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Ranges and Changes

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 easy adjustment for The Entertainer; this piece is coming back to me so quickly that there's no way I'll need to give it 20% of the entire month's practice.

Blues: It was less easy for Blues, as I really want to move forward with playing in this style. I've decided to spend this month reviewing and improvising on what I've already learned rather than start something new. One focus is to make the major blues scale feel natural. It feels very natural in my right hand, and I'm getting better at improvising, but my left hand falls apart when I'm trying to improvise. Until I have the hand-coordination more solid, I'm going to hold off on adding any new PWJ blues courses to the mix.

(My next Blues course will be the Bible of Blues Riffs, which I have been looking forward to for months ... so the motivation is there to practice! And I think 20% of the month's practice time is reasonable for what is mostly review and solidifying.)

Maintenance: Maintenance was a tough one to decrease because I have so many pieces. I'm also still working on getting "Solace" ready for a video, which has taken a lot of my maintenance time so far. (The piece technically ready; I just haven't had the quiet time lately to record the video.)

Addition to Technique Category: Oscar Peterson Exercises

One other change is the addition of some new finger exercises! I'm using Oscar Peterson's Jazz Exercises, Minuets, Etudes, and Pieces for Piano.   So far everything has been very simple (late beginner level?). In fact, they are really sight reading exercises as well as finger exercises. Which is good.

How It's Going

Here is a chart showing how I'm doing so far for the month of November. For the most part, I'm staying within my goal ranges. Maintenance keeps going a little over since there are so many pieces. If I'm able to move "The Entertainer" to maintenance in another week or two, I'll adjust the ranges accordingly, giving myself more time for maintenance pieces.

So, that's where I am. I have a few other ideas for posts that I'll be putting up here soon ... and they will include video!

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