The Next Phase

I can play through both my main pieces now. Both Bare Necessities and Rondo alla Turca are fully memorized, and I've worked out the various kinks of learning the notes. Even the tricky BN outro has come together ... mostly.

It's been a slow with Bare Necessities. The Mozart hasn't been so bad, but it's still tricky because all those 16th notes need to be absolutely even. And I still haven't discovered the secret of playing those broken octaves in the right hand effectively.

And both pieces are fast. The Mozart is a nice Allegro that I'd like to have at about 120 to 130. And Bare Necessities? I think the stride section is supposed to be around 200, though Jonny plays it faster. And the whole piece following the stride section is faster, though I don't really like it that fast, so I may keep it all at the same tempo, or at least not speed it up as much as he does in his video.

Time for the Next Phase

So. Now that I have the notes down and have at least begun thinking about dynamics, phrasing, and articulation, it's time to progress a new phase: The Metronome Phase.

I don't like the Metronome Phase. Too often, I've stuck with the metronome for a while ... but then I get tired of it. And I forget about it. And the piece gets sloppy, so I return to the metronome.

(I also can't really hear the metronome, so I have to depend on seeing the little light flash on my digital piano metronome, or seeing the arm swing on my wind-up one.)

Anyway, this time I want to do things ... differently. I started to type "right," but is there really a right way? This time, I want to find the metronome settings at which I can play each of these perfectly. I want to play them several times at that setting, and then move up just a notch or two ... and then adjust and do whatever drills I need to do until I can play them at those settings perfectly.

By the time I get to the target tempos, in a month or six weeks or however long it takes, I'll have played each piece dozens of times. Maybe even 100 times. Or more.

This is, to my understanding, how you're supposed to do this. I've rarely had the patience. But I want to stick with it this time because I really want to play both of these pieces well.

Tonight I'll figure out my "baseline" tempos and report them here. And then I'll track my progress!

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Picking Up the Pieces

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