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Happy holidays Richard and everyone else!

The last ten days have been quite productive. I got a fast enough recording of Tchaikovsky, and I will be contented with that for now. I will go back to it later on to see if I can improve my articulation.

I also have my Xmas video, will post it later in the related thread. It is musically appalling but my violinist and I had a lot of fun! I think you will have a good laugh too. Nobody will be ashamed to post anything here ever again

My goal for the final days of 2013 is just to get a recording of Schumann's Melodie at 70 bpm. I started Beethoven's Minuet in G and I already know that it will accompany me for a long time. Godowsky's fingering is brilliant but hard for me to learn.

For next year, I downloaded several books from the official conservatory program in Italy. It's mainly the usual stuff, Beyer, Czerny, Bartok and the like, some of which I had already started, and I want to go through the 1st year material as quickly as I can and then move on to the 2nd year stuff. I haven't set a deadline yet but I want to start asap so I can see how fast I can go. Would love to devote about 1 hour to that every day, on the digital. At least that's the plan!

The Holidays have come and gone, I am back home in Switzerland, and it is time to get serious about this year's goals. I have reset my FOYD list to target specific weaknesses and try to have effective, focussed practice this year. I created a weekly practice sheet to work with to help with this.

FOYD goals this week:

Technical: Per Grade 7 two keys daily - Work on 4 octave scales(M &m) at 1 note/beat, two notes/beat, 3 notes/beat, 4notes/beat 76 bpm. Do broken and blocked triads, 7th's, and dim7th's at 60. Arpeggios - tonic and 7th's at 60/4.

Venetian Boat Song: Make a baseline recording this week. Achieve 100% accuracy at 110bpm five times through. Then test at performance tempo for weak spots.

Chrysanthemum: Isolate the sticky spots, play 7 times correct, increase until up to tempo, then recombine and play entire section.

Kuhlua Sonatina: Record 1st and 2nd movements. Assure runs are even legato. Play third movement with metronome at 60 to check for rhythm errors and look for weak spots. Begin increasing tempo.

March: Check rhythm with the metronome on this one too! Play in small sections assuring accuracy, good expression, and well balanced voices. Combine small sections when satisfactory.

Good Humor: This is an etude for rapid Alberti and arpeggiated 7th's. I had started it several months ago, and have added it back to the job stack. Goal for this week is to relearn with slow accurate play.

Heller Etude in C: This is an Etude to strengthen the 5th finger. Same goal as above.

Burgmüller L'Orage (The Storm): Another etude for tremolos, and rapid shifts between hands. Goal for this week, learn A section.

Repertiore: My goal is to have one hour of memorized repertoire by the end of the year. I will play two pieces each day, and allot time as needed for "repair".

Sight Read: My goal is to sight read at tempo at grade 5 by the end of the year. To that end, I plan to spend 1/2 hour daily on sight reading.

That should keep me busy!

SwissMS -- When my daughter needed a talking to yesterday about needing to have a little ounce of dedication in practicing her trumpet (she doesn't want to practice, and doesn't plan to stick with trumpet long term because she has too much to juggle, but doesn't want to be a "quitter" either so her plan was to just coast for the rest of the school year and then not take it next year), I held you up as my gold standard for doing whatever it takes to arrange your life around your musical goals.


For me, I'm back to being focused after a long hiatus since Nov 15th... I'm working feverishly on my arrangement of "Against All Odds" for the Feb 15th ABF Recital. I have my 1st draft basically done. My goal for this week is to have it "finalized" (it will of course be tweaked endlessly as I go along), including fingering, by Saturday Jan 11th. That will give me 5 weeks to get it performance ready... a very tight squeeze for me.

Well, I was beginning to think my focus was going to go to the proverbial place one uses a handbasket to get to, but after Christmas things sort of settled down. I did get out my hammered dulcimer and had some friends who are also rusty on their instruments over this afternoon, but by gosh I think I'll still play some piano this evening!

