Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Send help. Roland Nicholas (my piano) and I are in counseling, and the piano isn’t speaking to me. Well, not exactly ... For the entire month of November, my faithful Roland sat in the corner like a dusty houseplant. Total practice time for the month ? A pathetic 11 hours. I probably spent at least as many hours scrolling X. What happened? I Re-discovered Muscles A couple of months ago, I learned that my club's volleyball coaches would have a full-day training session in early November, and that we would be doing some of the drills. Ack! After years of a desk job + 1-2 hours of piano daily + a car accident September, I knew I needed to get back in shape! So I started the daily workouts. Fantastic for glutes, great for triceps, terrible for Chopin and ragtime. The workouts pretty much replaced my piano-practice sessions for a few weeks. A Busy Month for Coaching Early November was a whirlwind of middle-school volleyball clinics, subbing for sick coaches, and the full-day training wh...

That's my sweet #34. February started on Saturday. So did the volleyball tournament several hours away. My daughter didn't play until Sunday, but we still had to leave by mid-day Saturday since we had an early team dinner. I managed to log a whopping 40 minutes of practice Saturday morning--22 minutes on the Bible of Blues Riffs, and 18 minutes on Pineapple Rag. We got home from the tournament at about 9:30 Sunday night. I unpacked and changed into my pajamas, and then I went downstairs to practice for a few minutes, even though I was bone-tired. I never made it to the piano. Ruthie Cat was on the couch next to the piano, meowing at me to please come and cuddle with her. So I lay down on the couch to cuddle with her ... and we both woke up an hour and a half later. By then everyone was in bed, so I just went upstairs and went to bed myself. This morning I worked on Liszt (30 minutes) and the Bible of Blues Riffs (15 minutes). Tonight the plan is to work on arranging and improvi...

So far, 2025 has been terrible for piano practice! January 1st was great. I put in almost three hours and was excited about such an auspicious beginning to the new year. I didn't practice on January 2nd (boo), but January 3rd was good, with just a little over two hours of practice that Friday night. But then ... volleyball tournament season started, and I wore my volleyball-mom hat all weekend. In fact, I left my piano-player hat at home and didn't put it on until Monday night. The best news? My daughter's team got second in Silver, coming out 8th out of 12 teams! I know that doesn't sound great, but it's a lot better than any of her other teams have done. I'm hopeful for a good season (or at least a better one) this year! Here is her team winning their final game of the tournament. Back to piano: I ended up not practicing at all on Saturday (January 4th) because we were so busy packing everything, and then we didn't get home until late Sunday (January 5th)...

Yesterday, January 2, I didn't practice piano at all. Horrors! I was so tired yesterday morning and didn't wake up in time for a morning practice. I'd planned to practice after work and before driving my daughter to her 7:00 volleyball practice, but then they moved her practice up to 6:00, which meant I had to pick up a fast-food dinner for her, rush home from work, and get her to practice. I went for my run while she was at practice (as planned), and then went to pick her up at 8:00. She didn't get out of her practice until almost 8:15, and then I had to stop by Kroger on the way home. When we finally got home, I had to take a shower because I was covered with dried sweat from my run. By the time all that was done, it was almost 10:00 and I was beat. I went to bed. So, no piano practice yesterday. That's the bad news. The good news is that I have kept up with my running plan for six weeks now! Yesterday's run (run 12 minutes, walk 2 minutes, X 3) was my longest...

We all have them--those weeks where you just can't seem to get to the piano to practice much more than the major/minor scales and arps. This week has been one of those weeks. I'd looked forward to practicing on Friday evening after work (which is my usual pattern), but something else came up--I can't remember what it was, but I remember calling my husband to see when he would be home, and complaining that I hadn't had a single chance to practice. And then Saturday was just busy, busy, busy. On Sunday, I had my first volunteer piano "gig" at a local assisted-living facility where I'll be playing every couple of weeks. I hadn't practiced in three days, and it felt like it had been three weeks. Still, it went pretty well, and everyone seemed to enjoy the music. It's a high-end facility and I was half-expecting a grand piano, or at least a nice upright, but it was a Yahama keyboard with non-weighted keys. So that took some adjustment. I've gotten...

