I had a rough week. Didn’t get much sleep, nor the amount of practice and study I would’ve liked. I was very honest at the beginning of this week’s class when asked how I made out with the material. I said I don’t think I got in enough practice and secondly I missed his notes on the Minuet that said to practice hands separate, so I ended up trying to do hands together on this piece to early. I think that stunted my progress a bit.
We started the class with me show I could do hands separate Hanon exercise #2 at 72bpm. He critiqued that I was rushing the middle, and it was probably because I was falling behind and then was playing catchup. This week I am tasked with hands together for this exercise. I will begin much slower and slowly ramp up, so I can iron out the issue with rushing the middle.
I then played hands separate the Minuet, and discovered I was hesitating on the last note of each bar for RH. I would start the first 2 eighth notes correctly, but then the final eighth note I was hesitating and it caused the next sections to go out of sync. So his suggestion is that I accent the beginning of each pair of eighth notes to work on the proper rhythm and tempo. So this week, I will do the first portion hands together, and hands separate for the later part.
He asked how I was coming along with the major and minor 7th chords, and he could read my non-verbal response and pause that I was not feeling too confident about them. He said take another week on it, since I need to be able to identify and get to them fairly fast before we can move onto the next games where I mix and match them into the Circle of 5th.
I went on to play Fly Me to the Moon at 72bpm, and his comment was that I got the hard part down, but then the quarter note at the end of most bar was coming out too early. So again, I will work on this through accenting that last note to get it squarely on the beat. This week’s assignment is to get this playable to 100bpm. Then we can start to spice it up.
I then asked him if I was practicing the blue scale in swing rhythm correctly, which I was, so thank goodness for that. This week I need to start playing it up two octaves, and then 2 octaves but switching the left hand to changing the shell and chord on descend instead of ascending.
Overall, while I had a bad week of practice and this week we didn’t really go into anything new, I think the class was thoroughly helpful. I have a list of things to work on slowly this coming week and should get through this and a better performance session for next class. We also discussed additionally why hands separate practice is useful to which I agree.
I think if I find some additional study/practice time this week, I will try to incorporate in some exercises from the Paul Harris Improve Your Sight-Reading! Piano book 1. I already currently try to do on a daily basis the minimum of 200 notes in the iOS app, Notes Teacher. And very recently I discussed a fun little game called Staff Wars, also on the iOS and try to get a round or two of that in every now and then.
Also from a YouTube video regarding to essential or useful apps, I began using Andante. It’s a neat little app to help track practice sessions, so I can make sure I am at least getting in the bare 1 hour minimum practice in, and in the right areas. A balance between technique, repertoire pieces, blue scale, chord recognition, and some note reading speed training.
Let’s work on better sleep, more rest, and more effective and efficient practice sessions this week!
Just My Things... 