Day 2

Another day, another successful practice session. I got half my practicing in during the late morning, the rest at night at 11. I was away from home during the afternoon and into the evening today. Dave had the girls and I was with one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, Diane B. She is so sweet and kind and humble. Plus my kids both love her. She used to babysit L. when she was a wee one, right up until I had R. In fact, I think L. was with her when I went into labor.

Anyway. Here are my challenges: I'm not very good at warming up and practicing scales, arpeggios, Hannon exercises, etc. I need to get better at that. It's just that, when I sit down to practice, I want to feel the music, and I don't really feel the music with those. It is uninspiring to me. So I've got to find a way to be inspired when I play. Sometimes I will run a few scales and arpeggios in the key of works I'm focusing on. But lately, that's it. My practice time is so precious that I don't want to spend it running scales. Then again, it will improve my technique, so I should do it anyway.

Oh, the trials of being ADD.

I also haven't figured out how to run through a song the first time all the way through if it is in any way challenging. I don't like playing really slow. I will slow a piece down if I'm micro-focusing on it, and I won't play it completely up to tempo when I'm just learning it, but I have a hard time really going through it slow enough to get all the notes and finish the piece without first losing concentration and starting to think about something else. Another trial of my ADD.

Today, I worked on the same pieces as yesterday. I have been working on the last line of page three of Chopin Nocturne 62/1 and will probably have it down in a day or two. I'll just keep working my way backward until I have the whole piece down, then I can start playing it through and I'll be so happy to feel the music of that song.

As far as the waltz goes, I'm "passing off" the trio. The way I "pass off" on something is to play it 10 times without a mistake (fingering, timing and notes all perfect). Then I can move on to the next section. Since I can't count very easily when I play piano, I use a trick I learned as a teenager that has improved my practicing skills immensely. What I did then was take two small bowls, and put them on either side of the piano desk. Inside one bowl would be 10 pieces of macaroni. As I played a section, I would transfer one noodle to the other bowl. Since I don't have bowls that are small enough to fit on my upright piano now as an adult, I've found that a saucer works very well. I put 10 beans in the center (or today, eight beans and two raisins) and as I play I can move the bean to the outer rim . I actually like this method better since I can very quickly move the beans over. It saves time over my previous method.

At the end of practicing today, I played Debussy's Clair de Lune, here performed by Van Clibun. I'm not back to performance level with this piece, but I sure enjoy myself when I play it. It is my favorite song of all time. It's one that I auditioned with way back when. Whenever I play it, I feel so rejuvenated and happy.

No recordings of me today. As for now, I need to get to bed. I've stayed up way too late once again, and I have to start getting up in time for 9 am church starting on Sunday! I got spoiled with church being at 1.