Skip to main content

Looking Ahead to June

Yesterday I posted my weekend goals, so I'm at a loss for what to write today.

Ha. As if I'm ever at a loss when it comes to writing about piano.

We're nearing the end of the month, and I'm thinking ahead to my schedule and goals for June. A few things will change next month:

  • My daughter is out of school, so I'll probably be practicing more (using the headphones) in the morning, as the whole family will no longer be waking up at 6:15 a.m.
  • My daughter will be at summer camp for two weeks and the beach for one week. With the quiet evenings at home, I will probably get a lot more after-work practice time in.
  •  I am going to graduate from Rondo alla Turca much sooner than planned.
I thought the Rondo would be a three-month piece, but it's proven to be a one-month piece ... even with not practicing it for the two weekends I was out of town. It will move to maintenance mode in June, and I need to decide if I want to start learning a new classical piece, or something else ... or just focus more on my Piano With Jonny courses.

A New Classical Piece?

What would I even work on? With Rondo alla Turca under my belt, I suppose I should move on to my next "bucket list" piece, the Liszt Liebestraume. But I'm kind of wanting to wait until the fall for that. I don't know why. I just don't quite feel ready for it yet.

"Something Else"?

If I decide to focus on "something else," it will likely be a re-learning of an old piece. Some of the candidates for that are Chopin's B-flat minor nocturne, Scott Joplin's "Solace," the Bach C#-major prelude from WTC 1, and Schubert's E-flat Impromptu. Those are listed in order of time required, i.e., which I think will take the least time to what I think will take the most.

There's also the option of learning an easier Chopin prelude or waltz. I must admit that it's been really nice to learn a piece as quickly as I've learned the Rondo. I wouldn't mind having another short-ish piece in my repertoire.

I also want to work on some gospel/hymn arrangements, but I'm not sure that I'm ready for that yet.

PWJ Courses

I'll have three different Piano With Jonny courses going on in June ... which, honestly, is more than enough to keep me occupied for two or more hours a day.

Bare Necessities

Yes, "Bare Necessities" is technically a course, even though it's more of a standard practice piece. Realistically, it looks like I'll be ready to graduate from this one by the end of June, or at least by the time we leave for Europe in July. If I mainly focus on PWJ courses for June, I'm certain I will graduate by the end of the month. Either way, I still have a good bit of work to put into this one.

Blues 10-Lesson Challenge

I'm on track to finish up the 10-lesson challenge by the end of June. I tend to do these lessons in great big bites (usually on the weekends), and then I spend maybe 10-15 minutes a day reviewing and improvising and simply practicing all of the various techniques. That really hasn't been enough to make the kind of progress I'd like to make. If I decide to do PWJ-only for June, I'll make massive improvements in this and will likely finish the challenge a lot faster. I've been doing the challenge since sometime in March, so I'm kind of excited at the prospect of moving on to the next phase of the PWJ Blues Track.

"Play Piano Lead Sheets with 7th Chords"

While my 7th chord courses mostly consisted of drills, this course is doing to require more in the way of improvisation and creativity as I learn various standard chord progressions. (The 7th chord courses included application, but I focused more on the drills.) Now it's time to take a deep dive into application. I'll finally start learning to improvise and arrange the songs in those real books I bought back in the late 90s! 

Conclusions

Well. I have almost talked myself into a PWJ-only June. Of course, I'll continue to work on my maintenance pieces, but I may not start any new ones. If I do feel compelled to work on a piece, it will likely be "Solace." I learned the B section years ago, so it might be a nice one-month project to learn the A section along with it. (I played the B section a few days ago and it sounds good; my main challenge with that would be to memorize it ... which wouldn't be that hard because I've played it so often, and it has a lot of repetition.)

That's my ramble for today, folks. I'm looking forward to a piano-heavy weekend, so I hope to have some videos to share (including final performances of Chopin and Maple Leaf) next week.

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