Wednesday 22nd - Part 2

Went for a walk along the beach, listened to my new Brecker cd... then:

20 Minutes - Wonderful Tonight at 40 bpm. I played the whole piece through at 40 bpm with the hands separately and then worked in four bar blocks with both hands together. I can just about get through the first 12 bars with both hands together at 40bpm... there are some errors though!

20 Minutes - Bob Mintzer Etude 1. I ran the whole piece through (with the repeat) at five tempos from 40 up to 48 bpm. I'm still making errors but it is getting better.

20 Minutes:

Reinecke 5 tempos 46 - 54
Biehl 5 tempos 76 - 92 (I might just start running this five times at 92 in future)
G, A and D major scales

15 Minutes composition exercises from Ted Pease book.

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.

(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!