Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Here goes. I still have pinky problems. Not good. I feel like my poor hands are atrophying. I've been playing piano quite a bit at lunch, but nothing too difficult. Mostly I've been improvising new-age versions of hymns in the style of Jeff Bjork , David Nevue , etc.--not music I listen to often, but a pretty satisfying style to play and improvise. I missed my calling as new-age Christian music pianist. Really. Of course, I'm only 39 ... it's not like I'm on my deathbed. It's just a little depressing that I'm improvising the same old crap since the early 1980's. (My style is crap--not the hymns themselves. At least not most of them.) Truth is, I've played new-agey, beautiful and relaxing renditions of classics like "The Old Rugged Cross" and "In The Garden" for years. It's music I grew up to, so it's in my blood. Show me a hymnbook arrangement and I'll crank out a beautiful solo-piano rendition faster than you can say ...

I'm going to practice. Now. I really hope I don't have to commandeer the sanctuary, Jack Bauer style, from the Organ Lady. Seriously. Jack and I are both English majors who were born on February 18. Don't mess with the likes of us. And don't get between me and my piano.

Pretend this is a left hand. See those red arrows? I put those there to show where my pinky is hurting. It's at the joint between the intermediate phalange and the proximal phalange. It has definitely helped to lay off piano for several weeks. Massive doses of ibuprofen have helped, too. Today I practiced, just a bit, before the Organ Lady came in. The pinky didn’t hurt too much. At this one point, however, I had trouble even lifting my pinky (the circled numbers are the fingers). Note that the pinky holds down the G, then picks up and presses it right back down. My pinky doesn’t want to pick up, much less press back down. It would rather just stay down. This could, of course, be due to lack of practice. I’m hoping it is. Many thanks to my favorite arpeggist for pointing out that the IMSLP site is alive and kicking.

On weekdays, the Organ Lady haunts the halls of the stodgy Baptist church on the corner of First and Main. She's not the organist for this church, but she practices there. She wears shorts and a t-shirt, regardless of the weather. She's lonely. She's friendly, but only to certain people (or so I've heard). She's always very friendly to me. I think it helps, in this case at least, to be a Bach nerd and a half-decent pianist. She was haunting the halls again today. I didn't know that this morning, when I got a wild hair and decided I would practice on Xan the Grand at lunch. For my faithful reader, you may remember that Xan the Grand is the old Steinway grand at the stodgy Baptist church on the corner of First and Main. I hadn't visited old Xan in ages. It was time. So, shortly after 1:00, I braved the frigid winds and walked the block to the church. "Please, Organ Lady," I thought. "Don't be practicing today. I really want to spend some qua...

OK. Not quite a year. But almost a year. Since I've posted anything on this blog, that is. It's been a little less than a year since I've played George. And Thuddy. And Xan the Grand. My job swallowed me. I'm still somewhere in the bowels of it. Development season, with its 60-hour weeks, it coming to an end, and support season, with its 60-hour weeks, is beginning. One of the major differences between the two seasons: during development season, we work until the work is done; during support season, we show up at a pre-scheduled arrival time, take a required one-hour lunch break, and don't leave until a pre-scheduled departure time. Here are my hours for support season (now through April 15): Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The hours are long, but we're forced to take lunch breaks. I don't think I took a single lunch/piano break during development season. I worked...

Stephen asked for some manly pictures of Thuddy, and I felt obliged to oblige. Thuddy was in a mood for pictures. Here he is, smiling for the camera. Here's a nice one of Thuddy in profile. But then Thuddy didn't want me to take a picture of him from the back. He thought his butt looked too big. "Hmm," I thought. "It's not a 'guy' thing to worry that one's butt is too big. That's really more of a 'girl' thing, isn't it?" Sure, consoles and spinets and uprights have reason to be bashful about their butts, but still ... "I'm sure your butt looks fine," I told Thuddy. "Now pose." I walked around to snap the picture. Then I realized something. Thuddy is a girl. No self-respecting boy piano would dress this way. BTW ... My apologies for the grainy pictures. This was the best I could do with my cell phone.

Today’s analogy is a really bad one, but it’s the one that comes to mind, perhaps because it’s the “holiday season.” My practices lately have felt like Mardi Gras. Only sober. Let me explain. Say you’re in New Orleans at a Mardi Gras parade. People on the floats are throwing all kinds of trinkets, beads, candy, etc. If you try to randomly catch everything that’s thrown, you’re not going to catch anything. But if you look a float-person in the eye and yell “Throw me something, Mister!” you’re likely to get a handful of beads zinged right at you (unless, maybe, the float-person is not a mister). I don’t know if that’s how it really is. I haven’t been to a Mardi Gras parade since 1989, and I haven’t been sober at a Mardi Gras parade since … before that. All these new piano pieces—Bach, Beethoven, Shostakovich—are like Mardi Gras trinkets and beads sailing past me. They’re all so pretty and shiny and fun … I don’t want to have to spend my limited practice time focusing on just one. I want...