Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Y'all, I love my piano-practice tracker. I enter my time every day, and I could seriously look at all of my stats for hours. Because I have no piano videos to share with you today and I've already discussed my December goals, I will now share my practice tracker with you, using my November stats. Click on images to make them larger. Part I: Data Entry and Daily Leaderboard When I'm practicing, I enter all of my information into the PWJ Practice Log. Then, when I'm at my laptop, I enter it into the practice tracker. Not only does it show the total minutes and hours spent practicing each day, but it automatically highlights the piece/project with the most time entered. This then feeds into my daily leaderboard. The greater the number of "wins," the darker the cell with the number. Part II: Totals and Averages This section shows the total minutes/hours for each piece for the month. It also shows how much time I'm spending, on average, on each piece. To do tha...

December is going to look a bit different from my previous piano months. Instead of five or six main pieces/skills to focus on, I'm only going to have two: Technique (15%) and Liszt (30%). The rest of my work will be to review almost everything I've done this year and be ready for a (not actual) performance by January 1, 2025. Also different for December is that I'll be dividing my maintenance pieces into the categories of ragtime, blues/gospel, and classical. Here are the details. Technique (15%) I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I love Czerny's Thirty New Studies in Technics, Op. 849 . I'm still on Exercise 1, but I've been working diligently to build up speed while remaining accurate and clear. Dynamics are also a consideration, so I've been working on that, too. The goal tempo is half note=100, and I'm at half note=80. so I've made progress. I expect to start Exercise 2 in early December and will spend a few weeks working on it. I'...

Whew. This piece has been harder than anticipated. (Aren't they always!) True, it is easier than "Bare Necessities." I didn't expect to breeze through it, but I also didn't expect to still be struggling after six or eight weeks. It doesn't sound bad. I can play through it pretty well. But it doesn't sound great . It doesn't sound polished . It doesn't sound professional . I don't feel confident about it, and confidence is key. Some Changes Granted, I've made some changes that have taken some time to learn. I've replaced a few of the jumps with octave walkups/walkdowns --partly because I like the sound, but mostly because it allows me to focus more on some tricky jumps in the right hand. I've also made a few fingering changes that I'm having to re-learn, and that takes time. The High-Octave "Jingle-Bell" Section I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the high-octave section toward the end. I go back and for...

I had hoped to put three hours a day into piano this weekend, and I came close! I put in FOUR hours on Saturday, but then I only practiced an hour and a half on Sunday. I had dropped my daughter off at volleyball practice at 1:00, but then she got sick, so I had to go pick her up and take her home. And then I had to be back at the gym (about 20 minutes away) for a 2:30 parent meeting, and then I had to do the week's grocery shopping on my way home. So I pretty much drove back and forth yesterday from 12:30 to almost 4:00. Because I had a sick child, I made a big pot of homemade creamy chicken noodle soup for dinner, which took up a good part of the late afternoon. And then after dinner, we put up the Christmas tree and further decorated for Christmas. By the time all that was done, I only had energy to sit on the couch, pet the cats, and look at the pretty tree while we listened to Christmas music. I did practice early yesterday morning, though, and I got some good work done. I...

I suppose I should think about my weekend piano goals. It looks to be a good weekend for practicing. Technique I've been doing a smattering of different things for technique lately. I started Czerny's Op. 849 (Thirty New Studies in Technics) and have been workinng on the first exercise for the past few days. I also have my Oscar Peterson book and the usual scales, arpeggios, inversions, Hanon, and octave exercises. I've been putting about 15% of my practice time into technique this month, and I think I can already tell the difference. My main technique goal will be to master Exercise 1 of Czerny . I can play it at quarter note=80, but the recommend tempo is HALF NOTE=100. So, quarter note=200!! That will probably be impossible for me, but I'd like to get it to a nice, fast tempo. The Entertainer This one is sounding good--amazing, actually, considering I've only been working on it for two weeks, and not every day. It's come back and is pretty solid except for a ...

