Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Scott Joplin's "Solace" is not a particularly hard piece to learn, but I have really struggled to memorize it. It's been much harder to memorize than Maple Leaf Rag, which is a technically more difficult piece. Still Shaky ... Especially When the Camera Is On I've now memorized "Solace," but it's still shaky. I made a video of myself playing it by memory, lapses and all, because it will help me remember where I need to work. There are the obvious spots (such as the second half of the B section, which I most recently memorized), but there are also the less-obvious spots that I can play just fine when the camera isn't on, but which rear their ugly memory-lapsing heads when I have an "audience." A mistake-riddled video and a list of mistake spots doesn't make for the most interesting blog post, but this is going to help me to know where I need to focus my next few practices of this beautiful piece. I also want to work on voicing--there...

 A few days ago, I wrote about how I'm learning "Misty" as part of a challenge group on Facebook. Week 1 focused on learning the melody only. The notes weren't hard at all, but the challenge was in memorizing it. Week 2's challenge--the stride-style left hand (LH)--was harder. Not only was I dealing with rootless voicings (something relatively new to me), but there were things like 13th chords with flatted ninths, and such. I studied and understood the theory (to a point), but mostly I just memorized hand shapes/positions. Yes. I have memorized the LH section. I can't believe it, really. I mean, I can't remember why I walk into a room most days. Or where my keys are, or what I did with my phone, which was in my hand not two minutes ago. But I memorized the LH to "Misty." In this video, you might notice that my hand gets to the chords a fraction of a second before I actually have to play them. This is because (1) it's good practice to get int...

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...

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...