Wednesday 22nd October - New Tune!

20 Mins - New piece...

I started my piano practice today with a look at my third Grade 2 piece. It is a short piano arrangement of (don't laugh) Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight. It doesn't seem as challenging as the other Grade 2 pieces YET. There are some tricky parts in the left hand though. I spent 20 minutes sketching through the whole thing a couple of times then tried working on bars 1-4 and 5-8 with a very slow metronome marking.

20 Minutes - Bob Mintzer Etude 1

I spent about half of the time making sure I was comfortable with the second half of the piece at crotchet = 40. I then ran through the whole piece at the same speed. I noticed myself tending to rush a little so I started to think (and sing to myself) the triplet subdivisions whilst playing. As I know from my drum practice this really works and seemed to relax me a little too. The time felt better and I seemed to have more time to make the changes. Next time I look at this piece I will try the five tempos method working at crotchet = 40, 42, 44, 46, 48

I need to make sure I don't over-do it with this piece - after the 20 minutes my right hand was starting to get tired as there are a couple of large stretches involved.

20 Minutes - Reviewing other material

Reinecke at five tempos 44, 46, 48, 50, 52

Biehl at five tempos 76, 80, 84, 88, 92

G major, D Major and A major scales at 50 bpm

I've started to blog in my practice breaks - I think this will work well as things will be fresh in my mind.