Long, Uninterrupted Practice Sessions on the Horizon!

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 session to do this, but I want one because I think this would be fun, and I don't want to have to stop after just 20 or 30 minutes.

Scott Joplin's "Solace"

I still need to make my Solace graduation video, and I plan to do that either tonight or tomorrow. It always takes a while to make a graduation video for a piece. I want it to be (mostly) error-free, so there is generally a lot of stopping and starting and re-recording involved.

Bare Necessities

I miss Bare Necessities. I played through it last night and felt sad that I haven't played it in a while. A long practice session for this piece does not fit into my goals or my schedule, but oh ... how I would like to spend an hour or two on this one this weekend.

Amazing Grace (and Old Rugged Cross)

I've also missed my gospel songs since moving them to maintenance. I never did gain the ability to improvise effortlessly with these, but I set them aside anyway since I was working through the major blues course. Now that I've spent a lot more time on the major blues scale, I'd like to take an hour or two to just dig into these hymns again and see if I can apply what I've learned to them.

The Plan

I won't be able to achieve all five of these long practice sessions this weekend, but I do intend to do items 1 through 3. If I find myself with some time Sunday evening, maybe I'll give Bare Necessities and the hymns some attention. It could happen!

Comments

Rethinking Bare Necessities

Today's breakthrough moment (there are actually two of them) focuses on "Bare Necessities." As you'll remember, I discovered Jonny May's arrangement back in early March and immediately decided to learn it. I printed out the music, started the course, and proceeded to learn the stride section, posting a few videos of my progress. Ha. I bet those videos make it look like I was making progress. I guess I was ... but not really. And I realized something this weekend that I hadn't before: Because I was thinking of "Bare Necessities" as a "fun" piece, I wasn't practicing it seriously or diligently. I wasn't treating it as something I wanted to master. This mindset might work with an easier piece, but this arrangement isn't easy. The result: despite a little progress at the outset, I wasn't moving forward. I was stalled. Breakthrough #1 The first breakthrough was realizing that if I truly want to learn this piece and play it well,

March Goals Recap/Looking Ahead to April

It's April 1, and time to revisit the goals I set for last month. I practiced a total of 50.45 hours in March, averaging 1.62 hours (or just over an hour and a half) per day. Realistically, I practice about 45 minutes to an hour a day on weekdays, and I usually get at least one longer practice (or multiple shorter practices) in on one or both days of the weekend to bring the average up. CLASSICAL GOALS Chopin, F Minor Nocturne March Goal: Have entire piece by memory and performance-ready. I have about 90% of the piece by memory, but I still have some work to do before it's performance-ready. The only two sections that I don't quite have are "The Agitation" and the "stretto" section with the seventh chords. I'll work on both this week and will have them both memorized before the weekend. April Goal: Finish memorizing, and polish, polish, polish! My focus now is really on phrasing and dynamics. I have the notes down, even in the difficult passages. Fro

Maple Leaf Rag Breakthrough

Oh, Maple Leaf. Where to begin? At the Beginning I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I learned the A and B sections of Maple Leaf Rag back in the 1990s. I can’t tell you if it was early, mid- or late 90s, but it was during those 10 years after I’d graduated college, when I was playing a good bit of piano but not taking regular lessons from anyone. I don’t remember teaching it to myself at all. I just know that, at some point, the first half of Maple Leaf Rag was part of my two- or three-song repertoire of pieces I’d be able to play by memory over the next 25 years. It was always sloppy and I knew it, but people loved it, and so I played it if there was ever a piano around. Back in January, I decided to properly re-learn those two sections, and to finally learn the C and D sections of this wonderful piece. I worked on these over the next month or two, learning (and-relearning) the notes pretty quickly ... but it took time to memorize, and also to get everything to tempo surpassing a

Picking Up the Pieces

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