-up of my progress, but I'll be writing more about the breakthroughs throughout the week.

What I Worked On

Friday night was mostly devoted to Maple Leaf Rag and Bare Necessities. On Saturday, I spent about a half-hour on minor sevenths, and then almost an hour on two scales: D Major and B Harmonic Minor. More on that in a scales-centric post later this week. After that, I dove deep into Chopin for several hours, taking the occasional break to do enough spring cleaning not to feel guilty.

And then, most of Sunday afternoon was devoted to the Blues.

Weekend SMART Goals

It was a good idea to come up with some SMART goals for the weekend. I had a clear idea of what I needed to accomplish over 2.5 days. To recap ...

Scales

Goal: Majors and 88, Minors at 76. ACHIEVED! But I also decided to take a different approach with scales, which I'll write about more later. For now, I'll just say that I'm now playing the parallel/contrary D Major scale at 120 and equivalent B Minor scale at 100. Parallel motion only? 130 and 110. Not lying. But like I said, I'll write more on this little breakthrough later this week.

Minor 7ths

Goal: Complete Lesson 2; improvise tunes. ACHIEVED!

Blues

Goal: Easy and medium shuffles with 3- and 6- note patterns and improv on eighth notes and triplets with both easy and medium shuffles. ACHIEVED! (I will post a video of my blues progress soon.)

Maple Leaf Rag

Goal: Whole piece by memory, with no pausing at transitions and minimal forearm fatigue, at 84. ACHIEVED! Playing at 84 now feels like child's play. This was another project that yielded a breakthrough moment this weekend, which I'll write about later this week.

Bare Necessities

Goal: Stride section by memory; sight-read rest of piece. ACHIEVED! Sight-reading was quite the adventure; another blog post for another day.

Chopin

Goal: End-of-weekend progress video for YouTube/PWJ community page. Video should be relatively error-free and include intended interpretive effects. ACHIEVED! I posted the Chopin video to the YouTube/PWJ/Facebook, and here it is:

As you can see, I still have work to do (particularly on the last page), but I feel very confident that I will have this ready to perform at a high level by the end of April.

So, there are a number of blog posts in the works this week. For now, I need to get ready for work. I'm working from home today, so I should be able to grab a few practice breaks in lieu of the coffee breaks I would normally take at the office!

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