Tired!

Its been a tough week. I haven't been sleeping too well and I'm exhausted and need an early night!

I managed a paltry 30 minutes of drum practice today. I was working through the Jack DeJohnette/Gadd/Elvin licks from the Drum Legacy package working from crotchet=126 up to 152. I played each idea over and over (at least 20 repetitions at each tempo) and then I started to mix and match the different ideas, playing with orchestration etc. Eventually I started to improvise more freely, working those licks into my solo to practice getting in and out of the different ideas. I felt pretty positive about this today.

After a long day at work I got to the piano:

15 minutes wrestling with the Study in F. I ran through the first 8 bars a few times and then tried to start into the next section. This proved a little too tricky for me so I played through to the end of the piece a number of times with the hands separately.

15 minutes Top Cat at 60 bpm lots of times. This piece is getting better slowly but surely. There are fewer mistakes now and I'm starting to focus on some of the details of note lengths and articulation.

15 minutes Bach piece at five tempos from 88-104. I intend to elaborate on the 5 tempos method in a later blog but right now I'm tired and there's a glass of red wine with my name on it!