Saturday (2nd Edition)

After my loooong sleep I went to the piano in my p-jays and hoodie this morning with a mug of tea.

I spent 30 minutes on the Study in F. I started off by working through the tricky part (bars 9-12) over and over. I started off without the metronome and then started to play the section in tempo working gradually up to 40 bpm. Once I had done this I tried the whole piece through a few times at crotchet=40. I'm now almost ready to start working the piece up to speed.

This piece has been a challenge but I also feel it has really helped me to improve. I have had to really read the music rather than memorise the piece through extensive repetition. It is quite an expressive piece when the dynamics are observed. I also feel it is helping me to develop my touch and the balance between the two hands.

After my breakfast/coffee/reading the Guardian routine I sat down and ran through the whole piece at crotchet=40 for another 15 minutes.

This afternoon:

10 minutes - Top Cat at 60bpm trying to look at the music and not my hands.

10 minutes Bach at 80bpm as above

I finished up with a quick run through the Study in F... it was better this morning!

Confession Time!

I can't believe I'm going to admit this but I grabbed a Christmas CD on my way to the car this morning - Diana Krall's Christmas Songs. I bought this last year and its actually a great CD. A fantastic band playing some really great arrangements of Christmas tunes. It is a very controlled sounding band throughout and really swings. Some of the arrangements remind me of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band, others remind me of Ellington - terrific stuff! I do miss regularly playing in a big band for many many reasons... maybe I'll find myself back in that situation at some stage. I hope so - its a wonderful thing.

Today I spent 30 minutes of drum practice time just improvising with no set structure or tempo. Some interesting stuff came out and made me wish I had a set at home so I could just sit down and do this more often. I played a couple of things that made me think of Dave DiCenso's Modern Drummer Festival performance... (except I didn't sound anywhere near as good as Dave) I really need to check out that DVD/Dave's MD interview/my notes from my lesson with DiCenso again!

This evening I hit the piano:

20 minutes playing the second half of Study in F without a metronome. This was much more successful than my attempt the other day.

I then spent another 40 minutes on the Study in F, eventually trying the whole thing through at crotchet=40. I need to spend a little more time working on bars 9-12 before I can realistically start working the piece up to speed.

I also had a couple of quick runs through Top Cat and the Bach piece to keep them fresh in my mind.

I've been leafing through some more of John Novello's book The Contemporary Keyboardist today. It has a LOT of good information and ideas in it (probably too much for a bone head like me.)

Tonight is my first Friday night in for a while so I'm off to cook Kung Pao Chicken, drink beer, watch a movie and then probably have some cheeky red wine and mexican cheese :)

Tomorrow I go to my Dad's in Wylam. It'll be good to hang out with Adie, Dipsy and the folks again - its been a while since the gang was all back together!

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!

Work/Life Balance

I'm really glad that I have limited my teaching hours since the Summer. Having gone through some tough times and been ill for a while I decided to ease myself back into the new term by having Wednesdays off. I enjoyed this so much that I've stuck with it even when my new students all started. It means I work four busy days instead of five so I'm only a few hours down each week.

This is all part of an attempt to simplify my life and enjoy things more... it works most of the time. Although a reduction in work has some financial implications I have actually found that my life is substantially better with more time and less money (although funnily enough several things have worked in my favour financially in the last couple of months so maybe its a win/win situation after all)

Wednesday is usually a day for catching up with emails/paperwork/phone calls/planning etc so I try and get all that stuff out of the way early in order to enjoy my day off and PRACTISE!

Today:

1 Hour 45

15 minutes Study in F - concentrating on the first four bars, trying to get a nice balance between the hands, work out fingerings and 'program' the notes into my hands through repetition.

15 minutes Study in F - bars 5-8 slowly, then in tempo at crotchet=40. By the end of the 15 minutes I was playing through bars 1-8 at crotchet=40

15 minutes Study in F - Bars 1-8 at 40 bpm

Another 15 minutes Study in F

15 minutes - Top Cat at 60bpm

15 minutes Bach from 84-104 bpm

15 minutes playing through some of the stuff in the next chapter of the Jazz Piano Book

Merrily We Troll Along

Today was a long hard day at work but I've managed some piano practice this evening:

15 minutes: Wrestling my way through the first eight bars of Study in F at crotchet=40. I've been doing some work on this with the hands separately in order to work out some fingerings. I also ran through the right hand part for the whole piece so that I could get the melody in my head (I guess this is the piano equivalent of flicking to the last page of a paperback to see whodunit.)

15 minutes running through Top Cat at crotchet=60. There are still some errors in this but not always in the same places. The piece is starting to sound better now and I'm trying to pay more attention to details of articulation, dynamics and fingering and as a result spending more time looking at the written music and less time staring at my hands - a good thing!

15 minutes running through the Bach piece at six tempos (80, 84, 88, 92, 96, 100) As with Top Cat I tried to focus on the articulation and not look at my hands so much. This is a little trickier in the Bach piece as there are more stretches involved in both hands.

Back in the swing of things...

I managed a proper day of practice today:

15 minutes: Running through Top Cat... warts and all!

30 minutes: Making a start on my third Grade 3 piece - Carl Albert Loeschhorn's Study in F.
I worked through the first six bars at crotchet=40

15 minutes: Running through the Bach piece at five tempos (76, 80, 84, 88, 92)

15 minutes more on the Study in F

15 minutes: Comping practice using the three note voicings to play Satin Doll and Tune Up

It has been a slightly odd and emotional week in some ways. I'm eventually starting to learn that although I have no control over the actions/words/thoughts of other people I can learn to control my responses to them. I'm trying to learn to 'let go' of things that people do and say and not get caught up in non-productive mind games. Easier said than done but certainly the key to a happier existence (Musically and otherwise.)

Pretentious nonsense? Quite possibly but its my blog and I'll cry if I want to!

Day of rest.

I finished my run of shows last night. After tearing down and packing my drums in the car I stopped for a drink and a chat before heading home for red wine and cheese :)

I slept VERY late today and had to go into town for a couple of things but managed to get about 45 minutes of piano practice in this afternoon. I am working through Top Cat at 60 bpm and almost getting through the piece without stopping. Hopefully my practice will be a bit more back to normal this week now that I'm done with the show.

I have yet another day off tomorrow so hopefully I'll some serious work done then.