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was considered a Creative Person by both myself and others. I could sit down and spin out a story or an essay, with or without any kind of a writing prompt. I was always scribbling down poems or ideas for novels. I've written several novels, and I've half-written a few dozen, from first chapters to entire first drafts. I haven't published anything because I am a scared little mouse and always have been. I was musically creative, too. I've written a number of songs, though it's been a long time. I always felt a great desire to write music, but I would get stuck in the same old chord progressions and the same old arpeggiated left-hand groove . One of the greatest gifts of Piano With Jonny is that I have broken out of those stale old habits. Yet, I still struggle to reclaim my old creative self. I get angry at myself for missing notes when, really, all I'm doing is making things up. The "missed" note is a note other t...

So much for my weekend of unlimited practice time . Thanks to a case of wrist pain, I only practiced for about an hour on Saturday. I felt better yesterday and practiced for a little over two hours. So, I got three hours in total. Not bad, but nothing close to the five or six hours I'd anticipated. Weekend Practice I spent a lot of time on Liszt , but I am very frustrated about this piece. I could learn it, but I can't figure out what fingering to use. I am missing Deborah, my piano teacher from Asheville. She would have me work out a fingering, but then she would adjust it as needed, actually writing it onto the music, and when I would try her fingering, it was like a miracle had happened. She helped me to become better at working out fingerings, but Liebstraume is a special case becuase there are so many tenths (which I can't reach), and so many options for which hand will play certain notes of the melody. I messaged her through Facebook to see if she might be up to an on...

  It's rare that I have a weekend that offers potentially unlimited practice time ... but I just may have that this weekend. And if I do? I want to take deep dives into a few different areas. First Cadenza of Liebestraume I've already broken down the cadenza theoretically, and it makes total sense--it's just a back and forth between D-flat minor and E-flat major in various inversions. But playing it is not so simple, and I feel like I need a good, long practice session to get it comfortable and automatic under my fingers. Blues Improvisation I diligently do some blues improvisation every single day, usually for 10-15 minutes in the mornings while waiting for my daughter to get ready to go to school. But I want to take some time to (1) improvise alongside actual recordings and (2) improvise alongside the backing track provided by PWJ. All of my improvisation so far has been just me and the piano, and I'm feeling a need to add something. I don't need a long practice s...

Working my way through the Oscar Peterson book , I present to you two versions of his Minuet 2. The first version uses straight rhythm while the second uses a swung rhythm. This book is turning out to be a good resource for sight-reading and technique. The pieces aren't very difficult (so far), so I'm able to learn them quickly and focus on technique. I'm not crazy about my sound at the very beginning of the first version in this video; it's a little harsh and wooden. I may record a better video later. For now, this is all I have! Click here to see his Minuet 1.

Oscar Peterson was a great jazz pianist of the 20th century. I think he's my favorite jazz pianist because so much of his jazz is so bluesy. Years ago, I purchased his Jazz Exercises, Minuets, Etudes, and Pieces for Piano ... and I don't know if I ever opened it. Last week, reader, I opened it. And it is delightful. The first section consists of finger exercises and minuets. Even though these are very simple, they are good exercises. I've decided to work my way through the book as an element of my technique work. His first minuet sounds like Bach. I suppose I could jazz it up with swung eighth notes and some slides and turns, but for now, I'm just playing it as written because it's so beautiful. Enjoy!

How have I managed to go a week without posting here? The good news is that I've been practicing. I've also been working from home for the last few days. At work, when it's time for a break, I open Notepad and work on my next blog post. At home, I practice piano (or do laundry). I've made a few tweaks to the November goals over the past week. Here are the original goals, compared to the updated ones: Below is a summary of the changes. Taking Jingle Bells Rag Out of Maintenance I had moved this one to maintenance, thinking I would just play it a few times every few days and move on. But then I found that I really wanted to work on it, and I needed to spend a lot more time on it than I'd allotted. So I pulled it back out of maintenance, made it a main piece, and gave it a 15% goal. Decreasing Other Percentage Goals To give Jingle Bells Rag that 15%, I had to decrease my percentage goals for The Entertainer, Blues, and Maintenance. The Entertainer: A 5% decrease was an...