Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Yes! I have practiced George twice in three days! A veritable record, after my five-plus year sabbatical from piano! Tonight's practice focused on measure 12, where we have a series of two-against-three with the RH playing the triplets. I worked really hard on (once again) getting my muscle-memory back, but I also focused on not getting just  the muscle memory back. I want to know exactly what I'm playing; I want to be able to dive into the middle of a measure and pick up as if I'd started at the very beginning of the piece. So I worked hard on both understanding what I was playing and retraining my fingers to play the right notes. It was a fun practice. I love focused practices where I can work on just one measure, or a half a measure for a good thirty minutes or more. (And that's about how long this practice lasted, after doing some D-flat major scales, inversions, and arps.) I realize this isn't a very long or interesting update, but at least it's ...

Yes, that the first thing I read when I opened up this blog. I haven't published to it in over four years. Sadly enough, I haven't even practiced  piano in over four years. My kid just turned five. Coincidence? I think not. But I can't blame my lack of piano-interest on her. I'm not blaming it on anyone, or anything. Life just yanked me into a new phase, one that's been nothing like I ever imagined. When I last posted, I had a one-year-old child and was working full time as a technical writer at a software company. Since then, I've taught numerous classes as an adjunct English instructor, changed residences twice, been unemployed, written a novel, and worked several jobs. (I quit the technical writing job for good in 2012.) Add a couple of nervous breakdowns major depressive episodes into the mix, and piano just hasn't been a presence (though it might have helped stave off some of the depression). Motherhood has been hard. Of course it's been hard. ...

I won't be blogging about piano again until I'm playing regularly again. Meanwhile, I'm blogging at Life Downside Up . See you there!

I got a new piano bench this weekend. It's an adjustable bench, and I'm hoping to have it for a long, long time. It replaces the kitchen chair, which replaced my old piano bench, which I'd used for 30+ years. So I'm a faithful piano bench owner, I am. I didn't get to practice this weekend, so I was looking forward to tonight's practice session using the new bench (which I've named Gilbert). Sure, I planned to practice my Shostakovich ... but I also planned to experiment with the new bench. My old bench was too high. The kitchen chair, obviously, was too low --plus, it wasn't flat, like a piano bench should be. I would get a backache before I ever made it through my warm-up scales. I started with the bench low and practice for a few minutes. Backache. I moved it up a bit. Backache. Moved it up a little more. Backache, but not quite so bad. Finally I found a good height and practiced for a half-hour before the sleepies started to take over. Then I compared...

I am in a serious musical funk. Negative, negative, negative self-talk galloping through my brain. All though my lunchtime practice session today. All through my lunchtime practice session yesterday. Here’s what the negative little voice was saying: "For someone so supposedly talented as you, who has worked as hard as you have at piano, you’d really think you wouldn’t suck as much as you do." OK, I was going to make a list of everything that little negative voice was saying, but really, that’s pretty much what it’s saying right there. Granted, I know I’m coming back to piano after a nine-month “fallow period.” I’m not in the pianistic shape I was in before. Deborah and others have said that fallow periods are necessary and good. That’s fine. But I think back to what caused the fallow period. It was basically a thought similar to the following: "For someone so supposedly talented as you, who has worked as hard as you have at piano, you’d really think you wouldn’t suck as ...

I got carried away today—carried away into a wonderful state of consciousness where I lost all sense of time and just enjoyed being enveloped in the music. That tends to happen when I find myself with a grand piano, a Baptist hymnal, and a big, empty room with excellent acoustics. Actually, it doesn’t. I’ve been practicing at that same grand piano at that same Baptist church at lunchtime for a couple of years now. Rarely have I let myself lose track of time. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I know I need to be back at work by a certain time because if I’m not, I’ll have to work later than planned. Who wants to do that? Not me. Today I worked on a very tiny part of the Shostakovich , practicing for mastery of that one little tiny part. Spent a good half-hour or more on three not-very-complicated measures. Dug into the music, picked away at the layers, drilled in rhythms, and in the process played those three measures probably 60 or 70 times. That’s the way I like to practice. That ...

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 ...