Skip to main content

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, I need to buckle down and get serious about it.

What does "getting serious" about this "fun" piece mean? It means I have to practice it like it's Bach. Or Chopin. Or any other challenging piece I've ever committed to.

I need to think in individual measures, not sections. I need to work on transitions from one measure to the next. I need to play those left-hand jumps ad nauseam until I can play them at breakneck speed with my eyes closed. I need to be (shudder!) a perfectionist.

(Oh, who am I kidding with that parenthetical shudder! My inner perfectionist relishes the opportunity to come out and play.)

I'm seriously considering setting this aside until early May, when I've graduated from Chopin and Maple Leaf. Until I can put them aside, I'm not going to be able to make Bare Necessities a priority. So that's something I'm thinking about.

Meanwhile, if I do decide to keep working on this for now, one of my goals over the next couple of weeks with the stride section is to drill, drill, drill those individual measures and pairs of measures ... and then groups of measures, and so on. I started doing this earlier this week, and the muscle memory seems to be taking hold.

And now, for ...

Breakthrough #2

Because I was taking such a lackadaisical approach to this "fun" piece, I'd never even bothered to sight-read the whole thing and see if it was even within my grasp. Realizing this, I'd made a goal of sight-reading it over the weekend, and I finally got to it Sunday evening.

And ... It Didn't Go Well

I am a fairly good sight-reader, but ... to put it mildly, the experience left me feeling deflated. OK, it was a train wreck that left me with questions and doubts. How did I think I could learn this difficult piece? Am I so arrogant that I think I can just sit down and learn anything I want? And what madness made me think that this piece might be like the Khatchaturian Toccata I played in college: showy and impressive, but not all that difficult once you work out the notes and the rhythms?

I briefly entertained the idea of just finishing up the stride section, calling it a day, and moving on to something else.

Enter ... Lesson 3

Monday morning, I watched Jonny's "Bare Necessities" Lesson 3 video. And everything changed.

What is it about that Jonny May? The man has a gift for teaching. Really, he could probably make a Piano With Jonny how-to video on "La Campanella," and I would be like, "Oh! Is that all there is to it? Sure, I can do that!"

When I finally started to work on the ragtime section in earnest Monday evening, I did so with confidence that this was well within my abilities ... and I was pleasantly surprised at how easily it came to me this time. There's still work to do--a lot of work, as this piece is no walk in the jungle--but I was able to memorize the left hand and most of the right hand in one sitting.

Here is the sight-read I did Monday after watching the video. It sounds much more like an actual song than Sunday's sight-read, which didn't sound like potential music at all!

The breakthrough? Not only did I commit to seriously learning this piece, but I got a whole new sense of confidence about it. Jonny's teaching videos are like magic pills that enable me able to play anything I want to. Or at least they give me the shot of confidence I need in order to think, "Yes. I can do this."

I know I'll be able to pull off this ragtime section, as well as the rest of the arrangement of this wonderful song. It'll take time, but I'll get there!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dance of the Digits

Note: I've expanded significantly on this post over at my other blog, A Sort of Notebook . I am loving Liszt. I love the way my hands have to "share" the melody. I have so much to write on that, but I'm borrowing a computer and don't have enough time to do it justice. Suffice it to say that I've practiced three and a half wonderful hours today, and about two hours on Liszt alone. What I find wonderful about Liszt is that it pushes one hand hard, but not too hard. Then the other hand gets a turn to be pushed. But it's never both at the same time, and never one hand for too long. It's hard to explain. When I have more time to write, I'll word things rather more eloquently, I'm sure. All I can say now is that my fingers feel like they're dancing a wonderful, graceful dance. I've been trying to "play with my body," as my piano teacher says to do, so all of me is dancing. And Standchen, though it still need a lot of work (like, um...
3 comments
Read more

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...
Post a Comment
Read more