Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

The good news, in the midst of all this despair, is that the long break from piano doesn't seem to have affected my playing. I got to play throughout the day yesterday, and it was sooo nice to (1) be able to play for so long, and (2) sound really good! Morning Practice I tried to work yesterday morning (from home), but I couldn't concentrate. My head hurt, and my eye was (and still is) killing me because I have a scratch on my left cornea. So I told my boss, and she said I have three days of bereavement leave, and to feel free to take some time. So I did. I turned off the computer, went downstairs, and practiced piano for a couple of hours. Mostly I worked on hymns, starting with the PWJ Amazing Grace that I wrote about earlier, and then moving on to a medley I'm arranging of my dad's favorite hymns. I was going to make it three hymns, but I've decided to just do two: In the Garden and The Old Rugged Cross. I'll play through ITG twice (where the second time is ...

Thanks to my forearm soreness from trimming hedges last weekend, I didn't play much piano on Sunday, on Monday, or on Tuesday morning. I thought about canceling yesterday afternoon's lesson, but I decided to go through with it anyway ... and I'm so glad I did! Eric had wanted to hear "Bare Necessities," so I played it for him ... and he was impressed! I played him the Jonny May video so he could see the Bare Necessities master himself, and then we talked about how I might use dynamics and phrasing to put my own stamp on it. It was a good lesson. I'm glad I decided to stick with the lessons, even though they are more like feedback sessions than actual lesson. But I honestly think feedback sessions are just what I need at this point. At the end of the lesson, I asked Eric if he'd ever thought about having the piano store sponsor an amateur pianists' club. He said he'd brought up the idea to his adult students in the past, but that no one had ever bee...

I had a piano lesson yesterday. It was my first lesson in six weeks, thanks to multiple planned and unplanned schedule changes. Six weeks ago, I was still working on how to interpret the "Mad Chase" section of Chopin, and I hadn't put any serious work into the final page yet. I was still fine-turning "Misty" and was just noodling around with Bare Necessities. I was crawling through Maple Leaf Rag and working to memorize the D section. And my adventure into minor sevenths was still three weeks into the future. A lot has happened in six weeks. Forty-five blog posts' worth of stuff! We went a few minutes over at yesterday's lesson, which is supposed to last a half-hour. I was glad Eric could go over because I really wanted the opportunity to cover both Chopin and Maple Leaf. Chopin and Piano-Lesson Piano Woes I played Chopin first. I'll begin by saying that I don't like the piano used in the lesson. It's a Kawai (I think) spinet, and it always s...

  Yesterday was my mostly-classical piano lesson. As a reminder, I meet with this teacher for a half-hour once every other week. It really isn't enough -- I mean, it's enough time for me to play something and get feedback, but there really isn't time for a lesson that covers more than one piece. While I've enjoyed the lessons and really like the teacher, I'll have to think about whether to renew the lessons later this spring. At yesterday's lesson, I'd hoped to spend a few minutes on Chopin and then move on to Maple Leaf Rag for the bulk of the lesson. I played through the Chopin, quite badly I might add. I have so much trouble adjusting to an acoustic piano after doing all of my practicing on a digital. Nothing sounds or feels right. Anyway, I made it through the piece, and, as usual, he made some observations and gave me some valuable feedback, as well as a few things to think about regarding interpretation. And that was it. No time for Maple Leaf. Time to...

I am trying a couple of things related to the piano. One is semi-regular piano lessons with a local teacher. The other is online jazz piano/theory lessons with a jazz pianist and teacher. Yesterday evening was the first of my lessons with the local teacher. I mainly want someone to oversee my progress as I learn the classical/romantic/baroque/etc. pieces I want to learn, starting with Chopin's Nocturne in F minor (Op. 55, No. 1). Trouble in Paradise ... Already From the moment I played my first note at yesterday's lesson, I knew something was wrong. The piano felt wrong. The sound was wrong--almost out of tune. Everything was wrong. But I went through the lesson and cringed my way through the nocturne I've been working on. There was no evenness, and often there would be no sound at all, even though I was pressing down on the keys. I made it through, and after that, I asked if I could play some of the other pianos at the piano store. Sure, they said. So I went to a Ste...

