Looking Back, Looking Ahead

The month of June was disappointing, piano-wise. I did have some accomplishments, but practice time was often spotty and distracted. I didn't put the work into Rondo alla Turca that I'd planned, and I felt positively stalled in my blues progress. I struggled to connect the Lead Sheets course to my own piano goals. I mean, it's good to learn progressions, but I have no desire to be a tinkly cocktail jazz pianist.

I was away from home more than usual, so my practice routine wasn't much of a routine. To make up for the lost piano time, I started doing ear-training exercises. That's been a surprisingly good use of my time, so I'm glad I started doing that. But I feel like I didn't make much progress toward goals.

I did a pretty good job of keeping up with my percentages this month, though it all fell apart in the end.

As you can see, I virtually ignored Chopin and Maple Leaf, and I spent far more time on Bare Necessities than I did Rondo alla Turca. I did make some good progress with Bare Necessities, so that was good. Rondo alla Turca sounds pretty good too.

The weekends I have been home, I've been really tired, for some reason. I haven't put in the monster weekend practices that I've done in previous months. Yesterday I barely even got to an hour of practice (but I did take a two-hour nap on the couch after driving to and from Athens, GA, to drop my daughter off at a friend's).

Looking Ahead

July is going to be a very weird month. I'm going to be away from home for at least one weekend (either this coming weekend or the next one), and I'll also be away from home, with no piano or keyboard access for the last two weeks of the month.

So, what should I do with July?

I am thinking I don't want to take on any new pieces. I'm also thinking I don't want to start any new lessons (as much as I'd love to finish up the 10-Lesson Blues Challenge). Perhaps what I need to do is just keep working on what I'm working on -- Bare Necessities, the Rondo, the Circle of Fifths and Turnaround Progressions with intervals, the Blues, the usual scales/octaves, and playing through my maintenance pieces a few times a week.

Primarily, I want to work on Bare Necessities. I feel like I am so close with this one. I can play it just about perfectly, but I have work to do in order to get it up to tempo.

My July Plans

My tentative July plans are as follows:

Work to get Bare Necessities up to speed
Continue to work on the Rondo, particularly the broken-octave and coda sections
Keep improvising with the Circle of Fifths and Turnaround progressions in various keys; get better at both transposing and playing in intervals
Continue to play blues every day. Possibly work through Lesson 10 of the 10-lesson challenge, but only if I find myself with a long stretch of time.
Get back into my regular practice of playing scales
Spent 10-15 minutes a day on maintenance

I think I can do that.

And while I'm away from the piano? Be thinking about what the next big projects are going to be!

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Picking Up the Pieces

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