Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

 I know I've mentioned the masterclass here a few times, but I don't think I've said much about it. It's going to be conducted by pianist Orion Weiss, who will be performing with the Augusta Symphony the night before (Sept. 27). Which reminds me, I need to get tickets.  OK. I just took a break from writing this to buy a couple of symphony tickets. $158 -- ouch! I could have gotten balcony seats for just $60, but I'm so deaf and my eyes are bad. Anyway, the deed is done. So, four area students will be participating in this masterclass. An 11-year-old, a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, and me. I saw the pieces being played, and one is Liszt's Consolation 3, which I played back in high school. It was one of my first "two-against-three" pieces. Two of the pieces seem to be intermediate/early-advanced, and I think the Consolation and my Chopin are probably comparable, as far as level. So it should be a good little masterclass. Mr. Weiss will also perform at the...

I had a delightful piano lesson yesterday. Eric gave me some good insights regarding Rondo alla Turca, but he also said that it sounds great. I asked him to tell me honestly if the broken-octave and coda sections sound like a train wreck, and he said they don't sound like a train wreck at all. That was a relief. Apparently, all of my slow practice on that section, as well as all of my broken-octave exercises and all of my rolled-chord and articulation work, have helped. It was good to get some objective feedback and have that objective feedback be so positive and encouraging. So, it looks like I will graduate from Rondo alla Turca by the end of June. What's next? I'll be 10 or so days without a piano at the end of July, so I'm hesitant to start a new piece for July. I've also felt a little overwhelmed by the many different projects I'm working on. So perhaps I should just focus on finishing up both Bare Necessities and the 10-Lesson Blues Challenge by the time I...

Here is a wonderful quote from Chopin from the book Chopin: Pianist and Teacher , as read by pianist and teacher Josh Wright: The passage was written by a student of Chopin's, regarding how Chopin responded when the student felt inhibited and unable to express himself (herself?) at the piano. "With what delicate nuances of behavior he adapts his own being with that of another," they write about Chopin as a teacher. "Imagine you're at the conservatoire ," Chopin said, "listening to the most beautiful performance in the world. Make yourself want to hear it, and then you'll hear yourself playing it, right here." He told the student, "I see that timidity and lack of self-confidence form a kind of armor around you, but through this armor I perceive something else that you don't always dare to express, and so you deprive us all." "Be bold and confident in your own powers and strengths." There are good reminders, from the mouth...

 It's lunchtime Tuesday, and I'm thinking about my biweekly 30-minute piano lesson that will be later this afternoon. I'll be working on two pieces: the Chopin Nocturne in F minor, and Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. Today I'm mostly thinking about the Chopin. I've learned the first three pages (mostly), up to the section I refer to as "The Transcendence," starting at measure 77. I'm a little apprehensive about the lesson--not because I don't know the music, but because of the weird transition that is required when playing an acoustic piano after practicing for two weeks on a digital . Anyway, when I first started this nocturne, I found this lecture by pianist Greg Niemczuk: In it, he tells us that in the couple of years before the F minor nocturne was written/published, Chopin was "wounded" three times. These wounds were the death of his first teacher, of whom Chopin was very fond; the death of his beloved friend, roommate, and soulm...

So there is a magic, invisible cord in my body. Two cords, actually. They're relatively sturdy, they lead from my brain to my fingertips, and there's enough cord for some slack. If you loosen the cord, the body can put more weight into the keys. If you tighten it, the fingers "pull away" and play more lightly. So that's what I imagine. The weight in the fingers comes from the body, from the core--not from the hands. When it's time to lighten up, the hands shouldn't tense; the core should control how much weight is used to strike the keys. So last night I worked on a measure of the Chopin that, in all the years I've played this, I've never given much attention to: measure 83. Here's what it sounds like, without the dynamics. In this measure, you have an accelerando  in the first half, and then a diminuendo  in the second half. The measure starts at something like fortissimo . So there is this rushing that is simultaneous with a dyin...

