Skip to main content

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!

Labels:

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

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

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