Category: ABRSM

20240317 Practice Diary

The Isle of the Dead is playing in the background. I used to want to learn that; it’s a transcription of a Rachmaninoff piece. I’ve changed my mind.

So, to practice this week. I survived to Platinum for a second week in a row and to be honest, that was doing well because while I practised every day (go me), I only had one long practice. Next week has travel and two after work engagements. I’ll have to do a lot of active listening to offset the lack of practice next week because they will be mostly short sessions. Still and all, I intend to hang in there for my practice streak.

Tuesday was the big session and it must have done well. Since then, for probably hormonal reasons I’ve struggled with finger accuracy and memory issues across the board. It’s infuriating but as I don’t think anyone reads in here, I’ll be frank. I had sleeping issues and headaches and some serious nausea. All of that points to hormones all over the shop and yes, my period showed up yesterday.

Most of the practice time was devoted to CPE Bach. I can now play the piece more or less cleanly but far too slowly. So the effort for this piece is to raise the speed up to around 100bpm initially and then up to 125. After that, I think it may be dangerous. There are moments (time rather than place in the music) where I can tell my fingers where to go but not when. I would like it to be secure. It needs more time.

That being said, every practice sessions now starts with a performance run through of all four to get myself accustomed to playing them in sequence. I was wondering when I would get to the point I could do this.

All in all, would like it if my brain didn’t succumb to my ovaries but still on schedule to deliver the exam video before end of April.

Talking about the journey

One of my bucket list items has been to go to Verbier, and I am thinking of trying to make it happen this year. There are two or three concerts I’d like to go to – Alexandre Kantorow’s solo recital is one because that I would like to see.

By the way:

Alexandre Kantorow and friends celebrate their teacher’s time in France

I start off with Verbier because well, another bucket list item but which felt unattainable was grade 8 piano. And somehow, this is now realistic.

I love pianos. I’ve played piano in one shape or form since I was 8 years old. The world is full of people who are much better than I will ever be at this stage. The world is full of people who started learning at the age of 64. I’m better now than they are ever going to be.

But I wouldn’t be here without some hard thinking about a year ago and it boiled down to this: the work schedule I had would not allow me to do another university degree. It simply wasn’t possible and to be frank, I didn’t see the point any more if the outcome was to be more intense and constant exhaustion. In 2022 and 2023, I was constantly stressed and exhausted. So things were going to have to change.

So I started wondering about going back to music lessons and to see what I might yet be able to manage on that at this stage of my life. I looked on line and found Canada’s RCM and its extensive list of pieces. I have to confess, I didn’t realise it was in Canada until after I had selected some pieces for Grade 6 that looked doable. As far as I could remember, I had done up to Grade 5 in Ireland.

When I figured out it was Canadian and not UK system, I went looking again for a British one as I assumed there would be exam centres here in Belgium. This is how I discovered ABRSM had these performance grades that you recorded and uploaded. Also, they allowed me to prepare 4 pieces and avoid some of the other skills that I didn’t really want to try and structure according to their syllabus. I play by ear, and I play a rhythm instrument as well. I wasn’t totally worried about that.

But I had to do Grade 5 theory or prove I had done it in Ireland before. I figured it was easier to just do the Grade 5 theory rather than search remotely for proof I had done RIAM. In any case, I don’t think I did Grade 5 with the RIAM in Dublin, but with the Leinster School of Music which isn’t on the list of accepted alternatives for ABRSM. Doing the exam was a good idea.

It was really interesting. I learned a lot. I learned that I could still remember most of the theory covered up to Grade 4. What I didn’t know was really interesting and helpful. It covers a lot of how I think about music. From my point of view, obligation or no, being aware of Grade 5 theory is a good thing and I haven’t excluded doing further theory grades. For now I’ve been working on the performance grades.

I play the piano almost every day – if I miss a day it’s usually because I am travelling. To that end, I can now play pieces by Mendelssohn (dream come true), CPE Bach (love the piece), and two other composers that I didn’t really know before I fished them out of the syllabus. It’s really great.

The benefits though have not really just been musically inclined. I think the simple decision in April last year to start working towards something that a person I used to be has pushed me back into being some of the person I used to be, someone a bit more comfortable in myself. It took a long time and I’m really only starting to see the benefits now. My self esteem was still rock bottom in January; but these days, I think about those moments when I fly through CPE Bach – and I learned that incredibly quickly. I learned it in 6 weeks to be honest and now it is in polishing mode. I can’t quite believe it to be honest.