For at least the first part of this year, besides just trying to focus, I'm particularly working on the accents and syncopation in my Joplin piece. When I've played ragtime before I've essentially just emphasized the off beat, or whatever, but I actually think it is more subtle than that to do right. So I've been taking it slow and really paying attention to the way it sounds. The good news is that I heard those ideas show up in Bethena, which isn't my next recital piece but was once long ago, and which I still maintain. So that was really cool to have the cross-over.

And that kind of attention to the niceities of interpretation I think will should be a big part of what I do over this next year - I have a pretty good set of repertoire, and can add a little at a time, and mix and match for gigs, so actually playing with more sophistication will probably really pay off. And be a lot more fun

But I was particularly relieved to not be completely scattered after the holidays.

Cathy

Wow, aTallGuyNH, Thanks!

I read some weeks ago of an initiative to re-record and post earlier recital pieces to see what progress had been made. As I took the turkey out of the oven this Christmas it suddenly dawned on me that just as meat needs to relax after cooking, my pieces also need this standing time to mellow. I've decided to let my pieces relax for a year before recording them for the quarterly recitals.

I have found it difficult to keep all my recent pieces in memory. I had thought it may be advancing years but I think it may be more to do with my learning process. Recital pieces need many consecutive weeks of practise in order to make the date and each section needs regular upkeep. Normally I use the weekends to run through parts I've memorised so far, reinforcing the memory and maturing it as I go but recital pieces don't get this valuable extra period of two days on and five days off.

While the themed recitals have stretched me and my learning ability they have added stress and some of the pieces still retain that stress when I play them. I'm reducing the amount of new material I cover each week and adding instead older pieces that need relearning with a more relaxed attitude.

This week my focus will be on:
Bach Sinfonia No. 1 that I recovered just before Christmas and will probably submit for the February ABF recital instead of the Chopin Nocturne that I'm holding back a year.

Scarlatti Kp. 159. I've just about finished this piece and can play it straight through but still have some areas I'd like to strengthen before I put the three parts finally together.

I revived the Mozart K.545 over Christmas, I do love this piece. I've to wrap up the Rondo this week and next.

The two Joplin pieces will fill up the rota. I've kept these simmering over the holiday period. I've not played every day this last two weeks but with time off from work I've had long days on the bench and I'm raring to go for the new year, which looks very exciting in piano terms with the Rachmaninoff and Chopin collaborative efforts.

Greetings everyone! There hasn't been much point in me posting until after the holidays. I finally got my one Christmas piece recorded. I have gotten most of Clair de lune memorized. My teacher has said it is time for me to start doing some live practice performances with some friends. I'll start contacting some friends here at home who I know want to do this. I'll keep you posted as to how that goes.

My focus for this week:

I am just getting started with "Invention #8 in F Major" by J.S. Bach. Right now I am slow practicing the right hand of the first 12 measures. This is my first time I've worked on any of the Inventions. I'm delighted that my teacher suggested this one.

Prelude in D Flat Major by Chopin. I put this piece aside in November when I realized I couldn't concentrate and give it the proper attention needed. Now I'm ready to take it back up. This week I will play it through to identify the measures needing the most attention.

Gymnopedie 1, by Erik Satie. When I recorded this In 2012 for the Satie themed recital it was performed as a work in progress. Now I want to bring it back and finish working it up for some live performances. Much of my work will be working on dynamics and expression as I memorize it.

Clair de Lune, memorizing measure 49-58.

One more thing. I recently started doing a few basic yoga exercises I found in a book, Musicians Yoga. It was recommended on one of these threads. I am finding it helpful with reducing stress and tension while I'm practiceing. I think it may be helping me with focusing.


That's it for now. Have a great week everyone!

Hi guys! I didn't forget this thread, it's just that I've been busy with guests and parties, and then figuring out a practice schedule for the next few months.

