Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

I started Czerny Ex. 2 (Op. 849) a few weeks ago but had to stop because of the ganglion cyst in my left wrist. I started it again this week, and it is such a delightful piece! It's not particularly hard (as long as you don't play it at breakneck speed). Here is a not-perfect performance of it. I had just played it slowly and decided, on a whim, to try to play it at close to the recommended tempo. As you can see, I'm not quite ready for that! But I still think it turned out OK.

December is going to look a bit different from my previous piano months. Instead of five or six main pieces/skills to focus on, I'm only going to have two: Technique (15%) and Liszt (30%). The rest of my work will be to review almost everything I've done this year and be ready for a (not actual) performance by January 1, 2025. Also different for December is that I'll be dividing my maintenance pieces into the categories of ragtime, blues/gospel, and classical. Here are the details. Technique (15%) I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I love Czerny's Thirty New Studies in Technics, Op. 849 . I'm still on Exercise 1, but I've been working diligently to build up speed while remaining accurate and clear. Dynamics are also a consideration, so I've been working on that, too. The goal tempo is half note=100, and I'm at half note=80. so I've made progress. I expect to start Exercise 2 in early December and will spend a few weeks working on it. I'...

I had hoped to put three hours a day into piano this weekend, and I came close! I put in FOUR hours on Saturday, but then I only practiced an hour and a half on Sunday. I had dropped my daughter off at volleyball practice at 1:00, but then she got sick, so I had to go pick her up and take her home. And then I had to be back at the gym (about 20 minutes away) for a 2:30 parent meeting, and then I had to do the week's grocery shopping on my way home. So I pretty much drove back and forth yesterday from 12:30 to almost 4:00. Because I had a sick child, I made a big pot of homemade creamy chicken noodle soup for dinner, which took up a good part of the late afternoon. And then after dinner, we put up the Christmas tree and further decorated for Christmas. By the time all that was done, I only had energy to sit on the couch, pet the cats, and look at the pretty tree while we listened to Christmas music. I did practice early yesterday morning, though, and I got some good work done. I...