In the journey, it helped me to move around changing other parts of my life so that I could manage stress more effectively. That I could realistically think about learning some of the lots of sheet music I own. I go to more concerts. I’m thinking about going to a master class in the local conservatory. My resting heart rate is down. I’m sleeping better and some other health indicators around stress are also better.

I still have a lot of things to fix both musically and personally. But genuinely, making room for the exam one of my colleagues thought was crazy has changed my life.

20240310 Practice notes

If I am absolutely honest, what I am trying to do here is avoid house work. I could and will go back to the piano shortly but first a summary write up now that I am more or less back on stream with daily practice.

Anyway, in terms of playing objectives, there are four primary pieces which I would like to submit for my Grade 6 exam with ABRSM within the next couple of months. I write about them frequently, but the important part is that although they are all short of where I want them to be, they are all adequate to actually doing performance practice as well. What do I mean by this?

The exam is a single take video. That means I have to be able to play the four pieces in a row, preferably faultlessly, but most importantly, coherently. I couldn’t do this last night; I could do it today. I need to update the project plan for this actually. I’m happy with that.

All four pieces need work. For one, they are erratic. That means, there is no one piece I can reliably play through without faults. But the truth is, now, I have done a couple of start to finish recital practices, and this needs to be done a couple of times each practice session.

Solfeggio, CPE Bach

I’ve come to really like this piece and it came on stream much faster than I expected. I delayed the exam window to April after missing 2 months of practice (and untold problems with a different piece) late last year. I am close to 99% memorised here and the primary challenge will be to play it at an adequate speed.

Gondollied, 19b/6 Felix Mendelssohn

I love this piece but I am not happy with it in places and I am not sure how I want to adjust it. I will relisten to some recordings of it and see how that goes. I think there is a tutorial as well. I think the pedalling is overly heavy which is one problem.

Autumn Leaves, No 3 Con Afflizione, Rebikov

This was an unexpected pleasure to learn; and it’s brought a lot to my playing I think. It is about 90% reliable. I have two months to get it performance ready. We will see how it looks at the end.

Indigo Moon, Elissa Milne

This too was unexpectedly pleasant to learn. I’m happy with it although the memorisation is not 100% reliable.

In terms of upcoming work, there will be a lot of drilling for the CPE Bach with the metronome. I tend not to play that late as I don’t know if my neighbours can hear the metronome. There are 3 bars very close to the end where I often trip over my fingers but recent practice has seen that reduce significantly. I intend to keep this in my repertoire. For the Mendelssohn, I’m not really sure what to do about it at the moment. I listen to Igor Levitt’s version from time to time and it seems to be a different piece in his hands. I listened a lot to Jan Lisecki’s recording too.

I think I don’t play it as musically as I would like. Of the four pieces, in certain respects, it is now the most challenging (even above CPE Bach) from a fingering point of view. I’ve always wanted to learn it but while I can play it, I don’t think I have learned it. My fingers don’t sing. There may need to be some deconstruction.

For the two more modern pieces, they are done or undone by how I am feeling emotionally at the time I am playing.

I will do the recording without sheet music in around 6 weeks’ time if I can.

In addition to these pieces, I have also started one of Brahms’ waltzes; the sheet music I have is in A Major, it’s an arrangement by Brahms himself so the fact that it is the “easy” version isn’t bothering me. Anyway, the version Henle has in its Brahms piano album is that one. I can see elements of it will also help with 118/2 which is on my piano stand most of the time for when I feel like having a go at pieces of it. It’s lined up for my ARSM so it’s not super urgent. For reference, by the way, I picked up on this via Kantorow’s encore on Friday. I bet he plays it in A flat though.

The practising since about Wed is mixed. I had a couple of terrible sessions (this morning’s one was a horror) and I have also had some highly focused and productive sessions. I’m told that the improvements, especially in the Bach, are highly noticeable if you listen to me through Tonic. But the practice planning is not perfect for me – it’s still more emotionally driven based on what I feel like doing.

