Sight Reading

Today I focused a lot on sight reading because I wasn't really feeling my practicing. I worked hard on my Bach Fugue and also played it with the prelude once. It sounds so great together! I never knew I was missing anything to the piece before I learned the Fugue. Oh, the ignorance of youth.

Today's sight reading included a Rondeaux by Bach, a piece by Grieg and a piece by Rachmaninof. Please don't make fun of me if my spelling is off-- I do love classical music and piano music in particular, but some of those names are awfully long and complicated, even if they are very famous composers! That took up the majority of my time today.

I ended with a few minutes to work on the Nocturne. The good news is I have it memorized to the first fast scale, which is AWESOME, especially considering I wasn't even planning on starting the first page until April anyway. The bad news is I still have a lot of fine tuning to work on with this piece. It may be a while yet before it is performance ready. Slowly but surely, it is coming along (but faster than I ever thought possible! I guess I underestimated my abilities!).

The bummer of being sick

The biggest bummer of having been sick this month is the lack of motivation I'm experiencing now with my piano practice. While I am still practicing every day and have managed to do so even while ill, I am not practicing as much as I should be. I have had three days in a row where I haven't managed to get in my full 60 minutes. Today it was because R woke up 30 minutes into the practice session, and since it's past 11 o'clock, it's unwise to resume practicing because she will wake up again. Yesterday I think I was just tired. I'm not sure about the day before.

Now I'm working on memorizing the nocturne. I am halfway proficient at it, so the next logical step (to me) is to memorize it. I cannot play this piece at all from memory. But I will drill it into my memory one way or another, and I will memorize it. Soon. I want to just play it at church when I happen to be there with nothing to do (which actually happens a lot, since I volunteer with the youth organization and sometimes I am there a little early). Right now I only have 2 or 3 pieces that I can just pick up and play without music. I want a lot of pieces that I can do that with. And the work continues.

Back in the Saddle Again

A whole week of not getting a full 60 in per day... bah! Well, I'm much better now, and in a few more days R will be feeling better too, I'm sure. She has a croupy cough that sounds pretty bad, but it's nothing serious. Just annoying, mostly (to others more than it is to her!). She also has a runny nose and a bad habit of wiping her snot on anything or anyone! You can tell a 2 year old to use a tissue, but they won't remember for more than .0000001 seconds.

Tonight's practicing was satisfactory. I went through my Nocturne and recorded it! I took just over 7 minutes and I think it sounds pretty darned good, especially considering I wasn't planning on having all the pages learned until the end of April! I've made good progress on this piece. I'd like to have it perfected to the note by the end of May so I can start working on recording it this summer. I'm not sure where I'm going to record it, but it sure won't be at my house! Maybe I'll convince my friend who has recording equipment and a really wonderful piano to borrow theirs for a while, but I don't think we're good enough friends for that ;) It could take all day. Maybe I'll wait for my parents to tune their Steinway and record it at their house.

I also worked on my Schubert Impromptu. Boy, that needs a LOT of fine tuning.

I also improved for about 10 minutes. That is one area that I really need to improve. I'd like to eventually become a singer/writer and it would be really fun to have a couple songs written by this summer. I'm not betting on it though! Maybe a goal for next year.

With no further ado, here is my Nocturne recording: It almost sounds good. Almost.

My perfect record will soon be broken

Thus far I've averaged around 60 minutes per day of practice time per month. March will be the first month where I don' t meet that average. I think what I have is the flu, and it's putting me on my back! Today I actually got up at 9:30 or so, took a shower, got halfway through changing my sheets, took a long break, finished my sheets, and needed to lie down I was so tired! My house is a disaster area and I'm just glad that I can keep up on my dishes. That's the only thing I can keep up on at all. If my kitchen were out of order, it would be loony bin time for me! I hate having a messy kitchen and dirty dishes. Hopefully I'll be able to get over this stupid flu soon!

Sick, sick, sick

I have either the flu or a bad cold and I'm exhausted and weak, so my practicing lately has been abbreviated. I will likely not average 60 minutes per day in March due to this.

Hoping I'm better by tomorrow...

The good streak continues

I'm continuing with my new practice method and am very pleased with the results I'm getting. Today I worked on my nocturne for 30 minutes in the morning. At night I was intending on practicing a couple different pieces, but I ended up working on the Bach fugue for a whole hour. Total of 90 minutes today. Great practice session. The fugue is getting so close.

Another good practice day

I wanted to go on and on and on tonight, but the clock struck 12 and I needed to stop, so I did. I had a really great practice session tonight. One a forum I frequent (but don't post at often), there was a thread about biggest mistakes a person can make while practicing. I took the advice given there to heart. So my method of practicing I used tonight was to start playing the songs through and as soon as I hit a wrong note, I drilled that particular section 40, 50 times or more. I have no idea how many times. I didn't count. Some sections that I drilled were only a measure long, or sometimes even shorter. I played my Schubert Impromptu through once and it took me 40 minutes with all the drills I did. This piece normally takes 10 minutes to play, and I'm fairly proficient at it. I believe this may have been one of the pieces I auditioned with for my piano scholarship, but it's been 13 years so don't quote me on that. Since it was so perfected at one point, my fingers still "know" the piece pretty well, but there's always improvements to be made.

Then I went to my Chopin Nocturne and I used the same technique. I got through 3 measures before the clock struck 12. I think this piece will take me a full hour or, more likely, longer to practice in this manner. I'd like to continue practicing this way, though. I feel like I accomplished a lot more today. Perhaps I'll work on one page at a time in this way until I can practice it this way with it only taking me a half hour. Hm.

So I got in a full hour of practicing today. But I did do some improve earlier in the day. My husband stayed up at a coworker's this evening because he was so tired and traffic was so bad, so I intended to practice from about 9 or 10 until midnight, and I put the kids to bed at 7 to plan for that. Alas, they didn't fall asleep until about 10, 10:15, and I didn't want to risk waking them up by practicing right away! So I made crackers until 11 and then got in my hour. Maybe someday I'll be able to get in the 2-3 hours a day that I really need.