Picking Up the Pieces

This weekend, I realized it was time to make some changes to the fingering in Liszt. Here is a boring video of me talking about them. That's all it is. Just me talking. And here is a video where I play one of the sections with changes. Can you guess where the new fingering is?

 It's April 24, and I am continuing my work on Liszt! Last night I worked on (among other things) the quasi cadenza at measure 25. I had worked out a LH fingering using the Alfred edition suggestions as a guide, but then I watched a YouTube video (can't remember which one) where the pianist used a different fingering ... and I had one of those "duh" moments. When I got home, I tried the new-to-me fingering, and it made the passage so much easier. It usually takes me some time to change a fingering pattern I've already learned, but I adjusted pretty quickly. Here is measure 25. I am nowhere close to my goal tempo, but I do have it so that I can play it at 80 bpm (four notes per beat).

Back on January 1, I had so many great plans for my 2025 piano year. In 2024, I averaged about 52 hours a month, most months, on piano. But in 2025? 40 hours in January, 15 in February, and 18 in March. I'm currently at 22 for April and am hoping to make it to 30. Why has this happened? Part of it was volleyball season . I knew I wouldn't get as many hours in from January through March because we'd be traveling a lot of weekends for volleyball. The weekends we didn't have tournaments, I either (1) visited my mom in North Carolina or (2) caught up on all of the house and yard work that I'd neglected over the previous weeks. With all of that, I fell out of the habit. And I was tired. When I did find myself with a half-hour or more for piano, I chose instead to veg in front of the TV or just go to sleep. (I also got out of the fitness habit during this time, so it wasn't just piano.) Back to Piano In March, after Don died and Brenda asked me to play a couple of son...

At a recent Piano With Jonny Q&A, Jonny talked about the importance of narrowing your focus if you want to make real progress. He quoted Dave Ramsey's "Momentum Theorem": focused intensity over time, multiplied by God, equals unstoppable momentum. I can't complain about not making progress; I've made unbelievable progress in piano over the past year. But ... I also have constantly struggled with having too many projects, not being able to focus on things the way I want to, and knowing I could progress faster and more fully if I could give more focused intensity to just a few projects. About a week ago, I made the difficult choice to set aside the PWJ stuff to focus on Liebesträume. I've worked very hard on it at times and have made progress--but that work and progress came in spurts of activity, separated by days and sometimes weeks of no focus on it at all. I fed my goals to Grok and asked it to give me a schedule for having Liebesträume performance-read...

Sunday, April 6, was Don’s celebration of life (funeral). I played “Misty” and “What a Wonderful World.” I was happy with how the music went. I started off on the wrong foot (or the wrong pedal) and managed to stop and start over without any drama or ugly faces. I had come up with a short intro to "Misty" the day before, and I was glad I did; I would have hated to have to re-do the famous first few notes. Here is the version I played, complete with intro: "What a Wonderful World" was lovely, too. I'd gone to the church the day before to practice on their grand piano, and it was time well spent. I'd cut and pasted (literally) the music so that it all fit on two pages, and then taped it into a folder. (I was using a mashup of Jonny May's version and a lead sheet/my own version.) With everything arranged on just two pages (rather than four, which is how I'd learned it), my brain got all mixed up. My eyes would go to where something was supposed to be, a...