Day 123: Coming Back Soon

As promised, the clock is still ticking even though I have not been practicing for the past three weeks or so.  I am still in a funk from being unemployed for so long and so other factors, but I think I am at a point now where I can force myself to get back into practicing every day.  I absolutely have not touched the keyboard during this time.  I tried playing a couple of days ago and noticed a bit of degradation in some of my re-learned pieces.  This is something I will address after finishing Maple Leaf Rag and Clair de lune. So, stay tuned because I am getting back into the saddle in the next couple of days.  I think this will help me get out of the funk I am in (coupled with some other upward trending events in my life).  Thank you for sticking with me!

Day 106: In A Funk

Perhaps not being able to practice the better part of the week has pushed me over the edge, but I'm officially now in a full on funk.  I have been unemployed for many months and am going through one of my short phases of hopelessness.  Stick with me.  I'll come out of it soon.  I am not going to stop the clock on my project.  It will continue to roll.  I'm just working on motivating myself to do many things at the moment besides this project.

Day 99: Finger Injury!

I wasn't being careful yesterday while slicing up a cucumber on a mandolin and sliced off the very tip of my middle finger.  Not an injury that warrants going to the ER or anything like that, but I sure am missing a hunk out of the tip of my right middle finger.  It is uncomfortable and awkward to try to practice right now, so I am going to practice in smaller chunks throughout the day.  If it feels like it isn't getting better, I may have to take a break from practicing until it heals.  This makes me very sad and frustrated because I am working on my most favorite piece right now (Clair de lune, if you just tuned in).  Please say a prayer for quick healing.  I'm chomping at the bit to get into intense practice on Clair de lune.

Day 97: Off The Wagon, But Back On Again!

Yesterday just didn't allow me to get practice in after I woke up late. That's OK, because I'm back on the wagon again today and devoting a full hour to practice, albeit broken up in two thirty minute segments since I had to tend to something else after about 30 minutes this morning.  The first 26 measures of Clair de lune are together fairly well.  I will spend a little more time on those measures this afternoon before moving on to the next set of measures tomorrow.


I did focus on those elusive final measures of Maple Leaf Rag this morning and can say with confidence that Maple Leaf Rag is going to be complete this week, once I can play those measures at tempo!  I have a road trip to make this week and some job hunting related stuff to get out of the way, so I may not get to make a completion video for that until next week.

Day 95: Habit Forming

I have managed to get up early for the past couple of days and, even though I don't want to stick to it, I pushed through each hour of practice yesterday and today.  I try to warm up with some Czerny or Hanon first and will break up my practicing of Clair de lune by going back to Maple Leaf Rag and some of the other pieces I have learned so far.

I move on to measures 15 through 26 this morning.  Tomorrow and Sunday, I will focus on measures 1-26 before moving on to measures 27-50 next week.  I will also intersperse each practice with focus on rough parts of the previous pieces I have picked back up as well as finishing off Maple Leaf Rag. A completion video will follow when I'm ready there (the piece is 90% ready as-is).  Since moving on to measures 15-26 of Clair de lune, I have some additional notation to bring to your attention!

First of all, see the "tempo rubato?"  This means that you may take liberty in how quickly or slowly you play the notes in these measures, but they must still each finish in nine beats.  It is Debussy's way of telling the pianist to interpret this how you wish, within the bounds of the time signature.  An eighth note does not necessarily have to be held for one count, but if you hold one longer, the rest have to be more hurried.  Also, my music is not marked like my original score I owned, but the initial notes of each measure here in the bass clef are sustained throughout each measure using the middle pedal on the piano.  And you thought that pedal was just there to separate the damping and sustaining pedal, didn't you?

I also did not mention in my overview of the first few measures of this piece an important piece of musical notation: the tie. You will notice several sideways parenthesis-looking marks between some notes.  This means the note is supposed to be held, not re-played.  For instance, if two eighth notes are tied, then the notes played are held for two beats, even though you see the same notes written twice.  There are several spots in the first few measures where Debussy wrote only one note of a chord tied, so it carries over to the next chord.  This promotes the flowing sound of the piece very well.

Also note here that the very lowest note of the chords in the bass clef and the very highest note of the chords in the treble clef are marked with a horizontal bar.  This is meant to remind the pianist to emphasize these notes most of all out of all the others in the chord.  Top and bottom notes carry the melody.

Lastly, you will note the French phrase: Peu a peu cresc. et anime.  This literally means to get louder little by little, while playing animatedly. There is also a notation that you cannot see in the picture above towards the end of measures 15-26 of dim. molto.  Dim. molto means get a lot softer.  Dim. is often a notation used for softer and molto means a lot.

Whew!  Lots of education out of such a few short measures, huh?

Replacing Bad Habits With Good Ones

I was reminded recently of something I heard a while ago about habits.  If you're going to break a bad habit, you need to replace it with a good habit or you are doomed to fall back into the bad habit you're trying to break.  Also, you should devote a certain amount of time at the same time every day to your new habit for at least 21 days to make it stick.  I have been trying to replace bad habits with a good one: Daily practice on the piano.  I have found, though, that since I haven't devoted the same amount of time during the same time of day each day to my endeavor, that I have had trouble here and there sticking to my daily routine.  In fact, if you have been following me, you have seen me have departures from my practicing several times already.  What I really need to do is sit down and tell myself that I WILL practice at a specific time EACH day and I WILL practice for AT LEAST one hour.  So, here it goes: The only time of the day that I can have complete isolation for practicing is before 8:00 every morning.  My aim is to practice between 6:30 and 7:30 every day.  If I can accomplish this for at least 21 days, I should have a new and very good habit formed.  I will be sure to tweet about my daily progress and will occasionally make remarks on the blog about how I'm doing with this new, stricter way of approaching practice.  The rough edges will definitely fall off the pieces I have already completed (see Youtube) if I can stick this out!  Clair de lune will undoubtedly be complete in 30 days or less as well if I can just make myself stick to this schedule!

Day 93: First Day on Clair de Lune

Today was the first day back on Clair de lune. Since the first couple of pages are mostly still there, I expect these parts to go pretty quickly.  The first page is comprised of 14 measures and practice went well this morning.  The piece is set in 9/8 time which means there are nine beats in a measure and an eighth note gets one count.

Note the key signature: D-flat major.  Also note that this is very soft.  Imagine the music is painting a picture of moonlight (literally what the title means).  Adante tres expressif means to play this adante very expressively. For a quick refresher, adante means rather slow, but with flowing movement.  Con sordina means to mute.  It is interesting to see this here, partially because this notation is not in French.  It may be something this particular publisher took the liberty of adding, because I don't remember a call for muting anywhere in this piece.  Muting means, in the case of the piano, to depress the damping pedal (the one on the left) to produce a softer sound.  Maybe I'll give it a try this time around...