Augh! Neither brain nor body wanted to practice tonight, forced an hour, now off to completely turn my brain to putty with Legend of the Seeker.

Started out great, but fell apart the more I played it. Why does that happen?

Almost got up to ♪=176. Remember, it's not a race against the metronome, you're playing with it, not trying to beat it.

Set up appointment for PT for hand. yays.

Quick run through scales, 30 sec.

Same stuff as yesterday, but thumb didn't hurt while playing.

Scales, problem spots (one of many) in (Flight). Thumb really hurting. Guess I'll be starting PT for that soon.

Worked on Bochsa. Another allegro ma non troppo. Thanks.

Quick check through (Flight). Some of the notes are still there.

Pozzoli had a few scale-y things in it. A few more lines of Bochsa learned, sort of. Got it up to ♪=132, sort of.

I am so tired of scales. But my thumb seems to be getting gradually better. I performed a cursory search of my music to see if anything else scale-y could be found. Need to do a more thorough search. *sigh*

Boscha and Salzedo.

50 minutes

15 minutes to keep limber, but hands don't seem to be working at all. Slightly looser now.

No practicing today: too tired from bike ride home through snow. Shoulders and back and sides too sore.

Still recovering from not practicing for x number of days.

Took a few days off because lt thumb increasingly painful. Made the realization at work today that I'm picking things up with my lt hand completely differently than with my rt. My rt thumb stopped hurting ages ago. When I concentrate on hold my lt thumb the same as my rt, it doesn't hurt. And the same thing goes for scales. I already altered my lt thumb position so it doesn't hurt when I play a while ago, and I realized today it is mirroring my rt thumb position more closely. Need to concentrate on that!

Hard to come back to scales after almost a week off. Or playing at all, really.

More scales. Scaly scales.

So I can play (Flight) around ♩=104, but I'm not sure because it is SO FAST. I can't hear myself with the metronome. I know it's at least over ♪=200. It is also going to take a lot of work, concentration, and strength to get the whole thing to that level. But I can do it.

Rt thumb non-existent when going up scales because of lack of pressure. Pulling with elbow to go up, but need to push to get thumb pressure?

Lt thumb is weak when going down.

Both are due to the different arm angles which exert different pressure at different times. It's all physics! Or dynamics of materials movement. Or something.

R thumb is non-existent, which is why the L hand is behind.

Visualizing playing scales at work today may have helped with actual playing of scales? Need to really focus on finger strength when playing for evenness.

Never, ever, tune harp in all ♯'s.

E V E R.

Ha! Judy Loman does not play (flight) at ♩ = 152! Ha, ha, haha, ha!

I take that as permission I do not have to, either.

Worked on right hand, as needed. Right hand is so very sloppy. Don't forget to do nerve stretches.

And relax your jaw, for cripes sake!

Left hand is apparently not uneven, the right hand is, which is making the left hand sound uneven. Left hand alone = fine. Right hand alone = no so much. I think we know what we need to work on. *nods*

Between needle felting and blister from yesterday's lengthy practice, I could only play ½ hour. *grumble* Wanted so much to play more.

Woohoo! Another 1 + hour practice. I guess I will just work on scales, give my hands a chance to heal (the right one is already 100% better yay), and not sweat it.

More work on scales. Can't manage to get the left hand even. 3rd and 4th are more dominant the faster I play. Is it because I start late or early and am rushing? Maybe need to play really loudly to strengthen fingers, then play quietly?

This is the kind of piece you really need contiguous hours to learn. Or I do.

No practicing today, either. Managed to sit directly on my thumb joint while jumping into bed last night. Also, home sick-ish.

I do not understand how I do these things.

No practicing for me as I spent the whole day cooking. Yay. And did something to my thumb in the process.

Meant to practice ½ hour, ended up playing over an hour. Thumbs hurt, but not while playing carefully, and not playing harmonics in left hand.

I guess I will continue with (flight) until my thumbs are better, then decide what other pieces to learn.

No practice.

Managed to crunch my thumb at work. Go me. But strangely, it doesn't hurt any more than it has been. Practice was ok with scales, not so much with the Clementi. I notice all my hand joints hurt when I play that. Are there alternatives? Or do I need to work up strength?

Twisted my knee while playing. I can't win.

More. Scales.

Minimal scales yesterday and today; thumbs still hurt.

If finale had a neck, I would throttle it.

Worked ½ hour on scales. (flight)

Worked more on Notturno/Finale. Whoa. Finale has a slick cross staff plug-in. I guess I don't really know what plug-ins are. A different form of macros?

