Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

  I have signed up for a 14-day free trial of tonebase , a music-learning program. I discovered their YouTube channel a few days ago, and, after some research, decided to try it out. It's geared toward intermediate to advanced musicians (though there are also resources for beginner to early intermediate). It begins with a series of questions so they can determine your level and give you a recommended path. Levels range from beginner to advanced. You could only give one answer per question, but there were some for which two answers could have been correct for me ... so I took it twice. The first time, I landed in Level 7, and the second time I landed in Level 6. I thought this was a pretty good assessment--both levels contained a few pieces I've played before, along with a few that I'd like to play. For now, I'm staying in Level 6 since I'm rusty from a few years of not playing. Plus, I could definitely use some review in the areas of music history and style, scales...

Readers, meet Roland Nicholas Rogers, initials RNR. Yes, I finally have a piano. I wanted an acoustic, I really did ... but for now, I have a digital. A Roland HP 704, to be exact. We welcomed him into our home about a week ago, and I've been able to play a few times, though not as often as I would like (never as often as I would like). For the moment, I'm working on Chopin's Nocturne in F minor (Op. 55, No. 1). I don't know if I will be blogging about RNR or about the pieces I'm working on, as I've been in a very weird place mentally . .. severely depressed and feeling pretty hopeless. So perhaps the F minor nocturne isn't the best thing for me to be working on ... or maybe it is. The sad "stuckness" of the theme does resonate with me. Whether or not it will spiral me into greater depths remains to be seen. Anyway, this is just an introductory post ... to introduce RNR.

I may be posting to this blog soon, for the first time in many years. For now, though, I just need to post this picture so that I can link it to a post on the Piano Forums. It's of a very dusty and unused piano that I may be getting for free. I've never heard of Campbell & Young (at least, that's what I think this says). I've heard of Kohler & Campbell, and I've heard of Young Chang ... did the two merge? So many questions, and Google has been no help.

I feel like an old dog who is having to learn a paw-ful of new tricks. After playing this Chopin piece on and off over the past 15 or so years, I'm realizing that some of my fingerings just don't work. Well, I realized it long ago, but I'm accepting it now. And I'm starting the long road of changing the fingerings that have been imprinted on my brain all this time. First, we have the octave-jump that appears a couple of times on the first page, and a couple of times at the end (sorry, I don't have measure numbers at hand): Do you see that "1 5" there? Basically, I use my 5 finger for the lower F, use 1 an octave up, and then do a quick switch from 1 to 5 while keeping the F pressed down. I can do this quite well at a slow tempo. When I speed up, however, I let up on the higher F just a bit, and I end up playing two short F's in succession--one with the 5, and one with the 1. It's always been like this. It's always been a toss-up as ...

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...

It's time for me to address something I've never addressed. It's something I've thought about, but never too seriously. But I think I'm at a point where I need to think about it. I dance when I play. Call it channeling Stevie Wonder, but I sway and rock and move. Even worse, my body contorts a little bit, sometimes in ways that aren't all that attractive. When I see other classical pianists play this way, I find it distracting, and it sends out a (however unconscious) message that the performance is about the performer's emotional state, rather than about the music itself. It's an unconscious thing with me. I only know that I do it because I've been told, sometimes in painfully polite terms. Once, after playing my Bach C#-major prelude and fugue for a class, one of the visiting professors asked, "Do you suffer from back pain?" He went on to say that I looked uncomfortable when I played. No, I'd actually been extremely comfortable ...

It's been a while since I've listened to someone else besides myself playing the Schubert Impromptu, Op. 90, No. 2, so I watched/listened to a few YouTube videos this morning. I just wanted to remind myself of what this piece is supposed to sound like--the tempo, the phrasing, and particularly the ben marcato section. I'm never quite sure how much emphasis I should give to the triplets in the middle of each measure. Here are a some examples: So I watched, and listened. I won't share the videos here, but there are some interpretations--the ones that are more rubato, the ones that are played too fast or too loud throughout--that I'm not crazy about. Others--particularly the Horowitz--are the gold standard. Of course Horowitz is the gold standard. And his triplet sections sound ... simultaneously tossed-off and glittering, rumbling and sparkling. And they each sound a little different from the others; there is no single "sound," but a variety of them,...