I'm technically on vacation for a couple of days. I was supposed to go to Shenandoah National Park with a group of ladies for a camping/backpacking trip, but a number of things came up that left me too broke and exhausted to make the trip. I considered having these few days be regular work days, but I truly needed the time off ... so I took it. It has been heavenly, which has helped heal (somewhat) the disappointment of not going to Shenandoah. I've had to do a little bit of work for my job, but I've also had plenty of time for music. Yesterday at noon, I went to Augusta to see a chamber music performance that was part of the Westobou Festival. My piano teacher, Carol, accompanied mezzo-soprano Diane Haslam, who did a mix of songs and poems about love. It was quite enjoyable, and I'm hoping to take more opportunities during the week (when I can) to attend music performances. After that, I came back home and settled down in the music room for a few hours of practic...

I've written several times about how I've been playing my Chopin Nocturne mostly from memory for years, and have totally ceased to think seriously about all the little dynamic instructions that poor Frédéric so painstakingly wrote down throughout the piece. I've been focusing very hard on, you know, paying attention to them now. The result is that I'm playing the piece much more slowly than before ... but I also think I'm starting to play it better. For my own reference (and for anyone who might be learning this piece and Googling "chopin noctrne op 9 no1 help what dose poco rallent mean"), I'm writing down some definitions here, in the order in which they appear in the nocturne*: p - piano , soft espress.  - espressivo , expressive smorz. - smorzando  - dying away (both tone and speed) legatissimo - very smooth and connected; more legato than legato appassionato  - with passion cresc. - crescendo , gradually getting louder con forza  - with...

I'm a little hesitant to share this recording, for several reasons. I'll get those out of the way now: My piano is not in perfect tune. I cannot play this piece perfectly because ... The tempo is too slow throughout, but a little faster than I want in places. The polyrhythm sections are still a little wonky. I accidentally turned two pages in the middle of the piece and had to stop and turn back to the correct page. The final note of the piece wouldn't play the first two times on my 100-year-old piano, so that final note sounds like it's showing up to the party really late. The recording isn't a professional one, and (I think) the left hand sounds louder and more plodding than it does in real life. (I will let my new piano teacher be the judge of that tomorrow.) I'm sure I could think another half-dozen reasons if I gave myself two or three more minutes, but I'll stop there. Why am I posting this? Because I want to capture a moment of time as ...

I've managed to squeeze in several short practices over the past few days. None of them were "worth writing home about," but I do want to keep track of my progress here, so this will be an all-in-one update. Scales I must say, I am so happy to be focusing on scales and not arpeggios right now. We'll return to "arps" in good time, but for now I'm working diligently at getting the scales back in my fingers and my brain. I'm playing 24 scales a day: 12 majors plus 12 harmonic minors, all in parallel and contrary motion. I still doing the majors at 60 and the minors at ♪ = 50. I do all of the majors plus six minors (C, C#, D, Eb, E, and F) in the morning, and then the remaining six minors (F#, G, G#, A, Bb, and B) in the evening. And they're getting better! It really doesn't take that much time, either, particularly now that I'm becoming comfortable with the scales again. I imagine I will move up a degree on the metronome for next we...

I learned Chopin's B-flat minor Nocturne using the Schirmer edition, favorite edition of broke college students everywhere. When Deborah and I were going to work on the F-minor Nocturne (which I barely started before I had to quit), she had me get the Alfred edition. So when I decided to do a chord analysis of the whole piece (B-flat minor, I mean), I pulled out the Alfred since it wasn't covered with fingering, jotted notes, and other scribbles. When I sat down to get the piece from memory a couple of weeks ago, I went back to Schirmer. Here's measure 73, which I'm still working on getting "just right." So the Schirmer and the Alfred are both lying around. When I sat down to work on measure 73 today, I grabbed the version that was closest at hand: the Alfred. Here's measure 73 of the Alfred: I have the measure 73 polyrhythms down for the most part, but I'm not confident about them. When they come together properly, it feels like mo...

