Dana's Practice Diary
I am experimenting with Dominic Cheli's practice outline. Since I'm likely to work in 2 hour blocks most easily:
20 minutes warm up and technique: I plan to work on scales and arpeggios mostly
60 minutes of repertoire: This will be Mozart K330; Chopin 10 # 1; Bach WTC book 1, first prelude and fugue. I'll be focusing on technical issues and theory in these, since I'm mostly interested in improvising based on them. I'll probably be working in phrase sections and doing a lot of transposition, so I can learn how they work in different keys. At the same time, I'm interested in developing my memory skills, so I'll try memorizing them. I'm wondering how transposing will effect memory.
40 minutes of theory work and improvising.
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This is turning out to be interesting.
Discoveries so far:
- Grouping practice is great. I'm really enjoying the weird math of the patterns and the way it is evening out the scales. I'm sticking with the keys of the repertoire and only doing the major scales so far.
- Also really liking working on arpeggios. Just sticking with C major (my Mozart key) and the Chopin patterns. The Chopin is hard for me, since it used to give me tension symptoms when I was in school, so I'm doing a version of grouping practice on elements of the patterns there and using the relaxation techniques from Henry Kramer's lesson on op 10 #2. I like how his lifted hand technique works on the elements of the arpeggios as well. I find I can practice the op 10# 1 without getting the symptoms. My thought is that I'm this etude for the next year or so, so I"m not rushing it.
- The harmonic practice on the Mozart is super fun. I'm analysing the harmonic structure motif by motif, then building the four bar phrases and seeing how they connect.
- In the first movement, there's four bar phrase built on repetition of the first two bar harmony. This stands on its own and introduces the theme in the melody.
- The second four bar phrase establishes a harmonic pattern that gets duplicated in the following four bar phrase.
- Then we get what I think of as a cadence pattern in bars 13-15 that serve as a leaping off point for the modulation into G.
- In practice this, I'm treating it as though bar 16 stops with the first beat and holds the C harmony.
- Then I'm improvising on the harmonic patterns in this section, in as many ways as I can. It's super fun and really opening up my conception of how Mozart build the intro to the sonata.
