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Weekend Plans

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 felt like playing the blues--maybe because Liszt makes me so happy. But I'm working steadily on the Bible of Blues Riffs and enjoyed about 20 minutes of improvising over the blues progression yesterday. I may try to play along with some recordings this weekend, just seeing what I can do, improvisation-wise, with the riffs I've memorized so far.

Technique - Oh, technique! How I love technique! I recently watched a series of tonebase videos by Sara Davis Buechner on Alberto Jonas's exercises for the piano. The first video is on hand flexibility and reach ... and wow. I can now reach a tenth! With my teeny-tiny hands!

I can't actually play a tenth for practical purposes, but I can reach it! All because of a day or two of these new exercises!

I'm also doing scales and arpeggios every day, and not just scales. I'm getting better at the arpeggios.

Maintenance Pieces - I'll review all of them, playing through each a few times. Half on Saturday, half on Sunday.

It's going to be a great weekend!

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