Piano Practice Challenge 02AUG23

In which I try to shame myself into putting more effort into my playing. In intervals of thirty minutes using my kitchen timer, I will practice three one hour a day for one week. What sort of improvement will I experience? I have a birthday coming up and I want to have something approaching a six pack in the abdomen department, be half-finished with my latest writing project, and make some sort of leap forward on the piano.

 

Operation Carnegie Hall

 A tourist in New York City stops a guy on the street.

"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

"Practice, practice, practice," the guy answers.

And so I begin a new effort to improve my piano ability. As you can see from the photo, I have my kitchen timer on the keyboard, set to thirty minutes. When I sit down to play, I hit the timer and it counts down from thirty. If I stop for any reason, I hit the pause. When the timer goes off after thirty minutes, I scratch a hash mark on the calendar for that day. With each hash mark representing a half hour of solid practice, you can see that on my first day I player for ninety minutes, yesterday I played for two hours, and today I've already played for thirty minutes.

  I begin every day playing scales, both forward and contrary when possible. Then I move on to song that I have learned and a new piece I'm working on (Bach Invention # 13). I'm really rusty on some of the songs that I used to play rather well, but it doesn't take too long to relearn them. Note to self: don't allow old pieces to languish for so long.

François Couperin - Les Baricades Mistérieuses

 François Couperin - Les Baricades Mistérieuses. From the Sixiême Ordre (Pièces de clavecin).

 I made a video of this lovely work from 1717 a couple of weeks ago. I was so disgusted with myself that I was on the verge of quitting the piano, as so many people have begged of me. A few mistakes and still a lot of work to do on the dynamics, but I only made this one take, so I don’t think it’s too horrible. I’m shittier at making videos than I ever could ever hope to be at playing the piano.

New Practice Method

Since I bought my piano I have wanted to know exactly how much time I spend practicing every day. I tried timing myself every time I sat down but I kept forgetting to turn the timer on or off so this method didn’t last even a single day. I thought that I had been practicing a lot—and I was—but I never knew exactly how much. At times I would sit down and play for only a few minutes which as a block of time is probably not much use to me at all.

I came across this piece in the New York Times and immediately saw how this could apply to my piano practice. Now I set my kitchen timer for 30 minutes and turn it on when I sit down. This breaks my sessions into half hour blocks. A half hour, as I’m finding, is a really good amount of time to practice at one sitting. Anything less and I tend to avoid the tougher parts of a song but with 30 minutes to kill I’m forced to face these demons. Anything longer than 30 minutes tends to get tedious.

I only wish that I had stumbled on this trick a lot sooner. Better late than never but I still feel like an idiot for not figuring this out much earlier.

La Cumparsita Cumple 100 Años

You can either walk or dance down this street

Without a doubt the most famous song in all of tango, La Cumparsita was written by Gerardo Hernán Matos Rodríguez from Uruguay around 100 years ago, give or take a year. I think that it was first recorded in 1917. Of course, it has gone on to become the most iconic piece of music in all of South America.

The video above is the tutorial that I'm using to learn this song on the piano. The pianist, Pablo Keilis was kind enough to send me a copy of his original arrangement for students of the piano.

Because La Cumparsita is a tango and the tango is a dance I have posted the video below of two great dancers ripping up this song on the floor.

Piano Diary: My First Rag

 I doubt that I will ever play it this well.

One of the things I decided when I began playing the piano again was that I would explore different kinds of music outside of the usual classical music repertoire for amateur piano players. I have learned a bit of boogie-woogie and some blues stuff. The Santa Lucia Rag arranged by Martha Mier has been my first attempt at a piece in ragtime, or a rag as they are called. Syncopated rhythm is completely alien to me so this has been something of a struggle.

It has been a real pleasure to become acquainted with Martha Mier through her music. She is very well-known among folks who are learning the piano as she has dedicated her life to education and composition in this field. This great little arrangement can be found in her book Classical Jazz, Rags & Blues 2.

My initial work on this song has been like chipping away at a huge piece of granite (but much harder than granite!) with a very small hammer (and my hammer seems to have been made out of cork) trying to make a sculpture. Somewhere inside of that chunk of rock lies the song. After two days of work there is almost no indication of music apparent in what I am pounding out. I think that I may have been born without whatever organ is responsible for rhythm and timing. I felt so clumsy when I first began on this piece that I nearly fell off my bench. At this point in the struggle I can’t be sure if there will be any survivors.