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Weekend Goals, June 7-9

How is it already Friday? It's time to think about my weekend piano goals. This weekend will be a little weird in that I'm leaving for North Carolina on Sunday afternoon, so I may not get as much practice in on Sunday as I might otherwise. Anyway, here are the goals.

Scales/Hanon

Get the Db major and Bb minor scales up to speed (between 100 and 130 for parallel and contrary). I've worked on these a little each day, and I'm getting there. As for Hanon, I just want to continue doing one or two Hanon exercises a day. I'm mostly doing stuff from Exercises 1-20, though I'm mixing in the octave exercises as well.

Rondo alla Turca

Continue with the slow practice. Continue refining the first few sections, and continue to drill the broken-octaves section and the coda. Those last two sections don't sound nearly as good to me as the other sections, and I honestly think that more slow practice is the key, which as few fast-twitch drills thrown in for certain areas where I find myself pausing. I do need to start working on speed for the entire piece, but I'm not going to do that until I have these last two sections locked in.

Bare Necessities

Continue the slow practice of the entire piece, and work on a few sections that I'm still struggling with. That includes the outro and a couple of short passages of the ragtime section. By the end of the weekend, I want those three sections to no longer be a problem. For the moment, they're keeping me from increasing my speed even a little.

Blues

Keep jamming and improvising! Work on the blues song I've written. And go through Lesson 9 of the 10-Lesson Blues Challenge. (I may wait until early next week to do this, as I'll be in NC and working from a keyboard instead of a full piano.)

Lead Sheets

Continue working on "Fly Me To the Moon," "Autumn Leaves," and "All The Things You Are." Come up with a version of "Fly On By" (Jonny's tune for Lesson 1) that I can share here. (My plan is to do Lesson 2 of this course while in NC.)

Maintenance

I've been working to get both the Chopin and Maple Leaf Rag back up to speed. For the weekend, I just want to continue playing MLR at a manageable pace (metronome 88 or so), and continue drilling different sections of the Chopin in preparation for the September masterclass.

And that's it! It will be a great weekend!

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