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.