ok here is the vast and absurd practice structure i drew up for myself at xmas — it went into the shape of a pear almost immediately when i wrneched my left ring finger lifitng my dad’s wheelchair out of the car, which took two months to sort itself (some will recall i had my fingers stuck up with crimson gaffertape for a while); anyway today (as i had a cancellation which leaves me with midday-midnight unexpectedly free) i got it back out again… WARNING: do not read if you hate self-involved keyb-based micro-yog, otherwise
i. sight-reading project — there are two ways of being bad at sight-reading, accurate-but-halting and inaccurate-but-keeps-going… i am the former, if i make a mistake i go back and replay it — i got this book but to be honest have only skimread it so far (i think it actually needs a second person to listen and be strict) (the cover picture is very offputting — the little man is sucking the notes off the page into his head with his eye, and his fingers are all tentacular and distorted)
ii. rhythm project — as i sed before, this is something i’m poor at — the things i’m working on are getting particular kids of syncopation into my muscles (viz “girl from ipanema”/the keyb riff from s.wonder’s “superstition”), and JUST KEEPING GOING (offenbach’s cancan; joplin’s magnetic rag)
iii. jazz project — i want to hear and understand orthodox jazz chording better (i have owned the john mehegan books for years but again i think i need a teacher to cut through to what i want to know); tho one thing i can do on my own is adapt some of the finger exercises in vi to incorporate chords and progressions from mehegan
iv. pieces being learnt
v. harmony project; this means getting back up to speed with harmony as i learnt it a-level in 1976-77, then (haha) mastering schoenberg’s “structural functions of harmony” (another book i’ve owned for years and gloomily looked at now and then: can has piano can has DECODE!)
vi. “Ernö Dohnányi: a legfontosabb ujjgyakorlatok a biztos zongoratechnika elsajátítására” — oh ok, “essential finger exercises for obtaining a sure piano technique”, iron curtain edition (mid-70s)… very compact modernist ‘sewing-machine” approach to types of exercise — this is what i mainly had to give up when i wrenched my finger: i tried some of them this morning and realised how flabby my fingers had got once more, even though my piece-playing is much better than it was six months ago
vii. bach project — basically learn scads of bach, who i love
viii. chopin project — see vii.
AT LEAST IT KEEPS ME OFF THE STREETS EH?