Transcribing Notturno into Finale. What a program. Tried "locking" the measures to two per line, but nooOOOooo, apparently that means the measures can still move around to whatever configuration they want. And who edited the tutorials, if anyone? Hello? It's disturbing I'm able to find the mistakes in the manual and I haven't even learned the program.

Tried to play on Tuesday, did for about 30 seconds. Not at all on Wednesday. Between the pain in my jaw, ear, and hands, it was a lost cause.

If I could just send a pair of floaty hands and a set of ears to my harp...

Practiced as much as I could with blister so I could: 1) keep my fingers limber and 2) not make the blister any worse.

The blister I thought I might have is indeed a blister, so no more practicing today. Ow.

Sort of got the tricky dynamics learned? Probably will have to go through a couple more times.

Later today work on Clementi.

And I may have a blister.

Continued working on both Clementi. Will proceed that way until both learned (again). And hey, why not work on dynamics?

Can't decide between Sonatina op.36 nos 5 & 6 so I'm working on both. Got no.5 up to quarter=108. Needs to be around 180. Hahaha!

Didn't feel like working on Notturno, but played it through. Still need to work on a few spots, dynamics namely though.

Zarabanda is still sounding pretty good.

Got totally derailed by squeeing over Wil Wheaton's tweet and consequently was very late in getting started practicing.

But I did finally focus enough - got the left hand dynamics done-ish, right hand still need some work, in the dynamic-y section (the mfmpfmfmpmfpmfpmfp section, ha). Left out some notes top of pg 2 to prevent thumb joint strain, sounds ok?

Think I may have picked the Clementi I want to play, but it's triplets, and my left hand does not love those so much.

Short practice to give my muscles a rest. Worked on problem spots.

Ok, practicing almost 2 hours yesterday made a HUGE difference in what I played today. It was almost like I had learned the music yesterday. Things I had practiced were smoother! There were less mistakes!

I spent another 2 hours practicing today, but most of that was spent deciding which Clementi piece to polish since I just can't decide! <--That was a cry of anguish. So I don't know if I'll be able to repeat my results tomorrow.

But I need to figure out how I can do this on a regular basis. Seriously.

Played almost 2 hours. Slightly brain-dead.

Got clunks worked out of some pedals, need to drill the really difficult changes again.

Also, still really, really, really need to transcribe this thing.

Short practice time because of fantastically killer headache, but got one more measure learned. Two more until repeats!

Excellent practice, but then everything fell apart when I tried to put it all together.

And 'yay' for repetitions: I don't need to learn most of the last page, so I'm almost done!

Possibly have pedal changes.

No practice today, new volunteer meeting, plus aching thumb joints.

Talk about procrastination! It's true, if I want to do something, but don't really want to, I won't. I do prefer playing later at night, so that's probably a factor.

Did figure out the D♭7, just needs an earlier pedal change.

Because Finale is so intuitive, I need to start transcribing Notturno again, but this time put the document settings in before. No other Windoze program works this way, why this one?

Tricky pedals in meas 38.

15 minutes, w00t. But did work on a previously difficult measure and it seems to have finally sunk in to some degree.

Need to figure out alternate way to play D♭7 on pg 4.

I did practice today. I think.

Measure 31 out of 65 done. Yay.

No practicing tonight due to extremely sore finger pads, finger joints, and finger muscles from changing brake cables and trying to adjust my caliper brakes.

I did get them adjusted, just so's you know.

Need to work on moving the G pedal in general. Use the ball of your foot and aim laterally.

Finale is annoying me. Actually, my brain's lack of retaining the ability to use it is annoying me.

C♭ = B♮. Really!

More measures learned.

Re-learned measures, trying to break bad habits from sight-reading.

Played Grey Donkeys again.

Not really time enough to practice, played other stuff. I always forget how much I love the Grey Donkeys.

More measures learned, but difficult w/o pedal markings. Taking time to re-re-learn Finale so I can get the music in readable/playable format.

I don't have to play this as fast as I think I do. Maybe. Maybe dotted quarter=48?

When learning new measures, hook on last 2 notes of previous measure.

Practicing after all-day knitting session not as hard as I thought, but still not easy. Biceps and delts sore.

Did I not play yesterday? Can't remember. Aha. No.

Decide (again) how measures should flow. Hey, maybe pay attention to phrasing?

Depressed. Apparently, I still need to be on vacation.

But up and moving enough to cringe and laugh at zombies, and strangely feeling much better.

Same.

Practiced placing chords, need to keep doing that between measures.

Ok, all the measures have repeating 2,3,4 fingers for the rest of the chords in the measures. Repetition and patterns, oi.