This morning I returned to Schubert for the first time in a couple of weeks. You read that right. It's been about two weeks (maybe more?) since I last practiced Schubert. There is something wrong with your life and your priorities when you don't have 30 minutes a day to spare for piano practice or  voice practice. And there is definitely something wrong. Not only have I not had time for piano, I haven't had time for writing, exercise, meditation/prayer, reading, listening to music, blogging, or even housework. It seems I go from work (where I'm always behind) to toting Anne places (where I'm always in a rush, and always late). Take, for instance, right now. I'm sitting down at 7:40 (work doesn't start until 8:30). My calendar has my first three hours blocked off for non-priority stuff that I need to get out of the way before I start on the priority stuff. But I just checked the ticket queue, and guess what. I have a good hour's worth of client...

How has it been almost two weeks since I've blogged here? It's not because I haven't been practicing ... though the practice sessions haven't been as often as I'd like. I am continuing to work on the usual pieces, though my main focus for this past week has been the getting the fugue into my fingers. I guess it's been "nothing to write home about"--just slow, steady learning of measure by measure, starting with the final measure and working my way backwards. I can now play the entire second page through quite smoothly, if slowly. My next lesson is tomorrow and I have a busy night tonight, so I don't imagine I'll get much further. I'm also getting through my scales in less time, now that I've upped the majors to 72 and the minors to 40. Those minors are not quite so tough anymore. Even C# and G# aren't too bad. Playing them every single day for a couple of months has worked its magic! (If regular practice can be called "magic...

Yes, life has returned to what it was before, now that my "fall break" (two days off from work) has ended. Yesterday morning I spent about 20 minutes at the piano, going through scales and a bit of Schubert. This morning, I had about 12 minutes, which I devoted mostly to scales and Hanon. I started to play through the Bach but I was distracted and playing too fast. So I played it through slowly, just so my brain wouldn't have those fast mistakes be the last thing it remembered ... and then I was done for the day. And that, friends, is a slice of life as an adult piano student. Now I'm at work. I've actually been at work for a few minutes, but no one is at the office yet, so I figured I could take five minutes for a quick piano blog post. Work has been really hard lately. It's been difficult to think. My mind lacks its usual focus, and I'm struggling to get through the simplest tasks. When I finished work yesterday, I was so completely exhausted. I to...

I have been dealing with a lot of anxiety lately. I've had issues with the depression in the past, but anxiety has never been that much of a problem for me ... until now. Some of it has to do with work stress, some has to do with money stress, and some is just plain old life stress. While the cost of piano lessons adds somewhat to the money stress, the escape of practice and the anticipation of the next lesson have helped me make it through these last few weeks. I'm finding that I tend to hit a low point on Wednesday evenings. Let's see why: On Tuesdays, I have a full day of work, including a required meeting at noon. On Tuesday evenings, I am the leader for a combined Tiger/Wolf/Bear Cub Scout Den. On Wednesdays, I have a full day of work, including a required meeting from 12:30 to 2:00. On Wednesday evenings, I volunteer to teach a pre-school class at church. On Wednesday nights, I have choir practice. So, as you might imagine, I can go two days without touching...

Yesterday, Deborah and I made the mutual decision to cancel my lesson. I've been estranged from the piano all week, and was going to need a "practice lesson" anyway. And Deborah had an unexpected schedule change. It wasn't a change that would interfere with my lesson, but it would have required her to race around and be stressed and have to hurry ... just to get home so I could have a practice lesson. And I wasn't all that crazy about the idea of the hour-long drive for a practice lesson. We both agreed. Not worth it. So, did I practice yesterday? NO. Why not? I worked at the bookstore, then ran four miles, then came home. My husband was home early, and it was Valentine's Day. It would be really bad form to lock myself up in the piano room when one's spouse comes home early for Valentine's Day. So I didn't practice. And I won't get much practicing in this weekend because I'll be on the road and piano-less for most of it. I'm not stresse...

I spent the day in Charlotte for the Thunder Road Half-Marathon. Didn't get to practice piano, though I did play a bit on my birthmom's keyboard that afternoon.