Category: practice

20240628 Practice Diary

I wasn’t near a piano for around half of this week, so here we are. Not a lot of practice done. But to be fair, I’m at the beginning of my new cycle so it’s not totally tragic.

This week, I started Rameau’s Les Cyclopes. Of the Grade 8 pieces I have chosen, it is my favourite, and the one I really want to learn. It’s got some challenges but I think once I’ve mastered the ones on the first page, the others should fall easily enough. I’m going to give it a couple of weeks on its own, and then, from around mid July onwards, I will add one of the more recent compositions.

Probably the Rachmaninoff, as it’s in D flat, and I have been working on the very nice scales to go with it. I would like if some sort of shape was on the two of them by Christmas and by around September I will start either the Liszt or the Debussy.

In addition to the travelling, it’s been swelteringly hot in Brussels. It hasn’t been totally pleasant to play in. I’m still waiting for the Grade 6 certificate to come through, to mark this year’s second major achievement (it’s less than a year since I put Grade 5 theory away).

In other news I got denied posting access to the ABRSM Exams group on FaceBook. This might have been the biggest achievement of the week. Apparently I didn’t agree to the rules. I don’t remember even getting a request to do so, so *shrugs*. It isn’t life essential at the moment.

Practice Diary 20240622

I’m on a 29 day streak!!!!!! Tomorrow I get another badge in Tonic provided I play in the morning. This is handy because I don’t have a piano for Monday and Tuesday and most of Wednesday.

So, having finished Grade 6, and pondering on what I would do, in the end I did some work on a piece of music by Fazil Say and then switched to Rameau’s Les Cyclopes. The latter is on my Grade 8 schedule and although I hadn’t planned to start that until I came back from Ireland next week, the truth is I could not stay away from that – I have really been looking forward to that piece and I wanted to get started.

So I’ve broken it into pieces and I am working on two pieces of it to start with (maybe 30 minutes in). I struggled with the Fazil Say piece in contrast, made less progress.

When I decided to drop the JS Bach piece in February, I chose the CPE Bach piece because I needed something that would feed into the Rameau. This seems to be very sensible as a lot of what I need to be able to do with the Rameau came out of the Solfeggio too. The primary skill I am missing are efficient baroque trills. I have a trills course via ToneBase and YouTube is probably swimming in them.

Outside that, I’ve been maintaining the Grade 6 pieces – all four of them are handy party pieces.

On the technique front, with the lovely Mr Rachmaninoff on my to be learned list in the next year, the D flat scales are in.

Around practice organisation, I’ve managed to maintain the streak of daily practice by guaranteeing 5 minutes every morning before I go to work. For the last month or so, that was CPE Bach time but now, I think it’ s scales time. I’ve already noted that I have some fun with the D Flat stuff and then I also need to look at some of the D minors. I’m inclined to separate that away from the Grade 8 planning aside from supporting the keys of the 4 pieces I am learning. The breakdown for the next few weeks will be Random stuff, Rameau, and some technique work.

What I will do on my holidays…

I bought some sheets by Fazil Say lately. I’m taking a couple of weeks’ break from my ABRSM schedule as I have some travelling to do during that time as well.

So I have decided for now to start learning this

Brahms in Izmir by Fazil Say

It is really pretty and although it’s not getting hours of my time, it is very lovely to play even in learning mode.

Grade 6 exam update

One of the nice things about living in the future is how much better some aspects of it are compared to pass. I submitted my performance exam on Saturday and the results arrived back at 4am this morning. I know for the future that sleeping is better than waiting.

Anyway. The result was a DISTINCTION.

Most of the exams I did as a kid were the practical exams by the RIAM, and the last one I did was 35 years ago. So I had no real idea how rigid the ABRSM would be. They were reasonable I think; the feedback was sensible, it highlighted the issues I knew about (but eventually cut my losses about. The lowest score was 26 marks for Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s one hit wonder. The highest was full marks for Elissa Milne’s introductory jazz piece.

I see a lot of discussion on how the performance grades are easier or dumbing down. I don’t really agree. You have the extra piece. And you have the utter trauma of the recording. It must sound seductive, this idea that you can try as many times as you like to get it right. But it means getting four pieces right every single time. I’ve played in public, and I did the practical exams up to grade 5 when I was a teenager. The experience of creating a valid, acceptable, compliant with the rules film was really tough. I live in an apartment with triple glazed windows. Nevertheless I had films wrecked courtesy of:

  • a helicopter
  • a bunch of extremely irate Belgium drivers stuck in a traffic jam
  • a processing of 10 police cars with their sirens blasting
  • a significant number of motor cyclists who appeared not to have any sort of silencers attached to their wheelmobile.
  • a stag party singing Sweet Caroline at the tops of their voices.

