Been a long time. A very long time.

But I've been practicing just about every day. The only days I've missed have been days I've been out of town. However, I have become pregnant sometime in April or May and since then I've been practicing less than I was at the beginning of the year. Some days I'm satisfied with playing through a piece once or twice because of exhaustion, nausea, or what have you.

But I've been working toward an e-recital that happens this week, and just submitted my piece. Want to hear it? Have a listen here. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I've made several mistakes in it, and my recording device just doesn't pick up the dynamics the way I would have liked it to. But, I've always been nervous performing in front of an audience (even if that audience is my digital camera set on "microphone") and this was the best recording I could get with the restrictions I've had on time and location. I wasn't able to record at home because my piano is so horribly out of tune that the song would have sounded much, much worse. I recorded this on a grand piano at my church, and was amazed at not only how much better it sounded, but how much better I sounded on that piano. It was much easier to play my piece on that piano, compared even with the fairly new (less than 10 years old) and well-maintained uprights that I had been playing on earlier.

So, I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor, while I prepare for the fruits of a different kind of labor, coming up in January or February. We're anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first boy, and we couldn't be more thrilled! The girls are very excited to get a brother to play with (and dress up, and otherwise annoy as much as possible I'm sure) and I'm excited to have a little boy to add a little diversity to our estrogen-filled home!

45 Minutes in March

My March time average came out to about 45 minutes per day. This is lower than my goal of 60 minutes. But let's review what happened in March:

• Hubby got the flu
• I got the flu
• Thing 1 got a cough
• Thing 2 got a cough
• Thing 1 got a fever and still had a cough
• Thing 2 got the fever sickness from her sister and ended up pretty darned sick
• Finally, in April, both Thing 1 and Thing 2 are feeling better

So. At least one of us was sick during the entire month of March. Because of my title as Mom, I do most of the care, feeding, food preparation, laundry, reading stories, comforting, getting glasses of water at 2am for coughing girls, etc. I had a couple days in March where I literally practiced for 5 minutes, and I was pleased with that! Toward the end, I was able to increase my practice times again, which upped my average from 40 minutes toward the middle of the month to 45 at the very end.

Now it's April, and so far my average is 65 minutes a day! Not bad so far! Of course, it's the 2nd. We'll work on keeping the average above 60 for the rest of the 28 days!

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...