Making up for lost time

Today I practiced at total of 85 minutes.

The first 5ish minutes were during the day when everyone was awake. I would have practiced more, but our house is small and the playoffs were on. So I got booted. Bummer. I mostly practiced Clair de Lune during this time.

I started practicing again after the kids were in bed. Hubby was gone at the moment, so I took advantage of the time and worked on "Ballet of Unhatched Chickens." It is his favorite and all, but I just needed peace and quiet to get it done. I worked on that for about 20 minutes.

I needed to finish off my 20th century stuff with "O Polichinelo," so I worked on that for about 1o minutes. It's sounding better!

Then I actually did warm ups! I can't believe it! It felt good, and I need to do them every day. I did 11 Hannon exercises, which took about 15 minutes, and scales in B major for about 5 minutes. I'm hoping working on these will improve my overall speed and accuracy.

Then I worked on The Nocturne. And I played it through, the whole way! It was awesome. I worked on this piece for 30 minutes. Loving it so much! Can't wait till I can actually perform it. I'll record it in a few days so you can here where I am right now, played through from the beginning. I'm not that good yet, and I'm not nearly as fast as I need to be, but I'll get there. Soon. I hope!

Guess what I found?

Yes, my camera. Which is also my microphone. I tore my house apart for two days, and it was hiding in plain sight! Isn't that always the case?

Anywho, because I found it I had to make a recording. And since I haven't recorded O Polichinelo, the Villa-Lobos number, yet, I thought I'd give it a whirl. This recording isn't that great of quality (I AM using my camera, after all, plus a 100 year old piano that is out of tune), and I am certainly not as talented as Bratke on this song, but here it is. But wait!!! My computer is having issues. So I'll post it tomorrow. Sorry.

Today's practice included 30 minutes work on the Chopin Nocturne, 20 minutes on the Bach Fugue, 10 minutes on O Polichinelo, 20 minutes on Modest Mussorgsky's "Ballet of Unhatched Chickens" from Pictures at an Exhibition, and about 15 minutes on Clair de Lune.

I am having a really hard time finding a recording of "Ballet of Unhatched Chickens" in piano for you. The thing is, Mussorgsky originally wrote it for piano, but it seems that most folks prefer to hear it orchestrated. Some other parts of Pictures is much more well known and popular, therefore there are plenty of recordings of those parts on the Internet. But I can't find my song anywhere! I'll keep looking, and hopefully I'll have something for you to listen to soon.

Or else, I'd better just get my act together and get this performance-ready and record it!