20240307 Practice Notes

I targeted April (revised after missing most of November and December) for the exam recording and while the switcheroo from JS to CPE Bach made me consider that a delay was likely, I’m not certain that it will be. I’m now starting to play Mendelssohn reasonably cleanly, I regularly get Rebikov cleanly (although when it goes badly wrong, it’s a spectacular disaster near the end) and I can play the Milne cleanly albeit not yet from memory. People who hear that seem to like it a lot. And then there’s the CPE Bach bit. I can’t play it cleanly yet, but it’s 95% in memory, is playing okayish at a low speed. There are shaky bits near the end – about 4 bars – and after that, it’s going to be a long journey with a metronome to bring it up to performance tempo. I do a lot of work with a metronome for this. I never got his father’s piece even close to this level. I am not in the mood to analyse why.

The week and a half, nearly two weeks, was odd. I was travelling so lost 3 days completely. One day got 20 minutes in Amsterdam Airport where I was too self conscious to play the classical pieces so it hardly counts for exam purposes.

For some time, and more sustained than usual, I’ve been playing when I come in from work, minimum 20 minutes, often longer. 90 minutes if I can. The Bachs have often accounted for a lot of that time. There’s something really nice about coming in, sitting at the piano and forgetting about computers, policy and applications. Today, I put about 45 minutes to CPE Bach, learning the last gaps so that I start the gluing process. It took fifteen minutes to achieve my objectives for the other three pieces together. They are, admittedly, short pieces but usually, they take about 30 minutes. So here I was, an hour in to practice with time. I haven’t had time on a practice for ages.

So I read through Reverie by Debussy which is scheduled for Grade 8. I’ll be chunking it, of course I will. But the RH is accessible. I’ve now read through two of the pieces and, in line with plans, I will probably start learning one of them even before I’ve done the grade 6 test.

I did something else but it’s going to get an entry on its own shortly. All told, the last few days have been good.

20240224 Practice Diary

Last week was busy and yet, I some how managed daily practice until yesterday. They were just short practices which is a pity.

Last week I got myself into the Platinum League on tonicapp, which was great while it lasted. I immediately ran into a week that was several late evenings at work, one choral concert, one day hiking in the countryside. Most days I barely made 20 minutes at the piano. The plus point is that I made it at all.

In short, I only did the four exam pieces I was working on and I looked at two Clara Schumann pieces for reasons outlined below as well. For the exam pieces, the CPE Bach is coming on, faster than I expected but I doubt it will be ready by end of April. The other three pieces are close to done. I still make mistakes with the Mendelssohn, and with the Rebikov. But both of them are memorised and the Milne piece is almost memorised although I still haven’t decided if I would use it with or without the sheet music when playing the exam.

I really like the CPE Bach even as my fingers trip over themselves. I am way short on speed of it, but half of it is more or less memorised to support dealing with the speed that it should be played at. If I get a reasonable run at it today, maybe during laundry, then I might have it all memorised by the end of the week when I will blow my practice schedule again by not having enough access to a piano for a few days.

On Sightreading

One of the gaps I identified for myself at the start of this more recent piano journey was sightreading. I suppose in part, it was because I wanted to read music as fluently as I read English. This might be unrealistic; I’ve been reading English since I was three years old and that is now a frighteningly long time ago. But arguably, my sightreading is weaker than I would like. I imagine a world where I can read anything I want up to and including Chopin’s third Sonata which is the apex of my ambitions, apart from buying a Steinway B, that is. But I struggle with sightreading, especially lefthand because I learned treble clef a couple of years before I learned bass clef. I struggle with ledger line notes too.

So I did what any sane person does when they want to get better at something. I searched sightreading on YouTube and disappeared down an increasingly disappointing black hole. There is a huge amount of advice out there from people telling you how you can sight read better. What most of them have in common is that they are targeted at people who know absolutely no music theory at all, have no basis in reading at all. I suppose it’s the easiest place to start with pedagogical stuff on sight reading. I’m not the target audience. I realised I was not the target audience because once you got past the names of the lines on treble and bass, there was an emphasis on understanding the length of notes. I know this. Understanding intervals: I know this. Understanding key signatures. Come on!. I know most of these too. I know that five sharps tells me it’s B major or G sharp minor. I’ll possibly draw them in the wrong order but interpreting them, I get there.

