Picking Up the Pieces

It really helped me to write yesterday's blog post . I was feeling frustrated with my lack of progress this month, despite having some good, intense practices, as well as a few days where I worked over two hours at the piano. Laying everything out and seeing how truly all-over-the-place my priorities have been, it made sense. So I felt better. Most importantly, I'm able to make changes for November. Below are my goals, broken down by project. I still think I may be a little too diversified this month. If that's the case, I will set The Entertainer aside until later. (But I hope I can keep all of these plates spinning.) Liszt, Liebesträume: 25% This is going to be a major focus for November. This is one of my dream pieces, and I think I'm ready to start working on it. It's a brand-new piece for me, and I may end up having to adjust this one's percentage to 30%. I'll know in a week or so. Blues Theory and Practice: 25% As I wrote yesterday, I've felt very ...

Time to do some serious thinking about my November goals. October was pretty much a wash. If I look at where I was in my October goals post from a few weeks ago ... I really haven't moved forward all that much. Granted, we had a hurricane and I lost a week of practice. But, even with many days of an hour or more at the piano, I really didn't make any significant strides. Even after I took "Liebesträume" out of the running. Why? It's the Fire Hose, Dummy It's the age-old problem: I have too many projects, and not enough time. I've been drinking out of the proverbial fire hose. Even if I average 2 hours of practice a day (currently, I'm averaging about 1.5), I can't make the kind of progress I want to make. So, I need to either (a) increase my practice time, or (b) lower my expectations. Or (c) limit my projects even more. Realistically, I can't increase my practice time all that much. I can shoot for an average of 2 hours a day, but I'll be...

When I went to Facebook this morning, I saw that a pianist and singer named Gordon Mote will be performing at a local church tomorrow night. I'd never heard of him, so I went to YouTube to see if I might be interested in seeing his performance. Wow. I'm going. Not only is he a great pianist, but he's hilarious. And he's blind. How can I miss this? I may drag my teenage daughter with me because I don't want to go by myself. Here is just one of his videos. There are many more. I've watched about three so far, and will be listening to him as I work for the rest of the day.

I don't have many words to type today. This morning I decided to return to Bare Necessities, which I haven't really worked on for a couple of months. I've worked on my stride piano technique a lot with Jingle Bells, but I've purposely kept BN in the background, thinking it would be good to take a break from it. I had it to a good tempo, but not the goal tempo. So what better than to let it marinate, or maybe simmer, for a while on low while I worked on other things? So, I returned to it this morning, and it was one big practice session of frustration. Did the practice do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. Am I on the verge of a breakthrough, in the deep darkness that comes before dawn? Maybe. Probably not. I don't know where I am, or what to think, or what to do. There is very little piano-playing in this 5:39 video. It's mostly me whining and being frustrated. I'd planned to make a series of videos this morning of my progress in getting BN back up to speed ... but...

I started the major blues scale course at PWJ a few weeks ago, and I (sadly) haven't given it as much time as I should. It's also been challenging. In this video, I'm playing a few different versions of the scale, all using the same I∆-vi7-ii7-V7 progression in the left hand: swung 8th notes with chord shells/Charleston rhythm in the left hand 16th notes with chord shells (I was thinking in triplets with Charleston, but the result sounded like 16ths Weird.) 16th notes with whole notes in the LH accompaniment (Note: I recorded this at 5 a.m., so I had the piano volume on low ... which is why you can hear my fingers thumping on the keys.) Why This Was Hard I: The Scale This was not easy to learn! First, there was the matter of the scale. The C major and minor scales are very automatic for me because I've been playing them for years. The C minor blues scale has also become very automatic, as I've been improvising on it every day for the better part of a year. But the ...

 Ah, those ambitious weekend goals ... I had some good goals for the weekend and, as expected, I did all right on some of them. I practiced for about 3.5 hours total, which is not a lot for a weekend ... but, considering I was in North Carolina most of Saturday and Sunday, I'll take what I can get. Solace My Solace goal was to be able to play it smoothly with increasing tempos. I'm getting there--which is good, considering that Solace got the most attention this weekend. It's still quite slow (about 48), and it needs to be about 65. I get kind of frustrated because I'll feel like I have it, but then I have a memory lapse in some spot where I never have memory lapses. It's like walking through a field full of gopher holes. I'm happily walking along, and then suddenly I'm on the ground with a twisted ankle. The twisted-ankle moments come mostly in Sections A, C, and D, which are the three sections I know best. Section B sounds good, but I'm struggling a li...

It's a little difficult to think about piano goals for the weekend, as I'm leaving for North Carolina tomorrow and probably won't be back until mid-afternoon Sunday. So, I won't get a lot of piano time in. At best, I'll get an hour, maybe 1.5 hours tonight, and an hour or two Sunday afternoon. I could also consider squeezing in a half-hour or so tomorrow morning before I leave. So, maybe I'll get more practice time than I thought. If I do, here are my goals for the weekend: Solace I have the entire piece memorized and am now working on just a few spots where I tend to pause when playing through slowly. I'll continue working on that and then begin increasing the speed. The suggested tempo is something like 65, and  I'm currently playing it at about 35. My weekend goal will be to (1) eliminate the habitual pauses and (2) increase the tempo to ... maybe 45 or 50. Jingle Bells Rag Lately I've been working a lot on (1) "hot-potato" practice in ...