I'm currently working on three pieces only:
Bach's Little Prelude BWV 939 - My goal is to bring it up to 60 bpm and possibly record it by the end of the month
Bach's Invention no. 1 - Very long-term! Maybe June? But a bit every day keeps the doctor away!
Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag simplified - Almost done; need to speed up the third section, polish a couple of spots and put it all together... easy uh? I will start recording next week and we'll see what happens.

Other than that I'm spending some time every day either on Beyer's op. 101, Czerny's op. 599 or Bartok's Mikrokosmos book 2, plus some sight-reading. I also borrowed Norton's Microjazz 1 from a friend and it's really nice.

Oh, I made a simple spreadsheet to log the minutes of practice for every day of the year, if anyone wants to download it it's here:

http://file.sinophilia.org/practice_template.numbers.zip (Apple Numbers)
http://file.sinophilia.org/practice_template.xls (MS Excel)

Well, I'm not getting as much practice time as I did last year in this month, partly because the distractedness is just the way I'm working now, partly for other reasons. But I've had 3 solo gigs in the last two weeks, and the band played a dance today, and I'll have to say they went well. I was much more centered than I was before the holidays, and I think my playing was much more confident. I've been focusing on current repertoire and really getting it into my awareness, and I think that and the last 4 years of really paying attention to, at the very least, how much time I spend at the piano, and the last year of paying really close attention to what I'm doing, has paid off. After one more solo gig this month, tomorrow, I'm going to really spend time on Joplin, and, if I can, something new for the quarterly recital. If I can't really get something new, I do have some repertoire pieces I haven't done for a recital.

But it is such a relief to find the centeredness, because I think that's going to be a nuisance for awhile, and I'll need to find some new ways to deal with being antsy much of the time. But onward and upward!

Cathy

Cathy, I totally relate to what you're saying about being centered. I've started doing some of the simple deep breathing yoga exercises to help me get centered in my practice sessions. I've found it helpful in dealing with all of the various distractions.

Hi everyone! I had a wonderful session last week with my teacher. We spent quite a bit of time on the "Raindrop" Prelude and Invention #8. I will spend the majority of my practice time on these two pieces this week.

With the Invention I'll get accustomed to slowly playing the right and left hands separately.

The "Raindrop" prelude will get a major amount of my time. I put this aside temporarily while I worked on getiting Clair de Lune up to speed. I was finding it difficult to work on both at the same time. I now seem to have gotten beyond that problem. With Raindrop I've identified 6 areas to focus on this week as I start the process of memorizing and fine-tuning.

As was suggested by my teacher, I've scheduled a few private practice performances of Clair de Lune with some friends. The first will happen this week! I am working on preparing for it today. I'll let you know how things go.

I also plan to work on Gymnopedie 1. I think I'll just keep it real simple and do some practice recordings to analyze my next steps with this piece. I'll be meeting with my teacher within the next few weeks to get it to the next level.

Richard, I'll be sending you a PM about the Rachmaninoff piece. My teacher is still trying to determine the best time in February to get me started with this piece. Stay tuned!

Diana, thanks for sharing the spreadsheet. I think I'll find it very useful.

That's it for me. Have a good week!

I spent most of the holiday going over some pieces I wanted to finish and revisiting recent material I had forgotten then I took a week off and cleared up my desk and the area around the piano the week before last.

The only new stuff last week was the Tchaikovsky and Joplin recital material. This week will be much the same again but the new material will be different sections of the same pieces.

I'm not in a hurry to start the Rach, Carl. It's not going away and I still have the motivation.

Hopefully we'll get to hear a Clair de Lune recording at some point. I may have expressed that sentiment previously? Not sure... anyway not to harp on it if I did, it's my favorite piece though, so I'm always interested to hear what people do with it.

As for Gym #1, I tried that two years ago when I was just barely beginning on my piano journey. It was an eye opener to realize that just because there are very few notes does not at all mean that the piece is easy! I'll have another go at it eventually.

