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!

Right on the money

I got in exactly 60 minutes of practice today, which is my goal. I was a bit uninspired, so once the 60 minute mark rolled around, I considered continuing on, but then I thought I'd rather get the house cleaned up and go to bed.

The first 20 minutes I spent working on my Bach fugue. It is sounding a lot better. I have the first three lines down, so now I'm working on the rest of the first page (it is about 2 1/2 pages in my book). I'll do another recording in a week or so so you can see my progress. I am really enjoying learning this fugue, and I'm thinking I'll learn another prelude and fugue in the near future so I have a couple of those under my belt.

I worked on my Chopin nocturne for another little while, about 30 minutes, and I am creeping up and learning all of page two. I have now played that whole page through. It gets really fast in one part, which is the only spot where I have trouble. I need to learn some tricks to improve my speed.

Finally, I worked on my Villa-Lobos number. That's a fun one. It's also very, very fast. Fortunately, it is also hard for the casual listener to tell if you've made a mistake, so it's not the end of the world if you hit a few wrong notes during the piece. I know a lot of people out there probably don't appreciate music like this, but I *heart* 20th century music.

Another day down, and I'm feeling more and more confident with my playing. Even though today I was uninspired and was ready to quit at any second, I got a lot accomplished. Usually that doesn't happen when I'm feeling this way when I practice.

Yeah, that's twice that I didn't check in.

I'm having a bummer week. But I'm keeping up with the practicing. I also noticed I had been neglecting my journal blog, so I had to post a bit on that today.

Yesterday I got in about 50 minutes, practicing Bach and Chopin only.

Today I have spent the majority of my time on those as well, but I also played Clair de Lune. I was about to open to that tonight when I opened to "O Polichinelo" from Prolo do Bebe, No. 1 instead. This little ditty is by Heitor Villa-Lobos. It is very fast and lots of fun. Listen here as performed by Marcelo Bratke. I can't play this piece nearly as well as this guy, but at one time I played it fairly well. I believe it was included on my senior recital. The hubby thinks it is just a mess of keys, which is what it probably sounds like right now anyway, so I'll give him that. But I was playing it more like at moderato, rather than presto. So I can understand his dislike. My goal is to make him like this piece! 20th century music can be hard to appreciate sometimes, but this is a great piece and its so fun.

Today so far I have about 50 minutes in as well. I'm going to get back to those ivories before I hit the hay so hopefully I can get at least another 10 minutes in tonight!