Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Folks, I bit the bullet. I signed up to participate in the next Piano With Jonny student recital. I paused a moment when I got to the "What will you be playing?" section. What would  I be playing? Solace? Liebestraume? A blues improv? Pineapple Rag? Yes. Pineapple Rag. It's not ready for performance at the moment, but I know I can have it ready in time for the recital. My minimum practice goal for this one is as follows: Focus on one section each day, drilling as needed and playing through 12x. Play through the entire piece 3x/day. And that's it! I have it memorized and have done the hard work of learning the tricky parts. What remains is to get it up to tempo and figure out how I want to play it (dynamics, pedaling, improv, etc.). I also want to get to where I can play it without thinking, the way I can now play Maple Leaf Rag. I'll get there. Yesterday I focused on the A section of Pineapple Rag. I got overly ambitious in the video and decided to continue on to...

I am so excited about this weekend! I'll be able to put in a lot of practice tomorrow, and I may be traveling to the Atlanta area on Sunday to meet up with a few other piano lovers! I'll also get some practice in tonight. My goals? Liebesträume - Y'all, this is sounding so much better than it did a month ago! I will continue drilling the few sections that are still a little bumpy. I also need to commit the final page to memory. I want to spent some (more) time listening to recordings and taking note of what this pianist or that pianist does, and then trying to reproduce the effect myself. Pineapple Rag - This one is coming back, albeit a little more slowly than I'd anticipated. I fully expect to have the whole thing back in my noggin (i.e., by memory) by the end of the weekend, and I'll be able to start playing it through and thinking more about expression and dynamics and less about where my fingers go. Blues - With all my work on Liszt, I haven't really fel...

 I was looking through my old blog and found this piano post from something like 2006. It was titled "Dance of the Nail-bitten Digits: A Ramble and an Analogy." I was working on Liszt's transcription of Schubert's Ständchen at the time--a beautiful piece that I've (sadly) forgotten. I'd also forgotten about the analogy at the end of this post, so I'm posting it again here. Dance of the Nail-bitten Digits: A Ramble and an Analogy (2006) I am loving Liszt. I love the way my hands have to "share" the melody in "Standchen." I have so much to write on that, but I'm borrowing a computer and don't have enough time to do it justice. Suffice it to say that I've practiced three and a half wonderful hours today, and about two hours on Liszt alone. What I find wonderful about the Liszt is that it pushes one hand hard, but not too hard. Then the other hand gets a turn to be pushed. But it's never both at the same time, and never one ...

Last night I practiced Misty , the Bible of Blues Riffs , and Liszt ! (My beloved Franzi!) Misty was a little rough, which was surprising, considering I performed it by memory less than a month ago. Alas, I am not a computer. After 15 minutes, however, it was mostly back in my working memory. I'll be working on it 2-3 times a week throughout the month. Bible of Blues Riffs was VERY rough! I started over from the beginning, reviewing only the one-note-at-a-time riffs for about 20 minutes. I also practiced using the stride style, which was very difficult, as I'm used to playing the blues shuffle. I didn't feel great about my progress by the end of the session, but I imagine it will come more quickly after a few more sessions. This is one of my top priorities for May. And Liszt ! I spent 32 minutes working on the cadenzas. The first cadenza is harder for me. I can play the notes and have practiced them in all kinds of ways--blocking, rhythms, hands separately--but I'm hit...

April was a weird month for piano! March was also a weird month for piano--I missed ten full days of practice. Toward the end of the month, after Don's death, I began working on the songs for his celebration of life. That got me back into the habit of piano. After that, I decided to focus only on Liszt for the rest of the month--about three weeks. And I did. April Stats As you can see, I got back on the proverbial horse in April, with regular practices and very few days off. I practiced 36.1 hours, bringing my monthly average up to 27.6. The piece that got the most attention was, of course, Liebesträume (23 hours of practice). After that, the top projects were Misty and What a Wonderful World (both about 3 hours of practice). I also put a little over two hours into technique. This chart shows how much time, each month, I've put into each piece. Yellow is April. I'm very happy with how April went. I'm glad I allowed myself to focus on Liszt for a few weeks. And I'm e...