Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

I am weirdly not in a mood to write about weekend piano goals today. Part of it is that I've been away for most of the week (for an unplanned trip) and have had very little actual practice. I say "actual" because, in the absence of a real piano, I did quite a bit of ear training. Using my 61-key keyboard, I made exercises for myself and quizzed myself for several days ... and I'm getting better at recognizing intervals! I also did some sight-reading as I played hymns and other songs for my dad on the keyboard. So, I did get some work done. But I didn't really practice . So it's hard to think about goals when I feel like I'm already behind. Add to that, I'm leaving for vacation in a few weeks, which means I have a piano-less two weeks in my near future. I'm not looking forward to being away from my practice routine. I fear all of my progress this month will disappear after two weeks of no practice. Also , I won't be home for most of Sunday, so c...

 Working from the Lead Sheets course, I was planning to video an impromptu improvisation last night ... but I was rudely interrupted. Here's the video.

This weekend yielded some good, focused work on Mozart's Rondo alla Turca. I still feel like I've hit a ceiling with it, though. It sounds okay, but it doesn't glitter. It doesn't shine. But at least it's better than it was last week . In my opinion. Here is my latest video of the full piece. I'm playing it at about 110 bpm, and my goal is about 120. I need to do more slow practice, and I also need to work on the little turnaround at 1:32 and again at 1:52 (which sounds great at 100 bpm but falls apart at 110). I also don't think I'm paying enough attention to the dynamics. It's like I'm remembering to think about them just in time, or just a little after the fact. The coda still isn't great. It needs to sparkle, glitter, flit, and shine, and right now it sounds like a sledgehammer to me. Just so you know that I'm not feeling completely negative about my performance, here are some things I am happy with: My sixteenth notes are (mostly) e...

It's time to think about my weekend piano goals! This should be a rare weekend where I can practice as much as I want to, so I'm excited about getting started. SCALES: I've been working on A-flat major and F minor all week, and they're sounding pretty good. I'll move on to E-flat major and C minor next week. These are both easy scales for me, so I might make my tempo goals a little higher, just to see what I can do! LEAD SHEETS: The lead sheet course has been helpful, but it's also been a lot of review. I've known about the Cycle of Fifths and Turnaround (Prison) progressions forever, so even though I'm applying them to new songs and using various inversions and working in multiple keys, the material itself isn't new. So I think I'm going to take some time to watch Lesson 3, which is on the extended turnaround progression. It may be another familiar progression ... but my goal, by the end of the weekend, is to be able to play/improvise songs fro...

I'm taking the PWJ "Play Piano with Lead Sheets and Seventh Chords" course, and the first two chord progressions he covers are the Cycle of Fifths Progression (which I wrote about  here ) and the Turnaround progression, which goes from I to vi7 to ii7 to V7 and back to I. The turnaround progression is what I think of as the "Prison Progression." Do you remember my early blog post about the rusty lock and key ? Where I felt like I was stuck inside a room and couldn't get out? One of the elements of that room was the Prison Progression. Whenever I would try to write music or improvise on my own, I would try all kinds of different chords, but I would keep falling back in to the Prison Progression. My left hand would play broken root-position chords (I wrote about that  here  and elsewhere), my right hand would mildly improvise a tune, and I would move slowly, predictably, from I to vi7 to ii7 to V7 and back to I. Why? Why couldn't I break out of that patte...

Bare Necessities is coming along nicely. I can play the whole thing at 120, and most of it at 140 or 150. It's supposed to be at 200-something, so it's still not up to speed ... but I am definitely making progress. There are a few small "problem areas" where I still struggle. All three of them are in the ragtime section, and they are the focus for today's blog post. Just a warning that the accompanying videos are very boring because they show me drilling these sections. My hope is that they'll be helpful for someone down the road who is trying to learn this same piece. Problem Area #1: Measure 55 This is the end of the verse that goes "just the bare necessities of life." I would put a photo of the measure here, but I don't want to break any copyright rules. So I'll describe it: The right hand is playing octave quarter notes, going down an A minor chord (E to C to A), finishing on G. The left hand is doing single-note jumps: It jumps from a lo...

I had a delightful piano lesson yesterday. Eric gave me some good insights regarding Rondo alla Turca, but he also said that it sounds great. I asked him to tell me honestly if the broken-octave and coda sections sound like a train wreck, and he said they don't sound like a train wreck at all. That was a relief. Apparently, all of my slow practice on that section, as well as all of my broken-octave exercises and all of my rolled-chord and articulation work, have helped. It was good to get some objective feedback and have that objective feedback be so positive and encouraging. So, it looks like I will graduate from Rondo alla Turca by the end of June. What's next? I'll be 10 or so days without a piano at the end of July, so I'm hesitant to start a new piece for July. I've also felt a little overwhelmed by the many different projects I'm working on. So perhaps I should just focus on finishing up both Bare Necessities and the 10-Lesson Blues Challenge by the time I...