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September 2025 Recap, and Looking Ahead to October

September had a slow start, but I still logged 37.1 hours of practice, averaging about 1.2 hours a day! My top projects were Liszt (7.1 hours), Bare Necessities (6 hours), technique (6 hours), America the Beautiful Rag (3.1 hours), and the PWJ Lead Sheets course (3 hours). I also kicked off Honky Tonk Women and worked on St. Louis Blues/G blues improv.

September Highlights

In the past month, I managed to:

  • Prepare Liszt for my upcoming Piano With Rebecca performance this Saturday.
  • Master Jonny’s St. Louis Blues Challenge.
  • Keep my maintenance pieces performance-ready.
  • Start reviving Jingle Bells Rag for the holidays.
  • Be seriously inspired by Chuck Leavell’s live performance!
  • Realize I want to shift focus away from "playing by the dots" and more toward improvising, arranging, composing, and playing by ear.
  • Revive Bare Necessities to near-performance level—check out this video of the first section! (Apologies for the weird angle!)
  

I also hit my percentage goals (see chart) and made solid progress despite a busy month. Whew!

October Piano Goals: A Packed Playlist!

My October spreadsheet is a glorious mess!! I'm not too worried about it, though, as I've found I progress faster if I practice mostly in snippets of 10-20 minutes per piece/project, and if I don't do the same music every single day. This requires a bit of a "spinning plates" approach that I don't love, but it's necessary for now ... and it works!

Let's look at my October plans, breaking it down by percentage goals for the month.

Technique/Foundations (10%): Scales, arpeggios, and ear training (for days I'm traveling and can't practice), plus PWJ Lead Sheets course for improv practice.

Ragtime (32.5%): Polishing (and speeding up) Bare Necessities and Jingle Bells Rag, plus writing my Pianeaux Rag arrangements. I'll also work on my Scott Joplin rags on Maintenance days.

Blues/Improv (32.5%): Honky Tonk Women (with left-hand groove and right-hand riff exercises), G and C blues improv, and maintaining Amazing Grace and St. Louis Blues. I'll also be setting up a private IROCKU lesson for Honky Tonk Women.

Classical (20%): Prepping Liszt's Liebestraume No. 3 for the October 4 performance, learning and memorizing Chopin's Waltz in A Minor, and maintaining Mozart's Rondo alla Turca.

Songs (5%): Jazz standards like Misty, my arrangement of What a Wonderful World, and a new Christmas project. 

I may shift 5% from Classical to Songs if the Christmas project grows. We'll see. For now, I'm excited to dive into October's musical chaos and start those plates spinning!

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