My focus at this point is still "Against All Odds". My arrangement work petered out close to the end -- I just got sick of trying to figure out a few bars near the end, so I switched to "learn to play the rest" mode. I'll finish out the arrangement when I have a better feel for playing what's been completed already (although even that is still being polished a bit).

The learning to play aspect is going fairly well. I've got the fingering down for ~1/2 of it. Goal for this week is to get the balance figured out.

I've pretty well settled on skipping the 2/15 recital. Just not enough time, so this will be for 5/15 now.

I certainly intend to record Clair de Lune at some point, TallGuyNH. I hadn't forgotten your request. Right now I'm trying to get comfortable with playing it in front of a few people at a time. I'm also considering doing a recording of it late next month on my digital piano (Yamaha P-155) to share privately for feedback. If you or others would be interested in that send me a PM and I'll share that when I get it done late in February.

I did one practice performance yesterday with a friend who is not a musician. It went pretty well, though I made some mistakes. My challenge was to stay present with the piece and keep it going. I did achieve that, and my friend said she couldn't tell there were any difficulties. I was satisfied with that because at this point I think of it as a work in progress.

Hello, everyone. I have fallen behind on the weekly reporting it seems. My lessons started up again last week after nearly a two month break, and I have been very busy "fixing" things. So, my goals have shifted from my set priorities to new priorities set by my teacher's critiques.

Venetian Boat Song: I have made several recordings, listened, and updated my interpretation accordingly. Hopefully I will get a final recording for the AFB recital this week.

Chrysanthemum: My teacher noted "flying fingers" on the RH in this, so this week it is very slow play with attention to the choreography. The left hand should be in constant steady movement, and the right should be more relaxed on the keys.

March: Right hand alone up to tempo, counting. The rhythm is not secure.

Sonatina: Fix the dynamics to be consistent with classic period. Work the running passages in 3 note, 4 note, and 8 note sections. Maintain relaxation and preparation.

Sounds like success! I'll PM you re: feedback for your upcoming recording.

Hi Everyone.

I’ve been waffling this whole month. Time to get back to some focused practice!

This week:

Tchai Nocturne 10/1: This piece has been on the backburner. Focus on bars 29-39. Play slowly and get brain to register chords.

Ballade: I’ve memorized to bar 65. Some things to work on this week: 24-26 (LH) , bar 33 (little notes), and bars 36-43 (when to hold notes versus when to let them go). Also accuracy during the transitions in bars 50-51. I’d also like to memorize bar 166 to the beginning of 180, so that I am free to practice those bars which need independent rhythms in the RH and LH. (ex. 170, 171, 172 and 179).

Moonlight 3: I need to work on alberti bass. Mine is terrible! Recently I realized how much my fingers fly around and that I have to change that if I ever want to increase the tempo of my playing. So now I’m trying to move my fingers as little as possible and my playing has become a disaster. I’m so unsteady and uncoordinated when trying to keep my fingers close to the keys. Ugh! So I will just take each albert bass section in the piece and practice it HS for now, keeping my fingers close to the keys, and trying to play it evenly.

Scriabin Prelude Op. 2 No. 2-This is a short, pretty little piece. (a one pager). My first attempt at any Scriabin.

Rach 3/2-another piece I am starting. Haven’t settled yet on an approach. I might try to work on bars 2 to the beginning of bar 8, focusing on getting familiar with the chords and relaxing my hands when playing them. Then I might also work on bars 14-26, HS, then try HT. All of it very slowly. Haven’t decided if I will memorize this piece or not.

That’s it. How is everyone else doing with their practicing?

I'm with Valencia - January was a spaced out month for piano. I am, however, still reaping the benefits of previous focused practice - yea!

But now that work has let up a little, I have 4 projects on the burner - a piece for the ABF recital, the Joplin, a couple of pieces for St. Pat's with the band, and whatever the gig pieces for Feb are.