So what I’ve come to understand is that I’m a better sight reader than I gave myself credit for. Still not good enough but the hints around knowing how to read are unrealistic for someone who actually knows how to read; the point is to read more and more and get faster. When you see discussions about this on Reddit, the advice is that it is a numbers game. I read a piece by Elissa Milne a few weeks ago where she noted that in general, the higher some of her students went in the graded music education system, the worse their sight reading got for the simple reason that they weren’t doing enough of it. I’m not a fan of the Numbers Game but in general, she came up with a plan to increase engagement of students and to get them to sight read a whole lot more. That’s the 40 piece project that I have going in the background (see here). I’m not really on top of it because I don’t always have the music to hand and practice time has been thin on the ground these last couple of weeks. But I have done some things outside the scope of the exam pieces I’m working on. There has been some Beethoven, some Shostakovich, some Haydn, all composers that I don’t regularly touch. I have worked on a couple of pieces by Beethoven – the infamous Bagatelle that everyone knows, and I intend to learn the second movement of Shostakovich’s piano concerto no 2 and one of his waltzes. I have sheet music for both. Haydn I tend to bypass.

Of the pieces that are being worked on for repertoire, there is Handel’s Sarabande and Variations, and Prelude in C Major from Bach’s WTC. I’m not a fan of Bach senior but there are some glorious things knocking around. I also have Siloti’s transcriptions of some of Bach’s stuff. So I may adjust the list currently here to take account of other things I want to learn.

I started learning CPE Bach’s Solfeggio during the week to replace the List A Bach that I wanted to abandon. It’s astonished me how much easier it was to sight read than I expected. I’m assuming that part of it is linked to the short pieces I work on now and again and that this has helped a lot. So yes, in short, it’s a numbers game.

20240210 Practice Diary

This week, on Tonic, I was in the Gold list having gotten myself promoted a couple of weeks in a row. Now, playing with the big boys and girls. The ones who clearly don’t have full time jobs. * rueful smile.

I haven’t done today’s practice session yet so who knows this could change after I have done it. It was at best a mixed week. I missed at least one day because I was at a concert (a good reason, you would admit). But I also started a new job and much to my surprised this has resulted in me getting home later rather than earlier. I didn’t have so much time to practice, and also not so much time to listen in to other people practising.

So, in terms of what went well: the Mendelssohn is getting slightly more security; it’s not where I want yet but okay, there are no obvious weaknesses except when I am tired. The Rebikov is now more or less internalised but in some odd hybrid short/long term memory mess. This means some times I can play it under finger without one error; last night I spent a lot of time again trying to render a section of fluent, a section that I know intelleuctually in my mind but my fingers take on crab like features of their own and I watch as a C sharp/A figure turns into something akin to a diminished chord undescribed in no music theory text book; a flow of notes that my wrists do not wish to play even as I know in my mind what notes they are. More work is required. Nevertheless, despite being the last of the pieces I started learning, it is the second closest to ready.

For Elissa Milne’s Indigo Moon, I have struggled to memorise this. I would like all four pieces to be memorised so there’s work to be done here. I didn’t touch this for several months (and it shows) but although I can’t play it fluently at all, it is in reasonable health for the effort it got. With both Rebikov and Mendelssohn demanding less time over the coming month or two, I expect this to be okay as it was fluent at one point. The shapes are broadly okay for my fingers.

This leads us to the Bachs, Johann Sebastien and his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel. Invention in E major is out (I have no idea but it really wasn’t coming for me at al) and Solfeggio is in. The read through for that went okay, and the chunks of it getting touched in practice is about half the piece. This is a piece that I absolutely have to memorise – I cannot read at Prestissimo velocity – and it is a piece that demands work with a metronome. It is nowhere close to written speed and that will be a while. But it altogether feels more realistic than his father’s easy training piece. It will also feed into the Rameau I have lined up for after.

Outside that, there were two or three other pieces this week. Reddit’s Piano Jam for the month had a small waltz by Shostokovich so I read that through, and I’ve also been working on the infamous C Major prelude that is Fur Elise-sque in its popularity with being hacked to pieces and murdered screaming. I’m influenced by Alexandre Tharaud’s carefully pedalled recording. I am happy with how this is going although strangely enough I struggle to memorise it. But it is very easy to read. And just because I was super angry about the Bach invention last week and needed something more motivational, I have Handel’s Sarabande on the go, also easy to read, but I haven’t tried the couple of variations yet.

At some point I need to write a piece on sightreading and discuss all the can’t lose hints I keep seeing.

Exchanging Bachs

I’m tired of Bach’s two part invention in E major. It’s not coming right for me; it’s lagging far beyond the other three pieces that I am doing for the Grade 6 ABRSM and the more I work on it, the more dispirited I feel.

