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Piano Stats for May 2025

I love spreadsheets so much. (But not as much as I love piano!)

Here are the stats for May!

"May-tenance" Goals

I had big plans to bring all of my maintenance pieces back up to speed in May. It didn't happen. I revisited them each at some point , but I couldn't dedicate the time needed to have them ready to play by memory at a moment's notice.

There are two main reasons for this:

  • I put more time into technique than planned. Beneficial? Yes. Worth the extra time? Absolutely. Good for meeting the original goal? Nah ... but the technique work will help me to be even better at my maintenance pieces.
  • I signed up to perform Pineapple Rag at two online student recitals, so about halfway through May, I focused more time on it. (The result? Not only is it now almost performance-ready, but the happy music has me dancing and humming my way through real life!)

While I'd love to have more maintenance pieces in my back pocket, I now have Pineapple Rag down pretty well, and I think Liebesträume may even be ready for a July student recital.

Percentage Goals

With my style-juggling ways, I've started tracking percentage goals for musical style (instead of for individual pieces). I try to focus on four main projects at a time (usually one classical, one ragtime, my blues work, and technique), though others always manage to pop up. With my recent emphasis on technique and Pineapple Rag, I exceeded my goals for technique and ragtime (yaaay!). I met my classical goal easily (yaaay!), but poor Blues was out in the cold in May (brrr ... I mean boooo!).

Hours Per Musical Style

Here's an interesting one: "Category Competition." It really isn't a competition since some styles will always come out on top, but I'm a sucker for gamification. Plus, I like seeing how many hours I devoted to each style.

Leaderboard

This one shows how much time I spent on each piece/project. I track which piece(s) get the most practice time each day and maintain a leaderboard showing which ones "win" most often. Yes, I'm a total nerd.

 (The Zero :( row refers to the sad days with no practice at all. )

May: A Great Month for Piano!

As you can see in this chart, I am back to my strong practicing habits after a few off months!


Looking Ahead to June

Stats are fun (so much fun), but they're just numbers. (Ha -- "just" numbers.) But seriously, they don't capture the many breakthroughs I experienced this month, or my excitement about how they'll help me to become an even better piano player! 

I hope to write more on all of that later. I know I've been away from the blog more than usual. I've just been very busy in real life, and I don't have the blogging time available anymore. I'll try to check in and update occasionally. Even though I don't have any readers, it helps me to see the progress!

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