Finally scanned music into Finale. It only recognized the first page, and what it did recognize is complete and utter crap. Thanks, Finale, I needed a good laugh.

I only wish I could post what it sounds like here.

Or I could link to it.

Too tired to hold up my arms and practice, so did this instead.

Chords on 2nd page are the same minus thumb, play rest of measure w/2,3,4?

Hard to play at speed, practice going from chord to chord.

Figured out I need to learn 4 meas/day.

Remember to keep hands rounded even after speeding up. Work from 16th =104 to ♪=150 (dotted quarter=50) Is that math right? Ungh, cooking makes me stupid.

Limited practice time due to having no food in the house and having to cook. Again.

M.M. = 50 to the dotted quarter. Really wish blogger could display the proper notes. As it is, I only have these ♪ ♫ , which are useless probably 75% of the time.

Really wish I had more time to practice.

Trying attempt #2 to scan music.

Need to figure out actual metronome marking.

Keep hands round, play like pulling taffy.

Back from vacation. Trying to scan music into a readable form and getting nowhere. I was just scanning and now my computer is happily informing me "can't find scanner!". That is my cue to quit for the evening.

Modified Original List

Changing the months:

Jul: Zarabanda - Turina : Done-ish. Sort of.
Jan: Images - Tournier : Mar
Sep: Classical - Clementi : Nov. Some of this done for the Browncoat Ball. Need to give myself some space from it so Nov is good.
Oct: Danses - Salzedo : Dec
Nov: Six Pieces - Renie : Jan
Dec: Etudes - Bochsa : Feb
Aug: Notturno - Resphigi : Oct
Feb: (flight) - prelude intimes - Chanson? - Salzedo : Apr

Am I really only 2 months off? I guess I won't be if it takes as long with all the other pieces as Zarabanda.

Need to scan in Notturno so I can get the proper pedal changes, fingerings, and enharmonics in. Luckily, I have a start thanks to Stephen Main.

Gig over, it was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to have that pressure gone.

Now back to original list!

I have crammed as much as I possibly can into my head. Fingers crossed all goes well tonight. Well, actually, fingers UNcrossed, hopefully.

I've learned as much music as I can at this point. Tomorrow's the gig!

After deciding to experiment with some chestnuts and being very VERY careful with the very very sharp knife (always manage to cut my finger before gigs), I was apparently too careful and didn't pierce the inner layer of the shell before roasting, and promptly and forcefully coated everything in my kitchen, including me and my eyeballs, with a fine layer of chestnut dust. I also burned my hand.

Thankfully, none of this affected my harp playing, so onwards and upwards.

Work on marked page.

Jasmine prob spots.

Practice again this evening.

Tinnitus less, I think I know what's happening.

Skipped ballet to practice, no big loss. >:|

Tinnitus back after PT. >:|

Page on rt.

TH!

Start on page book is open to.

Yet another reminder to stretch. >_<

Had run-through for the gig next Saturday and all I can say is: o_O

Need to really really work on problem spots. Some specifics: p.35 slides, TH melody line, Jasmine x-spots. And everything else.
Also, move harp around to different positions to get a feel for being out of my element, different lighting, play out of gig book instead of printed mat'l.

Whoa.

Playing an out-of-tune harp does not help with the jaw clenching I'm not supposed to be doing as part of TMJ treatment.

work on: sonatina op. 36 no. 3 allegro
sonatina op 36, no.5 presto trills on p50 and 51

While it is fun to just sit and play, there are still a lot of problem spots in the classical to work through.

Had to satisfy my craving and play through Notturno.

p.48 seems ok.

Top of p. 48 do not do trills for full measure.

Things shaping up.

Could tinnitus continue to be going away?

Still working on it. More later this afternoon.

Problem spot top of p. 48.

Fingers stiff. Really need to play 6 days a week.

Worked classical backwards.

Apparently I'm not practicing today, either.

I love cooking.

That was sarcasm.

Things to work on:
Op. 20, No. 1, Andante: 2nd half
Op. 55, No. 1, Allegro: FB, AE pedal changes
Op. 55, No. 2, Allegretto: Um, you want to finish practicing that?

Folk songs

FF

Sonatina p41: work on fun pedal changes.

Sonatina p 40: 88 to the eighth

Crazy day with bike-buying and balleting and no practicing.

So. Tiredzzzz...

Classical progressing. Keep working problem spots in all pieces.

Tinnitus has been noticeably less the past couple days. I hope I'm not jinxing it by saying anything.

Work on page turn for last folk song, as well as those 4ths.

Stretch!

Keep reviewing classical.