8 Days Left: 4th movement

No video today, but I practiced the 4th movement for about two hours, very slow and focused on accuracy and getting the notes to feel intuitive and to get solid transitions. There were a few places where I changed fingerings and it is a lot better but hopefully I don't get confused once I speed it up!

I don't think the fast parallel runs in the middle are going to be very good because my left hand just can't keep up, but I can just focus on the right hand and fake it. The rest is coming along and I think I'll be able to do a nice Molto Presto at the end! It's actually not super hard, just fast and loud. Sometimes I'm really amazed at how much better I've gotten as a pianist in the last 8-9 years from working on some challenging pieces. I think having a piano that is easy to play really helps as well, because I can practice for a long time without getting tired.

Anyway, feeling good today. I feel like now that I'm reasonably rested these days that my brain has come back. When I started this journal it was like I was in a fog, but now I can focus and see progress and improvement every time I practice! I've got one more week to pull this all together.

    twocats I really admire how you play at such good tempos, or should I say tempi.

        keff thank you! Do you mean that you like the tempi that I'm attempting or the fact that I'm taking the time to do slow practice?

        • keff replied to this.

            twocats Very much admire how well you can play this piece. Likely my comment was prompted by the penultimate practice session (on the Dr.Molly schedule) of variation 2 of Mozart's K331. I knew my tempo was slow but not by how much until I listened to recording. I was somewhat shocked. I'm wondering if it is worth starting a thread to enquire how PT contributers get their pieces up to a reasonable speed.

                keff thank you! I have been working on it for almost 10 months now. At the beginning I could only get through a few pages in an hour and it was painfully slow. I find that unless it's all techniques that I know well from years of practice (scale runs, arpeggios, etc), it really comes down to being so familiar with the piece that your fingers just know where to land next. I'm only now getting to that point. Then you will find yourself naturally being able to play faster.

                I think if you give it a few months to get note fluency the speed will come in the Mozart! Practicing scales and those kinds of exercises will definitely help as well, because then you'll already know the patterns.

                    twocats I think if you give it a few months to get note fluency the speed will come in the Mozart!

                    Thank you for this reply.

                    Today I reach the end of the first cycle in the schedule with variation 2 and I recorded my progress yesterday evening, the penultimate day. I concluded that it wasn't good enough to post into the members recording thread but your reply has changed my mind .

                      keff I'm wondering if it is worth starting a thread to enquire how PT contributers get their pieces up to a reasonable speed.

                      Dr. Gebrian also has some videos on how to work towards building speed. These are on my list but I have not watched them yet. So far I am very excited about all of her advice and looking forward to implementing it (just watched the video on blocked vs. random practice and I will be incorporating that soon!).

                        7 Days Left: 1st movement

                        I'm down to the wire but feeling more confident that I will be ready right in the nick of time. A lot of spots in the 1st movement aren't giving me trouble anymore, although the minute I hit record I started slipping up in all the easy parts! So I went back afterward and really paid attention to some of those spots so that I don't just take for granted that I can sight read them under pressure. The hardest part is still not fluent but it's improving.

                        There are two bars where I significantly changed the fingering and it flows much better now, but I need to get it into my memory so that I don't trip myself up. I practiced those a lot after the video as well and then ended up running through two thirds of the 4th movement just to keep it fresh and really practiced the section where I changed the fingerings last night. I really feel like a huge part of my struggle while learning this piece was figuring out fingerings, because there's a lot of trickiness with legato phrasing and other stuff. A lot of the marked fingering didn't work for me or didn't make sense at slow speed but now it makes sense because there are just no good options but what they wrote is better than what I was doing.

                        Maybe 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movements tomorrow? I should really just focus on the trouble spots and not play them completely through. Although that's how I end up being sloppy in the easy parts...

                        6 Days Left: 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movements

                        No video today because I'm wiped out but I practiced little bits of the 1st movement and then the complete other movements with lots of focus on trouble spots and transitions. I see stuff improving but there's still a lot to be done. Thankfully all the stuff that needs to be memorized seems to be getting there! Thank you brain.

                        The 4th movement parallel runs are still crap (right hand is great, left hand not so much) and I think it's just beyond my ability to play fast and clean. I'm planning to let my right hand carry the melody and the strings will be very distracting. Good thing I'm not a professional 😃

                        @Rubens I am cheating in a couple of spots and it makes my life easier! One is a rolled 10th chord (rolling due to not having the hand span) that I think sounds dumb rolled so I changed the chord. The other is a series of quick octave chords and for one of them it's super awkward and I keep screwing it up, so I'm not playing the lower note for just that one. This allows me to play it with ease and no one will notice!

                        I'm planning to get lots of sleep tonight. Tomorrow is another big practice day.

