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Weekend Piano Goals, 12/6-12/8

We are a week into December, and I haven't practiced nearly as much this month as I did in November. I should be able to get some good practice in this weekend. My daughter has volleyball stuff both Saturday and Sunday, so I'll be out of the house a bit to get her to and from. I'm also planning to work out on Sunday afternoon. Other than that, I'll be home--washing sheets and towels, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, and practicing the piano.

Oh, and I need to go Christmas shopping. I keep forgetting.

Anyway, onward to the piano goals!

Technique

I have the Czerny Exercise 1 at a good clip. I've started learning Exercise 2, which is even more delightful than Exercise 1. While Ex. 1 focuses mainly on the right hand, Ex. 2 is very left-hand heavy. I've played through the first half (luckily, it's an easy sight-read), and my goal for this weekend is to simply learn the second half and become comfortable playing the whole exercise before I start upping the tempo.

I've also begun doing scales/arpeggios/inversions again, a major and minor each day. On Saturday I'll do E major and E minor, and on Sunday I'll do B major and B minor.

Liszt

Oh, how I love Liebesträume No. 3! I practiced it for a total of 102 minutes yesterday--30 minutes in the morning and 72 last night. And I had no idea how much time it was taking. I was just so engrossed in learning. I'm now in the C major section, about halfway through the piece. We have lots of arpeggios and broken chords in the left hand, with big octaves in the right hand. Oh, and a good measure of flatted or sharped (and double-sharped!) notes.

It's so much fun. It's hard and it takes time, but I am loving the experience of learning this piece. My goal for this weekend is to learn the entire C major section. I'm about halfway through it, so I think this is a very achievable goal.

Jingle Bells Rag

This one is just about ready for a video. I don't have it to a blistering pace, but it's good enough. I'm playing it well and having a lot of fun with it. My goal is to get this up to a tempo of at least 100. I can play certain parts a good bit faster than that, but there are a couple of small sections where I'm stuck on 80 or 90. My goal this weekend is to iron all of that out and bring the whole piece to 100.

Maintenance Pieces

I would like to focus on two main maintenance pieces this weekend.

Amazing Grace

I've been playing this one more lately, and I'm getting better at improvising on the spot using the F major blues scale. I want to continue working on this one (partly for the improv practice, but mostly so I don't lose the rest of the piece). I've never made a final video for this, and I'd like to take care of that soon.

Rondo alla Turca

I played this earlier this week, and it is sounding very sloppy. I took about 20 minutes to really dig into the section with all the sixteenth notes in the right hand. I need to take more time to focus on the final two pages, and I hope to do that this weekend.

I'll also give some attention to my other maintenance pieces. I'm still planning to put some serious work into Bare Necessities this month, but I want to get the Jingle Bells Rag performance wrapped up first. The two pieces are very similar, and it's hard for me to work on both at the same time!

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