Piano Lesson

I arrived almost 15 minutes late for my lesson today. Bad me. Late is something I try never, ever, to be, so I wonder if this is more than just a miscalculation in timing. I have been feeling lately like I am wasting my time, and more importantly, the time of my fellow student and teacher. More than academic input right now I need practice time.

So I missed the time focused on I-IV-I-V-I chords in various inversions, based on B major. That’s fair, because it’s the one exercise I am more facile with than is S-, so she got a little extra time without me. And I am happy to report that we did not do Clementi today, so I wasn’t totally out of it after having missed last week’s lesson and not practiced since I got back in town. Bad me.

I don’t know yet what I am going to do about my current lack of interest in practicing the piano, but I did let S- know that I was planning to take a break over the summer. This is what I’m supposed to be practicing this week:

• Mach p460 Camptown Races, melody in D with chord symbols. Play A, not A7 as marked. Practice using root, 1st and 2nd inversion I chords. More importantly, practice the chord progressions we have been learning in the RH with the LH. Once the block chords are down, try it with various broken chord patterns.
• Mach p296. The Highlands, with damper pedal. We peeked inside the piano to see that the damper pedal lifts the dampers away from all the keys, while pressing a single key without pedal lifts only the damper on those strings. Lifting the dampers allows the overtones to echo more freely. We are starting with direct pedaling, where the damper pedal goes down at the beginning of the chord, and releases at the end of the chord, so that hands and foot are moving simultaneously.
• Indigo, by Roger Grove. I can sight read the A section, but need to learn the B section. Add pedal to this, as well. We reviewed some suggestions, but have permission to experiment.
• Clementi. Not discussed, but I need to keep working on the 1st and 2nd movements.

As we left, S- gave me copies of a printout of a web site about La Folia. She had mention two weeks ago that she had heard this in performance, and was enthralled. I’m with her there – it’s always been a favorite of mine, in all it’s variations, but especially violin played with basso continuo. She and G- played with it a bit at the lesson I missed. It’s not an assignment, but who knows. Maybe I’m more likely to spend time on it because I like it and know I don’t have to!