                          twocats
                          Hehe, before I am branded as the official corruptor here, let's have a look at a few more performers from the "dark" side😉:

                              Rubens haha the "CHEATING!!" thumbnail is a bit of a clickbait but that was a great video. I watched it while I was cleaning up in the kitchen 🙂

                              Hands are tired today... I think I'm going to take it easy and not play anything too loud and fast. Will continue trying to get the notes "under my fingers".

                                5 Days Left: all movements

                                I should have done this before; instead of making the videos at the end​ of my practice I decided to go in cold and film it all at the beginning of my practice, at performance speed. It really exposes everything that needs work!!

                                The 1st movement is generally pretty good except for the two bars with new fingerings and the hardest section. I'm working on it now and making notes in the score to remind myself when the pattern changes so that I don't stumble. There's also a page near the end where I'm not solid on the notes but today I played it fine for the recording. But I was internally panicking so that's a sign that it needs more practice!

                                The 2nd movement is the most solid, except for una corda foot confusion. My left foot is not used to doing much, let alone figuring out when to hit the Bluetooth pedal vs a piano pedal. Plus a few minor places where I need to memorize where my fingers need to be at a page turn. But overall it's feeling pretty good.

                                The 3rd movement weird chords are not solid, and the part with the "military sounding" bits are barely memorized and today they fell apart at the faster tempo. Not feeling ready at all for those parts and they need a lot more work.

                                The 4th movement: maybe I started too fast? But it's clearly also not solid with wrong notes all over the place. Weirdly enough the parallel runs where I said I couldn't play the left hand well were surprisingly good. And my right hand scales are always super solid and sound great. Even if I play a bunch of wrong notes in the cadenza it still sounds impressive if I play it with confidence 😂 But there's still so much to work on and it's difficult and fast.

                                I did a lot of focused practice. Started breaking up some of the chord progressions that I have trouble memorizing into marked groups, and I think that is helping! Like how a phone number is broken up into groups of 3 or 4 digits.

                                Also I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier, the "militant section" in the 3rd movement has two quick repeated notes and then a chord. I started practicing just playing one of the notes instead of the two to simplify it for memorization. And I marked groupings of the similar chords there, too.

                                Tomorrow I'm going to focus on the 4th movement which is currently a mess in a bunch of places.

                                Only working on 4th movement today and taking a break for dinner but I am so focused!! All the places I've been sloppy are getting close examination. I think because there was so much to learn I got things to "passable for now" and then just went on. Sometimes I can play a difficult bar ok but then I didn't practice the transition to the next bar enough so it's not second nature to land on the right note. Hopefully I am remedying all that now.

                                It does not feel real that we're leaving next Tuesday.

                                4 Days Left: 4th movement

                                As mentioned in the previous post, I did extremely focused practice on the sloppy parts. Why didn't I practice like this when I was learning it?! I should have, although it also took me quite a long time to figure out optimal fingerings. I've been been changing up stuff even this week!! Next time I will focus more on fast accuracy earlier when I'm working on something really hard.

                                No video because my wrists are trashed. During dinner I started making a list of all the things I need to do before we leave and figuring out when I have time to do them. My next few days are already very busy 😭

                                Tomorrow I'm going to take a break from the 4th movement. I should probably focus on the stuff that isn't yet ready in the 1st and 3rd movements.

                                Where is the workshop again, @twocats ? Maybe you mentioned it before, I'm just curious.

                                  Rubens I'll private message you! If I say where it's too easy to figure out​ my name 🙂

                                    @twocats
                                    Hey no need to tell me if you want to keep your name private, although I already know your name😉.

                                    You are Miss Cats. Two Cats.

                                    3 Days Left: 1st & 3rd movements

                                    No video today. I was running around all day and it was already after 9pm by the time I could practice, so I just very quietly refreshed the tricky bits of the 1st and 3rd movements.

                                    Tomorrow evening I'm going to try to make a video using my Zoom video camera. The video quality is terrible but the sound should be good. I need to try it out again before I take it with me. Annoyingly this model doesn't accept remote control so I'll have to edit the video afterward.

                                    I'm starting to feel resigned about the state of the piece. However, the first three days I'm in the afternoon session which means that I can practice a lot before we rehearse, which is good news!

                                    The battery for my Zoom video camera was dead and I put it for charge; I'll also charge up the extra battery I got. I may ask someone to also record on their iPhone in case the video gets botched, since I barely know how to use the device. I find that the Apple phones generally have better sound than Android.

                                    My hands and wrists are still tired and maybe this is a sign that I need to do minimal practice before I leave. Maybe I'll just run through everything once today with the recorder and then do a few touch up things tomorrow.