The 10 Year Piano Project

The lesson went great. I exceeded expectations, which is always fun, and even picked up on a couple things my instructor thought he’d catch me on. There are still a couple things to work on, one being consistency in the sixteenth notes in the left-hand in regards to legato and phrasing.

After the third movement was completed and critiqued, he had me try the entire piece. The first movement was shaky since I hadn’t really run through it all week. The second movement was solid, and the final movement was good, with the exception of the things I had to work on.

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I’m about 1 hour away from my 6th lesson. Overall, I think the week went well. I managed to get the phrasing where I wanted it to be.

There were a couple days of struggle just because my hands weren’t doing what they wanted to do and felt a bit stiff as well. I’m still doing the scales and the stretches, but some days you just can’t win.

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I had the pleasure of talking to my youngest on the phone yesterday. We talked about a myriad of subjects and eventually got talking about music. I let her know that I was taking piano lessons again and that I’d be focusing on Jazz.

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I currently own a Seiko quartz metronome. It works great, does what it needs to do, but it’s something I’ve been fighting with because it doesn’t have small enough increments.

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Again, the lesson time seemed extremely short, even though we had a 45-minute session. He had me go over the second movement of the Sonatina to ensure that I recalled what we discussed last week.

We then moved on to the third movement, which I was extremely excited for since I’d worked all week to try and get as much completed as possible. I got through the first page then stopped when I stumbled on a run, and we discussed everything prior to that.

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I’m feeling pretty good about tomorrow’s lesson. I’ve got a great start on the third movement of the Sonatina, so I should be able to finish that up for the 6th lesson.

There was some improvisation stuff that my instructor went over last week as well that I didn’t get the gist of, so we’ll be revisiting that for sure.

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If you’ve ever performed live, chances are you’ve run into some kind of technical issue with your instrument or equipments. I recall playing piano (digital piano) for a community theater production of ‘Annie Get Your Gun’, and during the performance, D3 (D above middle C), somehow that particular key became doubled in volume, no matter how lightly it was pressed. Cast gave me a look like “what’s going on?”, and the director gave me the eye as well. I just kept going, and making sure I skipped that particular key (which was more challenging that I thought). We made it through the show, and had to do it again the next night, unable to replace the equipment, and at least we wouldn’t be surprised a second night.

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