Skip to main content

484 Hours (so far) in 2024!

Today when I opened my practice journal on PWJ, I saw that I've put 484 hours of practice in since joining PWJ on January 30.

My home for 484 hours (so far) this year.

Wow. Four hundred and eighty-four hours. God willing, I should hit the 500-hour mark in another ten or twelve days.

Five hundred hours of practice! At that rate, I'll hit 10,000 hours in just 20 years!

10,000 Hours?

Honestly, I wonder if I've put 10,000 hours of practice in by this point in my life. I've never tracked my practice time until this year, so I have no way of knowing. I have had some years where I've practiced this much (and more), but then there have been years of almost no practice.

(Five minutes later ...)

So, I went into Excel just now and estimated my hours of practice every year since I started playing in 1974. My very first practice session, at age 4, was after church one Sunday evening. I worked and worked and worked at playing "Just As I Am." I have no idea how long it took that night, but once I realized I could play by ear, I was at the piano every spare minute. And that didn't change much for two years, until I started taking lessons and playing became "practice" and I begrudgingly "practiced" for 30 or so minutes a day.

Anyway, my estimate, once I added up all the years, is 10,750 hours. So it's very possible that I've put 10,000 hours of practice in over my lifetime. You'd think I'd be better at piano by now. Ha.

484 Hours = Lots of Improvement!

Seriously, though ... my 484 hours in 2024 have been worth it. I am a much better pianist than I was a year ago, and I have quite a few songs completely memorized:

  • Maple Leaf Rag
  • Solace
  • The Entertainer
  • Bare Necessities
  • Jingle Bells Rag
  • Chopin, Nocturne in F minor
  • Mozart, Rondo alla Turca
  • Amazing Grace (gospel blues style)
  • The Old Rugged Cross (gospel blues style)

That's nine songs! Jonny said it's good to have about 15 songs memorized at any point, so I have six more to go. :)

No recording or video today. It's rare these days that I'm home alone and have the opportunity to record. It's sad because I have so many pieces ready to share! Hopefully soon.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thursday, July 13

I worked in a short practice today. Had piano this afternoon. The short practice involved the usual scales and arps, and a run-through of my pieces. It wasn't so much a practice as a review. Piano was good. She said that the Bach sounded very musical. I asked what I should do next, practice-wise--continue drilling and memorizing HS, or start HT? She said that I "shouldn't hold off any longer" on playing HT, and to keep drilling HS if I want but to begin working HT on whatever I find to be the most difficult passage of the fugue. That's easy. I don't have the music in front of me, but in the Alfred edition, it's the bottom of page two. I played the Liszt pretty well, if a bit timidly. I'm playing it with emotion and paying attention to all of the dynamics and all of that, but I'm still also trying to make sure I get the notes right in several sections. She had all kinds of nice things to say about the Liszt. The 9-against-4 is sounding much better (...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Need an Intermediate Piece

Deborah wants me to pick out an intermediate piece to start learning next week. I went to the ARCT Syllabus guide that Robert so graciously sent me and looked up all of the pieces that I considered "intermediate." They were mostly Grade 6 and Grade 7. Not intermediate enough. I looked up my Beethoven Sonatina in G, my most recent intermediate piece. It's a Grade 3--a very early intermediate. So I'm looking for something in the Grade 4-5 category. And I'd kind of like to work on one of those pieces that everyone loves to hear--Fur Elise, Chopin's Em prelude, the Brahms waltz in Ab--all pieces I learned in junior high, but pieces that I'd like to re-learn, and learn to play well , and not like my junior-high self, whose heart wasn't in the music. And they are pieces I love, and that others love hearing as well. Hmm. Fur Elise is Grade 7. The Chopin Prelude is Grade 8. The Brahms Waltz is Grade 8. Too advanced for an intermediate piece? I'll talk it ...
3 comments
Read more