Leah's Practice Diary (updated 2/1/23)
I started playing the piano about six years ago. I think the hardest part for me has been bringing my adult expectations to an activity where I started with as much experience as a child. The last year and a half I鈥檝e been making a concerted effort to work through significant performance anxiety, and I鈥檝e made enough progress that I can post videos here.
What am I working on? Being happy with where I鈥檓 at, accepting my mistakes, enjoying the fact that this is a challenging hobby that takes time. At the end of the summer, it finally sunk in that I could keep playing and taking lessons for another 50 years, so there really is no reason to rush.
I take lessons with a teacher in the city where I live, and we focus mostly on repertoire and some technical exercises. I鈥檓 interested in composition, so I recently committed to taking lessons twice a month from a teacher in the UK who is going to help me with other aspects of musicianship like sight reading, theory, keyboard harmony, aural training, and composition.
I think it would be fun to keep a record of my progress. I鈥檓 hoping to post an update every 2-3 weeks. Please feel free to ask questions or give feedback. That鈥檚 helpful to my learning process :-)
-
I finished the fall/winter semester of lessons last week, and took some time to reflect on what went well and what didn鈥檛 during the last 4 months of practice.
My biggest takeaway is that Czerny is not helping me. The pieces look like they should be relatively easy to pull off, but they take so much work (at least for me) to bring up to any kind of reasonable tempo cleanly. I practice and practice, and at the end of it, all I have is a Czerny etude. It鈥檚 been frustrating, and a bit demoralizing. So I kicked Mr. Czerny to the curb and started a Chopin prelude last week. Played it today at my lesson and got a lot of good feedback for making forward progress. (Slower tempo, loud counting to control the rubato with my voice, wider dynamics, more of a singing tone in the top voice of the left hand.)
I mentioned Czerny to my composition teacher, saying maybe I should just go back to scales and cadences. His opinion was that scales focus too much on fingers 1-3, and suggested I learn the first 30 patterns in Hanon. He said, yes, Hanon is dangerous if you bang away on it too much because it can lock up the hand. However, he thought using it judiciously was a nice workout for fingers 4 and 5, the patterns are easy to learn so that you can focus on playing with different touches, and that it鈥檚 beneficial as a beginning transposing exercise because it鈥檚 easy to take around the circle of 5ths. He also said in his experience the way to really get familiar inside a key isn鈥檛 to memorize cadences, but to practice harmonizing a scale. So I鈥檓 experimenting with those two things in between repertoire work.
I have my first meeting with my new duet partner on Saturday. I hope it goes well because she signed us up to play at a recital on February 5th!
-
Leah Olson Yes, my son's new teacher is working out well. Thank you for asking. They are still in the checking each other out phase - she's trying to see how quickly he learns, how he learns, and what technical issues they need to work on. I'm kind of sad he learned the Chopin C#minor Nocturne, posthumous, so quickly - it is such a beautiful piece! I haven't been practicing quite as much - I found a teacher who would work with me periodically, but unfortunately the exercises I was given caused me to injure one of my fingers so I've been carefully and slowly getting back to playing. I think I need in-person lessons since I have a couple of old hand injuries from my mis-spent youth and probably need some adaptions. But I am doing the community challenge here on TB, hoping to get back to my regular practicing in the next week or so as my finger is nearly back to normal.
Did you and your duet partner ever meet in person?
-
Michelle R That nocturne is heartbreaking. I learned it at the beginning of the COVID lockdown. I haven't been able to revisit it...someday. So sorry to hear about your injury. I've done that too, particularly in the beginning when I was starting to practice more and didn't know how much I could push myself. I think Tonebase is wonderful, but an in person teacher is invaluable for so many reasons. I did meet with my duet partner, thank you for asking. Our recital is on Sunday. I posted my secondo parts in the 4 hand hub section. Hope you're back to practice soon!
-
-
Leah Olson Wow, you have accomplished a lot in six years Leah! I thoroughly enjoyed listening to both your Chopin prelude and the first movement in the Moonlight! Thank you for sharing despite your previous reservations. Your comment is priceless: "My piano resolution for this year is to post videos of pieces I've finished, without any apologies or excuses." I agree! Life is too short to hold back shared experiences. I look forward to seeing more of you play and you've inspired me to post more.
-
Darrell Jenkins Thank you so much! If you think of it, be sure to tag me when you post something. I'd love to see it :-)
-
Leah Olson I definitely will! :)
Here's my practice from this week in the latest community challenge:
-
Darrell Jenkins I'm so sorry I missed this! Absolutely beautiful playing. I loved your balance and phrasing. Tempo was really great as well, slow enough to feel expansive, fast enough that it never dragged. Well done!
-
Leah Olson Thank you Leah!
-
-
I had a good first meeting with my new duet partner. I've decided to post finished videos of my parts over in the Four Hands Hub of the forums in case other people are looking for a duet partner and would like to learn those pieces.
A good friend of mine from high school moved back to town recently. She plays the viola and would like to play with me, but it is a little rusty. I suggested we start with the very first Suzuki book to keep things very low key. Hopefully it works out. I'd love to play with a string player. Posting the accompaniment part to a "French Folk Song".
-
Thank you so much for sharing your practice diary - I鈥檝e really enjoyed reading through it. I particularly liked your thoughts on memorising your pieces - i really struggle with this, but i think you鈥檙e right - going through the piece and really analysing it properly has so many other benefits apart from for the memory. It really helps to understand the piece.
I鈥檓 currently revisiting the Moonlight Sonata first movement too and am finding the resources on tonebase really helpful here. I鈥檝e only been a member for a couple of days and there is just so much I want to learn.
Happy practicing!-
Melanie Thanks so much! Tonebase is a great resource. Enjoy
-