So it was a treasure to spend time on the Joplin today, playing all the way thru so that I could begin to hear it all in my head and not get lost, chunking a couple of trouble spots, hearing that some of the work on accents and phrasing has paid off. And then taking out one of my repertoire pieces for the ABF and really work on turning it into a waltz instead of a slow air That's coming along.

And then just playing thru, and chunking a little, the pieces in my stack of repertoire cards. Yesterday I got a call at 2:45 for a gig at 3 - sheesh - and doing that refreshment in rotation made a huge difference in being able to just fake my way thru an hour's worth of music! I'm hoping to be able to do all 2 hours worth reliably by the first of May, + the Joplin and the St. Pat's for cushion.

I've found that really having a specific set of gigs that I want specific things for, and musicality goals, helps a lot with motivating me to get to the piano, even if I'm not sure I can stand to sit still. I can, mostly, get 15 minutes in, anyway, if I know I'll see progress the next time I sit down. Whew! It's a journey.

The "stay relaxed" is an important thing for me, too, like SwissMS. I am really looking forward to Chrysanthemum!

Cathy

My recital submission is in now and I'm ready to start the Rachmaninoff as soon as Carl gets the green light.

I've spent January planning how I want to manage my time and pieces. Having the Bach piece(s) ready to go and well seasoned has been a great bonus. I've a few new pieces to learn this year but I want to spend a lot more time consolidating pieces from the last two years that are suffering from neglect and the sooner I get back to them the easier it will be to recover them.

I have my Joplin pieces memorised and getting fluent, though still in four parts each. I still have a bit of difficulty remembering the differences for the section repeats here and there and get myself into a perpetual motion kind of thing every so often but I'm getting quite confident. The Tchaikovsky is coming on and I'm slowly sorting out the awkward M10 passage between work on other sections.

Alongside these three pieces I shall refresh my Bach Allemande in Eb and Scarlatti sonata K. 149 this week and pick up the Beethoven Largo.

I wrapped up a first round of lessons with a new teacher, second round starts in May. (She's off teaching at a university now). I told her in the first lesson that she had covered more than my previous teacher had covered in a year.

My Dec./Jan. was the most intense piano learning period I've ever had. Most of the time was spent on Bach's Italian Concerto, first movement, but I also had a chance to work on a Mozart Fantasy, and a 4-hands 1-piano Mozart piece, which was a blast.

Worked on my first lead sheet with a teacher, using my rusty music theory. I could barely hang onto most of the conversations :-)

Currently wrapping up the Bach for the February ABF recital, mostly working on the ornaments, the jumps, and making the right hand of some phrases more legato.


One of the best parts of the lessons was having a teacher who was very analytical, and who enjoyed playing and demonstrating technique. For example, she explained the physicality of playing trills, with the small wrist/forearm wiggle, along with how to make the ornaments part of the phrases. This was one of the things we ended up working on each lesson.

Since all three recital pieces are done, I'm switching to two easy things from Pianist magazine, a minuet by Mozart and an arrangement of Leo Delibes' Waltz from Coppelia. Both require a very light touch. The latter is quite fast but they shouldn't take me more than two weeks to learn - hopefully. Then the plan is to go back to Bach's Invention no. 1, which I started in December. I only studied the first few measures but I felt it gave me some advantage when I learnt the Little Prelude for the quarterly recital. So I will continue my work on it, slowly slowly, even if it is way above my level.

I'm sticking to my technique work, with my daily Beyer/Czerny/Bartok. All of these are getting beyond my sight-reading ability, but I can still play 2 or 3 exercises through every day, very slowly, paying attention to the technique taught. I love this kind of extremely clear and progressive little things, they make me feel I may be on the right track after all. I'm definitely learning what patience is.

Just for fun, I learned an arrangement of Can't Help Falling in Love from Alfred's Greatest Hits book 3. Now I think I will try Speak Softly Love. I need some quick gratification every now and then!