Catching Up!

My new system is working! It's now very easy to see which pieces are furthest below their goal, so I can tell which pieces I need to work on next.

I entered my time regularly all weekend, and I managed to "catch up," or come close to being caught up, in all my projects. (See my weekend goals post to compare, if you're interested.)

I must admit that I didn't play any blues or "lagniappe" (Old Rugged Cross, etc.) this weekend. Instead, I focused on catching up on everything else. And I'm glad I did! I made progress I hadn't expected to make. For instance ...

Solace

I can now play all the way through Solace. I've memorized the "A" section, and when I played it this morning, it was (mostly) smooth and felt comfortable by memory. I can also play through the "B" section! I haven't started to memorize it yet; this morning I just worked on the fingering for the first part, as well as drilling a couple of the trickier passages and sight-reading the rest. Tonight or tomorrow I'll work on the second part, and then I'll focus on memorizing.

And after that? I'll have the whole thing by memory, and it will just be a matter of playing it a lot so that it feels natural and comfortable to play! I hadn't expected to graduate from this one by the end of September (particularly with needing to focus on the Chopin), but that is now looking very achievable!

Jingle Bells Rag

I'm making progress on the Jingle Bells rag. I don't know why, but I don't have a ton of enthusiasm for this one. Still, I worked on it diligently for 15 or 20 minutes each day, and I have the tricky final page worked out. It's still slow, but I can play it. I believe this is the most difficult section of the piece, so I'm glad I'm getting though it.

Loving My New System!

I got some good work done on the other pieces, but I'm highlighting these two, as I likely wouldn't have given them very much time this weekend if I hadn't been using my new spreadsheet system.

I'll have videos soon!

Comments

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...

The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...

The Tyranny of the Dots

In the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes , Billy talks about "reading the dots." He didn't want—or need—to "read the dots," meaning the music notes on the page. He had developed his own rock 'n' roll piano style and, after a few years of classical training, he left the dots behind. I didn't want to read the dots, either, once upon a time. As a little kid, I had a good ear and could quickly figure out just about any tune on the piano. But in first grade, I finally started piano lessons, thus beginning my life with the dots. The Wall of Dots Between Me and Music I hated the dots! I wanted to learn them, sure, but it was so hard. If my teacher played what was written, I could play it right back for him. But if he asked me to play it from the dots, I felt like I would pop a blood vessel in my brain. It was so frustrating for my six-year-old self to have the code to a simple tune sitting silently before my eyes and not be able to crack it and bring th...

Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Search This Blog