I'm still here!

Believe it or not, I'm still alive, and we moved in last weekend. Unfortunately I have not been practicing at all. I think I've only been able to play maybe three or four times since my last post.The move was much rougher than we expected, but we survived! 

I'm over a week behind on the practice plan, but I'm going to keep plugging along. I'm going to redraw my practice plans and post that in the next few days if I can. I'm going to do my original plans for Week 2 from today until Tuesday, at which point I'll start Week Three with the second week of the Patricia George plan. Her method of working through the Taffanel-Gaubert uses 6-day practice weeks, so if I'm able to get in at least a little bit of productive practice each day, I'll be able to make up the lost time.

I was able to practice today, and it felt great. While it was certainly not smooth sailing all the way through and I didn't make it through the entire to-do list, it was a very productive practice session. I'm having to out some tension issues, especially in my left arm, and having to fight the urge to try and play faster than I need to.

Patricia George suggests working in chunks, which I found very helpful. She suggests playing short chunks (between 4 and 8 notes) with a quarter note rest between each chunk. This was very great for slowing my mind down, getting my focused on consistency of sound, smooth finger motion, and getting rid of negative tension.

More to come in the near future, hopefully including some good news!

Day 3

While I haven't lost any of my excitement or fervor for practicing and achieving goals in general...I'm pooped. We only have some 30 hours left in Motown before we hightail it south, and it feels like we're all set to go and yet only beginning to scratching the surface of the work left to do.

I could only play for a few minutes today, but I really tried to make it worthwhile. I did some harmonics exercises from Jim Walker and some work on Bolero. I'm happy to find that the JW exercises are getting much easier and more consistent as the days go by. I used to struggle to reach the second partial, but now I'm able to get to it with little difficulty.

When I reviewed the recording of Bolero that I made on Wednesday, I was very shocked at how arrhythmic and unsteady my playing was. Granted, I can admit that I wasn't "in the zone," and that I had done all but maybe five minutes of reading over it, but still. I decided I would try to begin tackling that issue first, since rhythmic integrity is paramount to...well, everything.

Even though I didn't spend much time working on the excerpt, I do feel that progress was made. I'm heading to bed before I fall asleep typing.

First Two Days

Just a really brief post today. I've survived the first two days of practicing!

Wednesday went very well. I feel like I was really making progress, things were really falling into place.

Thursday was rough. There were several snags, so my entire afternoon was spent rerouting efforts and putting out fires, but at 11pm I was finally able to practice. Needless to say, it was much abbreviated. Stress levels are pretty high, but I think I was reasonable with what I did.

The move seems to be coming together, although not so perfectly we can relax yet, haha. All-in-all though, feeling pretty positive.

Ready, Set...Go!

I know it's technically Wednesday, but I haven't gone to bed yet. It's still Tuesday.

I had a nice (yet brief) practice session this evening, which was interrupted by my washing machine leaking and flooding part of my apartment. Thankfully it's going to be fine. Since it wasn't caused by my oversight I won't be held responsible for any damages.

Tomorrow is going to be a great day. We're going to do the bulk of the packing, I'm teaching a final lesson to a fantastic student I've been teaching for two years, selling some more furniture, and I'm so excited to kick off this year of practicing. As long as I keep my sights set on the long run I'll be great.

Wish me luck!

Plans for Weeks 1 and 2

It's going to be a crazy week because we're packing everything up and traveling across the country. Maybe it would be easier to push everything back a week or a month, but I feel like I need to make myself push through this time instead of taking an easier way out. Since it'll be a hectic couple of weeks, and I'm not sure how time will pan out, I've mapped out the first two weeks below.
Thankfully I've already begun some preliminary practicing, trying to lay some foundation for the work I'm going to be doing. On the first few days of the week I'm going to try and touch on flute, piccolo, and recorder, but on the moving days I'm only going to worry about a little bit of flute tone and finger technique.
Notice that I plan on "sharing"   a recording of myself playing the opening flute solo from Ravel's Bolero at the end of Week 2. I'm looking forward to it!

Hopefully as I go along, I'll become better at preparing these weekly practice plans, and they'll be a little easier to understand. There will be sporadic practice reviews that I'll post, commentary on how things are going, etc.