(Almost) A week on....

I can't believe it has been nearly a week since my last blog entry. Although I haven't been spending much time blogging I have managed to get quite a few hours of practice in!

Today I spent about an hour at the piano:

20 mins - Bob Mintzer Etude 1. I concentrated on the second half of the piece, particularly the right hand part. I can now just about get through the whole thing at a modest 40 bpm.

20 Mins - Reinecke. I am now running the whole piece through at five metronome markings per session. Last time I ran from 40bpm up to 48. Today was 42bpm up to 50 and so on. I run the piece several times at each tempo (trying not to look at my hands so much.)

10 Mins - Scales. A, D and G major with both hands together over two octaves. I'm still finding this tricky!

10 Mins - Biehl piece at five tempos from 76 up to the marked tempo of 92.

Tomorrow is probably my last Wednesday off as my teaching is starting to pick up. I intend to make the most of it by getting stuck into a third Grade 2 piece and trying to work the full Mintzer Etude up to speed.

15 Minutes Composition - I intend to go through some of the exercises in the Ted Pease Jazz Compositon Theory and Practice. I did a lot of this earlier in the year but I'm a bit rusty so I need to get back into the swing of things.

I've clocked up a fair bit of drum kit practice recently. This feels good but I still want a set of Roland V Drums to practice on at home!

A new CD arrived in the mail today courtesy of Amazon. I've been on a bit of a Michael Brecker trip recently so I ordered his first album. I'm especially enjoying the tune "Choices" which I used to play in a band ten years ago when I was at college. Its nice to hear it played properly!