Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Dear readers, After blogging about the F minor nocturne for a few weeks, I finally have the first two pages to share. My playing isn't perfect -- I miss a note (and add a beat) right after third instance of the main theme, and my grace notes and trills aren't exactly as they should be -- but those are minor issues, and I'm happy with how the recording turned out. The biggest negative is that I stop at one of the more dramatic moments of the piece, and I probably won't have the next page ready to play for another week or two, at least! I had a piano lesson yesterday with my in-person teacher, Eric. He gave me some good feedback on fingering and articulation. I had fallen into my tendency to play the treble too softly. It's a problem related to my hearing aid, which amplifies higher sounds over lower sounds, so what sounds fine to my hearing aid sounds too soft in reality, and I'll often play the LH and the RH at the same volume when I think the right hand is loud...

 It's lunchtime Tuesday, and I'm thinking about my biweekly 30-minute piano lesson that will be later this afternoon. I'll be working on two pieces: the Chopin Nocturne in F minor, and Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. Today I'm mostly thinking about the Chopin. I've learned the first three pages (mostly), up to the section I refer to as "The Transcendence," starting at measure 77. I'm a little apprehensive about the lesson--not because I don't know the music, but because of the weird transition that is required when playing an acoustic piano after practicing for two weeks on a digital . Anyway, when I first started this nocturne, I found this lecture by pianist Greg Niemczuk: In it, he tells us that in the couple of years before the F minor nocturne was written/published, Chopin was "wounded" three times. These wounds were the death of his first teacher, of whom Chopin was very fond; the death of his beloved friend, roommate, and soulm...

 I'd like to play like this: This is former longtime Disneyland pianist Johnny Hodges. I found a neat interview with him by Jonny May on the Piano With Johnny YouTube channel . I am seriously thinking about joining the PWJ site, just so I can listen to the rest of the interview. He is luring me in ... I am falling prey to PWJ's marketing ... but can you blame me? Anyway, enjoy these two videos. For the last couple of days, I've worked pretty diligently on Maple Leaf Rag and the Chopin nocturne. I'll get a good practice in tonight and tomorrow morning, but I'll be away from the piano for most of Sunday. I'm hoping to get another Instagram reel made tonight or tomorrow, which I'll share here as always.

So, almost seven years ago exactly, I posted on my old blog about "reclaiming my musical self" ... and the similarities made me think I've been on a great, big cycle and am finally coming back around to where I was then. Of course, then I was working on guitar and voice as well as piano. But on the piano, I was working to get my ragtime less sloppy, and I mentioned wanting to finally learn "Linus and Lucy." Which are two things I've blogged about here recently! So, yes, I'm living in cycles. Last night while looking for videos of people playing "Elite Syncopations" (which is what I want to learn next, after I've de-sloppified "Maple Leaf Rag," "The Entertainer," and "Solace"), I discovered a great YouTube channel by pianist Kristen Mosca . She loves ragtime and Disney songs, and many of her videos combine the two. She also has a TikTok page, but I'm not on TikTok. Anyway, enjoy her videos on YouTube! Here ...

I have always loved ragtime music. When I was a kid in the 1970s, our family had the soundtrack to "The Sting" on LP, and I remember listening to it over and over again. I remember seeing the movie in the theater, too. I don't remember a thing about the movie, but ... that music! It seems that every kid who takes piano lessons can play some version of "The Entertainer," but, oddly enough, I didn't learn it until I was an adult and taught it to myself. I can also play the last two sections of "Solace" and the first two sections of "Maple Leaf Rag." I never studied these with a teacher; I just loved Scott Joplin's ragtime music and wanted to be able to play it myself. None of it is easy, or I probably would have taught myself more over the years. With my years-long sabbatical from piano-playing, my ragtime pieces don't sound as good as they once did, so I've decided to go back to them. This weekend, I opened up "Maple Leaf ...

My goals, at least those in the classical music sphere, seem to oppose each other: (1) To refine my skills to what they were when I was studying with Deborah, and maybe even go beyond that. (2) To have fun and not take piano so seriously that I drop everything else in my life. When I was studying with Deborah, at least for the first year or two, I practiced several hours a day most days. I was working full time, but my husband was rarely home and I didn't have kids at the time, so I could do that. I can't now ... but I'm going to be tempted. I know that. Anyway, I didn't come on here today to write about my classical music goals. I want to discuss a goal that's kind of a jazz goal, but, really, it's just a general goal. I want to be able to do the kind of thing I'm doing here with "The Long and Winding Road," only in a much more sophisticated, creative way. \ I want to have a better sense of what notes will work with improvisation, and what chord ...

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...