Skip to main content

Exploration and Discovery on a Saturday Morning

Did I ruin this nice photo with the cheesy clip art?

It's 9:30 Saturday morning, and I've already practiced for three and a half hours. It is a rare Saturday that I'm (1) home and (2) don't have a whole lot to do. On those rare days, I can just let myself sink into the piano experience. Today was one of those days.

It Starts with a Cat Story

Last night, my indoor cat (Buddy) got out. I went out and called him multiple times, but he was enjoying the mild weather, so he'd run every time I got close to him. I finally gave up and set my alarm for 2 a.m. because I didn't want him to be out all night.

So at 2:00 this morning, I went to the front door and called him. My indoor/outdoor cat (Ruthie) was ready to come in, but Buddy wasn't. He was too busy hunting worms, or baby moles, or who knows what. Here he was at 2 a.m.:


I finally gave up (again). Ruthie is a good big sister, so she stayed out there with Buddy. Meanwhile, I tried to go back to sleep ... and couldn't.

At 4 a.m., I went back out to call the cats, but Buddy was still enjoying the outdoors, so I came back inside, made some coffee, plugged in my headphones, and started practicing.

First, the Blues

Well, not exactly practicing. I spent my first two (yes, two) hours on Lesson 6 of the Piano With Jonny 10-Lesson Blues Challenge. The video is 67 minutes long, but it takes about twice that long to get through it if you're stopping to try all of the different things he suggests. So it took a while. I'll now spend the next couple of weeks becoming competent at the various turns and runs covered in that lesson.

Next, Bare Necessities

I took a small break after that, but I soon returned to work on Bare Necessities. Wow. It's sounding so much better. I played through the stride section about 10 times at various tempos, and it's sounding good. With that section, I'm working toward automaticity, and I'm getting there.

After that, I worked on learning/memorizing the Ragtime B section. It's not that hard, but there are a couple of places where you can't play the music as written because the hands run into each other. I worked and worked on a different way of doing it, and then I decided to watch Jonny's video on it ... and he suggests something that ended up sounding better (of course) than what I had come up with. But it was good that I got some exercise in figuring something out. Still, I wonder why he didn't just write it the right way in the first place.

And Then ... Chopin

I spent an hour on Bare Necessities, and then I took another break. I came back with the intention of working on scales, but I decided to play through the Chopin Transcendence ten times instead. I did that, and then I drilled a few more of the tricky sections of the Chopin, and they I finally played it through. It wasn't note-perfect, but man ... I have to say this. It is sounding really, really good. I'm really happy with my articulation and dynamics, and as I play this more and more, I'm finding new ways to use rubato, and thinking that my original ways were just a little naive.

So I'm at such a good place with the Chopin. In a way, with both Chopin and Maple Leaf, I feel like "graduation" is just the completion of the first major step ... similar to school graduation, I guess. I suppose there is a reason they call it "commencement," which means, literally, a beginning.

Perhaps I'll call it "commencement" from now on. I can do my Maple Leaf commencement recital, or my Chopin commencement recital. After that, the piece goes into "maintenance," which is really just further discovery and exploration.

I love it so much. I love all of this so much. I love Chopin, I love ragtime, I love piano. I'm so happy to be playing again. I'd be playing it right now, but after two hours of blues, an hour of ragtime, and thirty minutes of Chopin, I'm giving my hands a break. But before the day is over, I plan to spend a good chunk of time on Mozart, as well as on my sevenths and scales. I'll also play through Maple Leaf Rag a few times.

It's going to be a good day.

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