When it's going well

I really love it when my piano practice is going well. When my fingers do what I want them to and I'm making music. That generally only allows me a week or two of fine tuning before my piano teacher suggests that we retire that piece and move on.

I really hate starting new pieces, when I don't have the music in my head yet, much less my fingers. It's so hard to motivate myself to practice as it doesn't seem to work at all.

I am taking part in an adults-only recital on Friday, June 11. Most of the pieces I'm working on - whether they're for the recital or not - are at the "ok, we can give them a rest" stage. This means that I need to be choosing new pieces. I find this part really difficult.

Luckily, I have one piece that's about half-way along in that progression. It's an Invention by Bach. I think Nancy or Ruth (or both) learned it, probably about 40 years ago - because from the first time I tried it, it sang in my head. It's very familiar, which makes it so much easier.

However, that's only my List A piece; I still need to pick a List B (classical), List C (romantic/impressionist); List D (20th Century - YUK) and two study pieces. Oh yeah, and a supplementary piece. 1 piece selected, 6 to go!

However, let's not forget that I also need to work on all that technical stuff. Scales, chords, arpeggios, chord progressions, harmonization, transposition, sight reading and ear training. The ear training is easy - the rest? Not so much.