It’s really frustrating when you have got through the 4 pieces reasonably cleanly and the film is destroyed owing to circumstances outside your control.

And then there were my own mess ups, centred mainly on CPE Bach but on occasion, Elissa Milne departed my fingers in a less than elegant manner. As it was the last piece I scheduled, those occasions were both times when I had played each of the other three pieces faultlessly.

In short, this was deeply, deeply stressful in a way that no other music exam ever has been.

And I’m going back for more. I will skip Grade 7 and move straight to Grade 8 as I need it for the ARSM which is to follow that. My target date for this is end of next year and I will work to the 2025 syllabus rather than the 2023 as the repertoire list is okay for that. Before I start preparing those pieces though, there will be a short holiday from exam syllabus music.

Practice diary 20240615

I practised every day this week and I think that’s the longest streak so far.

Apart from practising music, I also practised recording for the ABRSM digital exam submission. I don’t really want to talk about that until I get a result, so more lately. For now though, I am on a break from the grade 6 pieces and this brings the question, what now? Do I take a break? Do I get stuck into grade 8 immediately? What about all the sheet music I bought recently? More scales? I don’t know.

While I was playing Solfeggietto today, I was reflecting on how fast that piece went (sort of) – I started it in February. In a way, the grade 6 pieces feel awfully easy now; they were anything but when I had finished the grade 5 theory exam and yet, now I play all of them, mostly at ease, provided there isn’t a camera there. Someone somewhere on social media talked about how the conviction that practising something allowed you to go from not being able to do something to becoming very good at it.

If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever get as far as playing some of this music I love, this Mendelssohn, that CPE Bach, I would probably have said no. I’m 51 years old. I didn’t have the time.

But I made that time, and here we are.

Practice diary 20240610

I was without internet for the weekend and also my desk space is quite disrupted so I’m a bit late with the practice diary.

I’m currently on a 16 day streak. I’m hoping I can get to 30 days without breaking this time and who knows how that is going to go. In addition, I’m in that space where I’m trying to record the exam and infuriatingly this is suggesting I’ve never seen these 4 pieces of music in my life. It hasn’t been helped by stress relating to the internet outage (happened Friday, fixed today). Now, it’s like I can play any of these pieces provided there isn’t a camera going. If there is, Carl Philipp Emmanuel goes on strike. I’m making mistakes I’ve not made with that piece ever, before Saturday. It’s really infuriating.

All the more so because, well I can play all four pieces, and I’d like to submit them and then move on to the next piece of work which is the grade 8 selection. I’ve slowly started working on some Rachmaninoff but really slowly because obviously the priority is to get Grade 6 paid for and submitted.

Because all my time is going into the final run at this, I haven’t been reading music so I assume my sight reading as deteriorated a little again. It’s disappointing.

Let’s hope I get the exam submitted this week.

As a general note though, I’m really delighted to have made this. It isn’t that I didn’t believe I could do it technically; it’s that I wasn’t sure I could stick at it; my personal life has tended to get a bit disrupted and one of the reasons I am a few month’s late submitting this (four in total) is because I spent a lot of January and May travelling, and I lost December as well. Not only that, until February I was working on a JS Bach piece. Having dropped that fiasco and picked up the less calcitrant CPE Bach, I’m really pleased I even feel like recording this exam. Passing it would be * chef’s kiss *

Practice Diary 20240601

I play the piano, that’s what I do. And I am sorry for my neighbours at the moment, unless they like the same four pieces, then they are on clover.

It’s been a good week for the practice in terms of actually doing any. I now for the first time in a while have an 8 day streak again. Hopefully i will make that nine tomorrow.

Most of the work has focused on the grade 6 pieces. They vary between being tantalisingly close to being ready and completely screwed up. I don’t understand that last part. I’ve been playing 2 of them more or less correctly for the last 3 months. The other two, well one I took a four month break from but it’s generally okay these days. The problem is Solfeggio which varies between being 100% perfect and otherwise being a hot mess. Currently, I am in performance practice which is where mostly, I say my piece introducing the pieces (sometimes) and then play them all. I want to be used to playing them as a performance. But now and again I have to break off and work on a couple of sections of Solfeggio. That’s frustrating because while I feel like I’m not improving, objectively I am. But I cannot play all four pieces cleanly in a single shot.

This is somewhat annoying because I was supposed to be 2 months into Project Grade 8 by now, and a ickle bit of the way into ARSM (Brahms, you see….). There isn’t one place where things go awry all the time, there are several that occasionally cause problems. Mostly, I think, it is glitches not in my fingers, but in my brain. As I’m playing from memory, because I can remember faster than I can read (although that really isn’t a big deal for anything other than CPE Bach), it leads to some wry entertaining moments for me. I think part of this is hormonal; I have not had a period for nearly 3 months now.