Yesterday was my piano lesson. I played through the arpeggios--all of 'em!--to warm up. After that, we moved on to Bach, starting with the Prelude. I've been working on this thing for months, and I've had the notes down for some time now. It sounds pretty good to the untrained ear, and now I'm really in the fine-tuning phase, working to have everything perfectly balanced. The scales are sounding good, and those left-hand trouble spots are not causing nearly the trouble they did before. Oddly enough, my biggest problem now is the thirty-second notes in those first few measures. My left hand eighth notes are light and graceful, but my right hand thirty-second notes are uneven--not so much rhythmically as ... tonally? The second note will be too loud, or the third will be too soft, or ... they just sound punchy rather than smooth. One thing Carol said was to imaging this piece is being played by a single hand, and think of a single line of sound rather than ...

Yesterday was my first lesson with my new teacher where I felt truly unprepared. Despite some good practice time over the weekend, I hadn't been able to practice more than a couple of scales (literally, a couple of scales) all week. So, it was pretty much another Week in the Life of an Adult Piano Student. It was a good lesson, though. Carol gave me a lot to think about--my practice-work is now cut out for me, you might say. I went through some scales and then a Hanon exercise, and she had me freeze mid-play, and pointed out how my left wrist had dropped. I was using pretty good technique in my right hand (as far as the palm being higher than the fingertips), but my left wrist had taken a dive. She'd mentioned something the week before about my left wrist needing to match my right wrist, and I'd thought about it ... but apparently I hadn't thought about it enough. So there was that. The other issue was that I've adopted this loose, limp, flourish-y movement wi...

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...

This evening's lesson was about 50% talking and 50% playing. We started with scales. I played six major scales at 60, and then we did a few minors at my new glacial pace of ♪ = 50. I played them through pretty well, and I think I need to stick to that pace (or slower) for a while with these contrary minors. Next, we did Hanon and worked on playing softly with both hands, then soft LH/loud RH, and vice-versa. One thing we are focusing on is "weight," as she calls it: how much core weight you use to get a certain volume out of a key--and knowing, before you press a key, exactly what volume you are going to get. So the focus is on playing softly and evenly. That's a challenge. If I play softly, some notes are a little louder than others, and some notes don't make any sound at all. So I have a bit of work to do. She suggested Debussy's "La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin" ("The Girl with the Flaxen Hair") as a good piece for working on what I'...

I've titled this post "Asheville Piano Teacher" for a reason. If anyone in western NC is looking for a good piano teacher and googles "Asheville Piano Teacher," I want this blog to come up. Deborah Belcher is probably the best teacher I've ever had. My last two lessons have been quite good. I think that's partly because my practices this week were good. I've really made strides in the fugue. I've been working exclusively in rhythms and can play the first two and a half pages at a decidedly faster tempo than my usual creeping pace. The notes are starting to feel natural (there's a joke in there somewhere, since this piece has seven sharps) to my hands. Really. I'm getting to where I don't have to think about every little movement and gesture. They're just happening . I sometimes doubted that I would ever get there. So I played the first two pages for Deborah, and she wrote "Great Work!!!" in my piano notebook. Of course, ...

During practice sessions, certain questions arise regarding fingering, dynamics, etc. Sometimes I write them down on a scrap of paper. Usually I bring them up at a lesson if I remember them. But I've started to write them down in the notebook where Deborah writes all of her notes at my lesson. I used to feel like this notebook was something almost sacred, something I didn't want to sully with my dumb questions, but that's changing. I'm feeling more and more like Deborah and I are a team, rather than Wise Teacher on the Holy Mountain and Lowly, Groveling, Ignorant Student. Anyway, I write the questions on the page she'll be writing on at the next lesson so she can't miss them and I can't forget to ask them. That's how the lesson started today. Only one question was "Liszt: IT Dynamics?" And I couldn't remember, for the life of me, what "IT" was supposed to mean. On to my lesson report! Inversions sounded fine. I fell apart, howeve...

Today's 1.5-hour lesson included a lot of talking, but in a good way. I love my piano teacher. It was a great lesson, even though it was mostly talking. Today's theme seemed to be "Trust Yourself." See, I have very little faith in my ability to play well. Have you ever thought you looked good in a certain outfit, then, when you saw pictures of yourself in it, thought, "Oh, horrors! Why did I ever think that turquoise jumpsuit looked good on me? My butt looks like Mars!" OK, maybe you've never had that experience. But try to imagine. I've always been very critical of myself, not just in piano. When I don't play well, I know it. When I do play something well ... I know it. I can feel it. Or I think I can. And the other week in the group piano class, I thought I played the Prelude and the Liszt well. Not perfectly, of course, but beautifully. Then ... later ... I wondered ... "What if I just thought I sounded good? What if I really sounded ...