Yes, this is possibly the cheesiest graphic I've ever used on this blog ... and that's saying something. I wish I had a video to share, but I had to practice on the headphones last night. So you get the cheesy graphic instead. Hitting the Speed Wall At my piano lesson Monday afternoon, I lamented my inability to play "Bare Necessities" and "Jingle Bells" at a lightning-fast tempo. I've been particularly frustrated about "Bare Necessities." I mean, I can play it pretty well at 100, but if I get any faster than that, the whole thing (meaning the "B" section, which is the ragtime section, as well as the final section/outro) falls apart. I had made some slight progress last week when I tried touching the keys more lightly; it is, of course, easier to play fast when you're not going all the way down on the keys. But I was still making sloppy errors -- missing notes, accidentally grabbing an inner note when playing an octave , etc. I wa...

According to my practice log, I've spent about 10 hours on "Jingle Bells Rag." Most have that time has focused on the outro. Still, I learned it pretty quickly (for me), and memorizing it wasn't too hard (mainly because there are just a few chords, and a lot of repetition). The Challenges The biggest challenge will be with the tempo--it needs to be a lot faster than what I'm currently playing! Some sections, such as the crossed-hands section, will be easy to get up to speed (mostly). Other sections will take more work. The hardest section, by far, is the outro. It comes right after the high-register "jingle bell" section and begins with climbing arpeggios. The arpeggios aren't too bad, but there's the one little spot where the left hand is playing C7 to F (at 2:47 in the video) that has dogged me ever since I first started learning this piece! I've come a long way with it, but it's going to be a while before I can play that section as fas...

Scott Joplin's "Solace" is not a particularly hard piece to learn, but I have really struggled to memorize it. It's been much harder to memorize than Maple Leaf Rag, which is a technically more difficult piece. Still Shaky ... Especially When the Camera Is On I've now memorized "Solace," but it's still shaky. I made a video of myself playing it by memory, lapses and all, because it will help me remember where I need to work. There are the obvious spots (such as the second half of the B section, which I most recently memorized), but there are also the less-obvious spots that I can play just fine when the camera isn't on, but which rear their ugly memory-lapsing heads when I have an "audience." A mistake-riddled video and a list of mistake spots doesn't make for the most interesting blog post, but this is going to help me to know where I need to focus my next few practices of this beautiful piece. I also want to work on voicing--there...

Earlier this year, pianist and Scott Joplin expert Scott Kirby did a lecture/performance here in Augusta. (I wrote about it at the end of this blog post .) He played quite a few whole Joplin rags, as well as snippets of others. He played "Solace" in full, and I loved it. Here is a YouTube video of him playing "Solace" back in 2008. I seem to remember that he played it at a slightly slower tempo when I saw him, but I could be wrong. I just remember that he played it with great sensitivity, and the audience, including me, was very moved by the performance.

 I wrote "Logan's Song" years and years ago. Thirty-two years ago, to be exact. It was during the long, sweltering weeks following Hurricane Andrew in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when we had no power and no water and were all about to lose our minds. The devastation was unimaginable, and the hopelessness was palpable. It was a difficult time. On top of all that, my circle of friends and I had recently experienced unspeakable tragedy: the death of a friend, Cari Lockhart, age 28, and her 20-month-old son, Logan. It's a long story and I won't go into the grisly details here (because they are grisly), but I will say that their deaths were a shock to all of us. And then, just a few days later, around August 19 or 20, Hurricane Andrew washed away much of South Louisiana. I had just graduated college that May. I'd had a difficult year, with a couple of suicide attempts and several stays at ICUs and psychiatric hospitals. It's a miracle I was able to graduate college...

Liebesträume arrived yesterday! I am so excited! Last night I sat down and sight-read the whole thing, even the cadenza(?) sections. It's going to be a challenge. Some sections are going to require more work than others. But it's definitely doable. However ... A Change of Plans, and Why I'm going to set Liebesträume aside for a few weeks. Last night as I looked at my percentage goals, I realized one of the downsides of having a lot of piano projects on my plate, and it is this: Even if I meet all of my percentage goals, each project will get so little focus that progress will be negligible. I expect to have Solace, Jingle Bells Rag, and Amazing Grace all "in the bag" by the end of the month, but that expectation simply isn't realistic, considering the amount of time I'll be able to give each of them. When I start the Liszt, I want to be able to devote a good chunk of my practice time (25% or 30%) to it. But if I do that now, my many other projects will bar...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote down some general thoughts about my October piano plans . October did not start off the way I thought it would, thanks to Hurricane Helene ! September also didn't end the way I thought it would. Yes, I went from Sept. 27 all the way to Oct. 6 with zero piano time! So I'm having to do some recalibrating and readjusting. Here are my percentage goals for October: I'll break these up into categories and write a bit on each.  New Pieces (35%) Technically, I only have one new piece, Liszt's Liebestraume No. 3 (25%). I haven't started it yet -- not only did I just get piano access back last night, but my music shipment has been delayed. I could print it out, I suppose, but I wanted the Alfred edition. It should be here today or tomorrow. Another new-ish piece is The Old Rugged Cross (10%), which is actually an arrangement I'm working on. I started on it at the beginning of September , but I set it aside for the rest of the month (mainly ...

Well. Life got seriously interrupted last week. Hurricane Helene devastated our little part of the world, and then it went on to devastate my old home (Asheville, NC, and surrounding areas) even more. We were without power for 10 days. There were a few bright spots in those 10 long days: I got to read a few books, clean the house, and stay home from work. But mostly I was a melancholic mess. The word "shellshocked" kept coming to mind. That's how it felt. I just felt lost and overwhelmed and sad. And I didn't have a piano to play since my current piano is a digital. Fortunately, our family is safe, and our trees that fell did not hit our (or anyone else's) home. Many of our neighbors can't say the same, so I'm grateful that we were spared. The top of one of our pines snapped, landing on our neighbor's trampoline. (The trampoline was fine!) Our Eastern Redcedar tree. I liked that tree and was sad to lose it. We drove to my mom's house in Brevard, NC...