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Winding Down

My two-week vacation starts in a few days. For almost the entire time, I'll have zero access to a piano. Isn't that sad? I'm sad.

This is one of those times where it would be more convenient to be a guitarist.

I haven't made any conscious changes to my practice sessions, but something has changed. I'm not going as hard as I usually do. I haven't watched a new PWJ lesson since last week. I guess I don't want to start something that I won't be able to finish.

I'm still practicing, of course, but only an hour or so each day instead of the usual 1.5 to 2.5 hours. Some days it's not quite even an hour.

I haven't lost my passion for piano, so no worries about that. I think part of me is just distancing myself. Kind of like you cut back on caffeine for a few days before you have to go cold turkey.

That being said, I'll provide an update here, and this will probably be my final update before I leave for vacation (unless, miraculously, I get a few minutes to make some piano videos).

Bare Necessities

I've been going at this one really hard. I can play the whole thing at 200 bpm, which is (technically) the "slow" tempo for the stride section. However, I feel like I've hit a wall. I've started missing notes that I never missed before. I'm having to slow down because my hands are going haywire. I've experienced this before (though not since my 30s when I was studying with Deborah, and before that, not since college), and I know what it is: I need a break. I've put in a ton of work and I've made great progress, but my brain is tired. So it's good that I'll be getting a break.

Mozart

If I were studying full-time with a piano teacher, he or she would have "graduated" me from this one by now. It sounds fine. It sounds good, even. Really good. I just don't know what to do with it now. I have it at my goal tempo (120-125 bpm). I have the dynamics worked out. The section with all the sixteenth notes is acceptably even. Even the broken-octaves-and-coda section sounds "good enough." So my goal to graduate by the time I leave for vacation has been met. (So why doesn't it feel that way?)

Blues

I've done Lessons 1 and 2 of the Blues Endings course, and these endings are challenging! I haven't moved on to Lesson 3 since I know I'll be gone for two weeks. I've also been improvising over the shuffle nearly every day, practicing all the things I've learned so far -- the blues scale exercises, slides, turns, rolls, licks, runs, tremolos, etc. I don't have the same enthusiasm that I had before, which is troubling. Learning to play the blues well is a long journey, and I think I'm just ready for some rest.

Lead Sheets

I dropped the lead sheets course, but I'm still working on the progressions every morning as part of my warm-up routine. This wasn't planned; it's just something I'm doing. And I'm getting better at it! The only part of the Circle of Fifths progression that throws me is the move from IV major 7th to vii half-diminished to III dominant seventh. And this morning, I found my hands getting through those naturally in several different keys before I hit the usual wall. So there is improvement!

Maintenance Pieces

MLR and Chopin both sound fine. Oddly (or perhaps not oddly), all my work on Bare Necessities seems to have improved my playing of MLR.

Oh, and I've hit a milestone!

I noticed this morning that I've hit 300 hours of piano practice since February 1! No wonder I'm tired! 

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