Piano Lesson Canceled :(

I was supposed to have a piano lesson last Tuesday, but I had to go to North Carolina for the week, so we rescheduled to today. But today my piano teacher isn't feeling well, so he had to cancel.

Next week is spring break, so he's not doing lessons. He said he could take me the following Tuesday, but that's not going to work for me because I already have an appointment after work.

So, my next lesson will be April 23, five weeks after my last one. After that, I have two more scheduled 30-minute lessons: May 7 and May 21.

I really need to sit down and think about whether I want to continue lessons into the summer. Part of me would love to, but I'm not sure it's worth it. $150 every two months for four 30-minute lessons isn't a lot, but a 30-minute lesson every other week really doesn't give me what I need. There's barely time to work on a single piece in a half-hour, even with skipping warmups altogether. (And I need my scale/arpeggio/inversions warm-ups after a long day of work!)

This particular teacher doesn't do hour-long lessons (he teaches through a company that only does 30-minute lessons), so if I do want to continue lessons, I will likely have to look elsewhere, most likely to the music department of the local university. And I'm sure there are probably a few home-studio teachers out there who would be happy to take on an adult at my level. I'll just have to do some research if I get to that point.

Meanwhile, I am pretty happy with what I'm getting from Piano With Jonny and Tonebase. PWJ has been great for strengthening foundations and learning to play the blues (and pulling me out of my depression). And PWJ will be the perfect place for me to learn to write and arrange music using skills and theory from blues, ragtime, and jazz. Tonebase has been great for my further development in the classical realm ... but I do feel a need for an in-person teacher (one that I meet with more often and for longer lessons) who can give me both objective feedback and guidance on taking my playing to the next level.

Instead of going to my piano lesson this evening, I guess I'll just have to practice more. Darn the bad luck. ;-)

Comments

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,

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

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

Picking Up the Pieces

Search This Blog