The other pieces were relatively quick to learn under finger so I wondered if I might do better with a different piece. I didn’t remember wanting to do much of List A for the Grade 6 when I looked so I wasn’t totally enthusiastic. But that was almost one year ago and I’ve happened across more music in the meantime. So at some point since then, I had bought CPE Bach’s Solfeggio and added it to the to be learned list.

Is it a good idea to skip on the two part invention? Do I really want to admit to a piece of music besting me? It’s Bach – it’s supposed to be a challenge.

But there’s the question of keeping focused on the objective and the objective was not actually Bach; that was just a contribution. Something else could contribute – it wasn’t the only piece on the syllabus.

So I went and looked to see what else was on the syllabus and I idly considered some Schubert before I noticed the CPE Bach and thought, wait, don’t have I have that piece now in the the sheet music collection? I’m sure I bought it in Trier….

The effort on the JS Bach is almost certainly not wasted. It feeds through into improvements in other piano skills. The read through of the CPE Bach was joyfully straightforward. My sight reading. It’s not necessarily a difficult piece to read although it’s a bit finicky to play with the hand switching, and also, the fact that it is played at Prestissimo. But it feeds into the Rameau that I want to do next year so there is that.

This decision will probably cost me a month (not superb but still) but I’m also a lot happier to move away from a piece that was making me unhappy. And this variety of syllabus was why I chose the ABRSM rather than the RIAM when I picked back up the piano exams.

20240204 Practice Diaries

It appears I missed last week. I don’t think last week was a good week anyway. I missed a few days but I still got myself into the silver league on Tonic.

This week hasn’t been the worst. I missed two days – the first two days of a new job. There was measurable progress. I’m working four pieces this week, with some snipping time on one other piece. There was nothing from the 40 pieces challenge.

So: Bach, my nemesis 2 part invention in E major. Light of my life, dark of my soul. This week, bar 7 is severely weakened and I am very slowly gaining ascendency. It’s far from perfect but in slow practice it is rarely wrong. At speed, it is always wrong. But that’s okay. I’ve started working on the second part and while the same rhythm pattern is to be found, it is not causing the same trouble so far. I have a way to go. What is likely to be more of an issue is the fingering on black keys. I have a lot of work to do there. I estimate it will take about a month at the current practice rate.

The Mendelssohn is more or less under control and in that zone where it’s being practice not to make mistakes in it. This will also reduce the amount of time going to it so next week I will start back at Elissa Milne’s piece.

Rebikov is heading the same way. There are occasional memory and fingering hick ups and I honestly hope my neighbours like it because they heard it a lot yesterday. I must say I like the piece a lot more than I expected when I started learning it first – it has some unusual fingering shapes but I know it has freed up the lack of flexibility in my fingers a lot. I expected that more from the Bach but it isn’t really happening. Anyway, over the next week or so, I expect the practice focus to move from getting it right to not getting it wrong. I will keep this and the Mendelssohn in regular repertoire afterwards.

For non-exam pieces, the main work is on one of Bach’s preludes – the famous one, basically. I like the way it sounds and it forces me to address how I practice – I practice to memorise, this is clear. Anyway, I’d like to finish that and add it to repertoire as well.

The open question, of course, is what I move to as the time taken by these pieces reduces and I work towards the exam rather than the learning. An obvious answer is to start looking at the exam pieces for Grade 8 which I’ve targeted before end of 2025. The one I would like to start most is Rameau’s Cyclops but I also have a map in my mind about what needs to be finished to feed into the next grade and for the Rameau I would like to be on top of the Bach. I am not on top of the Bach. For the Rebikov, the choice is either the Rachmaninoff or Debussy. The fixed pieces are:

  • Rameau – Les Cyclopes
  • Tchaikovsky June from the Seasons
  • Debussy Reverie
  • Rachmaninov, Moment Musical Opus 16/5

The obvious ones to start with are the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. I will map the Debussy to Milne and the Rachmaninov to Rebikov. Tchaik builds on Mendelssohn.

I don’t want to constantly say we’ll see and depending on where they go, I might revise my planning. Grade 6 is currently pencilled in for April which, Bach pending is now realistic provided the practice schedule does not fall apart.

For January, it feel apart on the days I was travelling. I find that okay.