Aside from that, there were dips into the Rachmaninoff but in truth I need to do some prematch analysis on all four of the Grade 8 pieces and also find a teacher for that and the diplomas. I am not sure I have the chops to push through those on my own.

I came across some discussion about pass rates for the FTCL during the week. I’m focused on ABRSM at the moment but in general their diploma repertoire lists overlap; one comparison I saw suggested that the FTCL did not require an essay of types. I’m not sure yet how I feel about that but basically since I would probably choose mostly the same rep for both, it won’t matter until I am close to considering doing the registration. It being the last of the three diplomas, it’s not going to matter for the guts of ten years, if even then.

But there was one comment which I cannot find substantiation for that typically, the FRSM had a pass rate of around 50% and the FTCL had a pass rate of around 30%. Whether I do one or the other, I intend to do Chopin Sonata no 3 (it’s currently on both lists) plus something else (check the goals list for options) and maybe, I won’t be too focused on the diploma by then but still go for the piece.

In other news, it transfers that for ARSM, the Fauré Barcarolle I mentioned in the context of Lucas Debargue’s latest album and recently acquired sheet music is on the repertoire list.

The way I work it is as follows, crazy as I am, is that once I am working Exam X pieces, I will start finalising the choice for X plus 1. For ARSM, if I get Grade 6 submitted any time soon (CPE Bach willing), I will start seriously working on the next four pieces (and not just the Rachmaninoff), and also start planning the repertoire for the ARSM. Now it seems, there are two pieces from my TBL list lined up for that. After that, I’ll probably tap Rach’s preludes and then I have some serious work to do to find some Bach or Scarlatti that appeals.

Practice Diary 20240526

I practised three days this week. This is a big improvement on most of the month of May which has featured a few weeks of nothing at all.

So, where are I? I’ve missed my April deadline for submitting the exam, and I won’t make the end of May either. But I am close and that makes me happy.

This week I worked primarily on the exam pieces, and one of the Grade 8 pieces.

Grade 6:

CPE Bach: = this is about 97% there. I make precision errors from time to time and these are really linked to how tired I am.

Mendelssohn: 99% there. Mostly clean playing.

Rebikov: this one is odd. Mostly, it is 100% there but when it goes wrong, it goes spectacularly wrong.

Milne: likewise. Mostly it is 100% but when it goes wrong, it goes spectacularly wrong.

I now practice all four as a performance and I have started practising the little speech I want to give introducing the pieces at the start of the exam recording too. That’s a bit nerve wracking to be honest.

I had intended to use the Steinway I occasionally hire for the exam recording but it is mostly not available until August, so I will more than likely wind up recording it at home on my digital Kawai. That’s a little disappointing.

In addition to that, the Grade 8 piece I looked at today (only today, I’m afraid) is some Rachmaninoff. I will have to sit down with a recording of it and do a few read throughs. It’s in the key of D flat, and that’s just a little challenging.

I realised today that since I had finished memorising the Grade 6 pieces (I will play from memory), I wasn’t reading much music and this is detrimental to the progress I made reading earlier in the year. So I want to resolve that and while I have to read the Rach, I need to do some easier to swallow stuff. I need to pick up the 40 piece challenge I started at the beginning of the year. In fact, I cannot believe it is almost the end of May. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I’ve missed practice. It’s been hard as I’ve been away from home quite a lot, and I’ve otherwise been tired. I’ve also picked up reading and drawing again. This makes a difference in terms of available time – don’t call this an excuse – the reality is many people have struggles on available time. Nevertheless, I spent 40 minutes at the piano today and more than 2 hours yesterday. I’d like to go back to doing at least an hour a day. We’ll see how this week shapes up.

20240520 Practice Diary

Let’s be honest. The practice has fallen off a wagon lately. Admittedly for 2 weeks I have been travelling. So I think there was only one practice session in there. It was alright given I haven’t been playing much. I also played at the Airport in Amsterdam.

I would have played at the airport in Brussels but the piano in Area A is GONE. NOOOOOOOOO. I hope the one in B is still there. I’ll check the next time I am flying outside Schengen but as I tend to exit Schengen in Amsterdam lately….Oh well.

Someone left a book of movie themes at the piano in Amsterdam though so if you are looking for Chariots of Fire, there you go.

Now that it occurs to me, I used to have a copy of Chariots of Fire when I was a teenager. It didn’t turn up the last time I went through the piano music at home.