Week 3: Keep the Momentum
By now, the challenge is getting real!
You’ve chosen your piece, spent time with it, and hopefully started to hear it take shape. But this is also the point where things can get hard. The easy excitement of beginning fades a little, and you’re left with the more important part: staying with it.
That’s what Week 3 is about.
Not perfection. Not having everything solved. Just continuing, even when the going gets tough.
Maybe you’ve hit a section that still won’t settle. Maybe progress feels slower than you hoped. Maybe you’re realizing how much more there is to do. That’s normal. In fact, it’s part of the process. This is often the exact moment when real growth happens, if you just keep showing up!
This week, the goal is simple: keep the moving forward!
Even a small step matters:
- one passage a little steadier
- one phrase a little freer
- one practice session where you stayed patient
- one moment where the music started to sound as you like
That is momentum.
This week, share where you are right now:
- a short clip from your practice
- a passage that’s improving
- a place where you’re still stuck
- or a few thoughts on what it’s been like to stay with the piece
And if you need, share what might be frustrating you, too.
We are all in this together.
Week 4 will be about recording. This week is about building the resilience to get there.
Keep going. Stay with it. You may be closer than you think.
167 replies
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Missed week 1 and week 2 progress videos but have been grinding away at this polonaise for the past couple of weeks! Some things I’m currently focusing on and making notes of:
- fleshing out the big picture of the piece, making repetitions of phrases/sections different from the first time they’re presented, keeping things interesting in general
- keeping concentration and focus during high octane passages and not getting overwhelmed by the adrenaline rush
- trying to separate practicing full run throughs of the piece from practice of individual small sections, which is tough because I‘m currently getting carried away with playing large sections at a time (it’s just too much fun to play 😅)
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Week 3.2: measures 23-29 have proven to be quite challenging for me to stitch together. And on Friday I strained my back working, so I haven't had as much time at the piano as I would have liked. But, there is some improvement on this section. I hope to be able to put a recording of the entire piece together this week before we head to Alabama to take care of some family matters.
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Dear all,
My update for this week: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYxji1MRDko/?igsh=MXF0eHRvcmN5b3Bwbg==
I need to practise with hands separate.
Best wishes,
Aaron
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Today for the first time, I moved the metronome to quarter note rather than eighth note, and had a lot of challenges with that! I'm also thinking of my ultimate goal tempo-range, the range where it feels con moto. Here is a snippet of this piece played at what I think wll be an appropriate "final" tempo (not this week, but maybe in a month or so). What do you think?