I managed to get about 60-70 minutes of practice in today. Gotta love weekends. Only thing is, those 60-70 minutes were broken into short intervals throughout the day. Six or seven short intervals. One thing I became good at as an adult student years ago was micro-practicing . I don't know if that's a real term, but it's the one I use. Basically, it's the ability to take the 10 minutes you have available for practice, and make the best of every millisecond in those 10 minutes. After a half-dozen micro-practice sessions, I feel almost as if I'd gotten an intense hour in. Of course, that's just a feeling. But experience has shown that the practice sessions are worthwhile, and that the improvement happens anyway. The key is in focus and planning . Plan to focus on a very, very small bite during those ten minute: a half a measure, the transition from one chord to another, a scale run. Today's micro-practices focused on several things: 1. The Eb-minor con...

So I finished labeling chords today as I worked to memorize the last couple of pages of the B-flat minor nocturne. At some point I realized that I've been playing a couple of notes all wrong for ... who knows how long? I thought maybe I'd been playing them wrong from the very beginning, but I could see that Deborah had circled the correct notes in my Schirmer edition. So it's possible that I wanted to play the wrong notes but she was trying to get me to play the right ones. These are near the end of the piece. As in the beginning, we go from B-minor to F7 ... or do we? This is what you have in the beginning: That second set of notes is an F7 chord over the B-flat bass note: F, E-flat, A, F, and F. An F7 chord consists of F, A, (C,) and E-flat. Those notes in the red boxes? All F's. So that's what I was playing at the end. But look at what's actually written at the end: Over the B-flat bass note, we have G-flat, E-flat, and A. Those notes in...

I have had the hardest time memorizing songs for my voice lessons. I work at it and I practice, but the practice sessions aren't as focused as I'd like them to be, and it seems that the weekly voice lessons come and go, and the words still aren't there. Piano is another story. At least when I took from Deborah, memorizing wasn't too much of a stretch because I practiced so intently. At the same time, she didn't require memorization, so I never quite jumped out of the nest with any of my pieces. So did I ever memorize them? Kind of? Maybe? I'll never know. So in my rediscovery of the B-flat minor nocturne, I've decided that I want to do two things I'd never seriously focused on before: analysis and memory. The two go hand-in-hand, so it seemed a worthy way to spend some time this afternoon while Anne played with the neighbor kids outside. My Schirmer edition of the nocturne is the one I learned with, so it's all marked up with fingerin...

Today I took my lunch break with Henry. We worked on those runs in the Chopin that I was writing about earlier. I decided to record myself playing them so I could get a different perspective on how those runs were actually sounding. It's been a long time since I've recorded myself playing this piece. As I listened to my first few measures, I realized something, and it had nothing to do with the runs: The first note of each measure in the LH is unnecessarily heavy. Too heavy. In fact, it has a funereal sound to it, or maybe just the sense of heavy, tired breathing: a slow BOOM da da da da da, BOOM da da da da da ..." My beautiful, thoughtful nocturne sounded tired. It's a nighttime-evoking piece , but "tired" is not the effect I'm looking for! I may have even heard a hint of labored snoring. At first I wasn't sure why it sounded to sluggish, so I listened to my beloved Rubinstein, and then to me, and compared. Ahhhh ... something I never ...

It has been a lovely morning. I woke up, did some writing, listened to some Horowitz, listened to Rubinstein playing my Nocturne , and then played for a few minutes myself, all before waking up the kid and getting her off to school. Considering how little I've played in the past few weeks, and particularly how little I've played in the past 10 years, Op. 9 No. 1 is not sounding too bad. My new teacher may have  different opinion, but for now, I'm going with my own judgment. I feel like I don't have too far to go to get this into "recital" shape. What's left? Memorize. I have a lot of it by muscle memory, but I haven't actively worked on memorizing it. Analyze. As a composer wanna-be, I want to look at every single unit of this piece and understand what makes each one what it is. This probably isn't a necessary step, but it's something I want to do. Learn the notes. Ha ha. OK, so I already know the notes, but there are just a...