W02W24 Review 75 - AND a Bonus Practice Session! (007)

[@VictoriaB834]

Please, can you tell me what was in your green box? (The other one was for all scales!?)

[@ShanesPianoJourney]

Hi Victoria, The two 'boxes' are how I randomly pick a scale to practice in each session (I plan to practice at least one each session, but sometimes find more interesting things to do :-). The way it works is as follows: 1) I start with all the scales I have learnt in one container (the pink one at the moment), and when I need to pick one randomly I open that container and take one without looking. 2) Once I note down what it is, I put it into the other container (in this rotation it's the green one). 3) Once all the scales from the pink container have been practiced, it will be empty, and the green container will be full. In the next session, the process switches, and the green container is where the scales I pick randomly come from, and they go into the pink container, and the process goes cycles again. The goal is to make sure that I don't just practice the same scales in the same order each time, and it's flexible enough that when I learn a new scale, it just gets added into whichever container is the "take from" one at that point in time. I hope that explains that well enough.

[@airpac1873]

Are you open to suggestions, don’t want to over step your teachers program?

[@ShanesPianoJourney]

I'm always open to new ideas, but I do show them to Jane and generally don't act on anything she doesn't think is appropriate for me at whatever point I'm at in my journey. We don't have a program as such - it's a case of regular review against what we want to achieve over each six month period when selecting pieces, scales etc. and then every six months we discuss what areas should be a focus (in terms of areas where I'm weak relative to others and in relation to my overall progression, areas where I'm ready to advance etc.) for the next cycle. You'll see this in action in the next lesson - we have just reset for the next six months today, and selected my next piece - it's targeted at some areas I need to improve, but was just a little to hard technique wise when we selected the piece it's replacing . It was but easier when I tried a hand movement for it today, but it may still be too much of a technical challenge after I've had it a couple of weeks and if that's the case we will review. It's a very flexible approach to piano lessons.

[@airpac1873]

@@ShanesPianoJourney I have found, for myself that if do my technical, ie, scales and such at the very beginning of my practice session, in properly stretches and limbers up the hands and fingers for the rest of the session. It seemed as if you were struggling a bit with the Scale you had chosen, and you ( in my opinion ) made it harder on yourself by going straight to both hands. Whenever I start a NEW scale, especially if it is one I’m unfamiliar with, I also Play first in each hand, usually starting with the Left, and when it is comfortable to play in that hand then I move to the right, and only when it is comfortable in each hand then I make the move to both. I try to get it down in the Left hand, to the point were I can carry on a conversation with someone, or myself, LOL, then I can concentrate more on what the right hand is doing. The C scale everyone knows and it is the easiest to play, so I use the as my initial warm up at every session. I do what is called contra motion, starting at middle C left hand Plays in reverse down the keyboard, and the right goes up the keyboard for as many octaves as you are comfortable with. At my stage it is the full keyboard. When I get back to center the do it again only this time the Left hand is Legato, right hand staggoto. Then back to Center and revers it. Once I I get back to center again, I will quarter notes in the Left hand and 8th notes in the right, once back to center reverse to center, and finally I do one more pass using Dynamics. I can do it now in just about every Key, but C is the easiest and fastest, only takes a couple of minutes to do the whole thing, but when I first started to use that routine it took some time!

[@ShanesPianoJourney]

@@airpac1873 Yes - all good points. I'm struggling to find a plan for my scales practice, possibly because I'm not keen on them 🙂but is one of the areas that we identified as a focus area for this 6mth cycle. I haven't been taught contra motion yet, so that will wait a bit, but I'll print out your suggestions and try those. Jane's also increased my practice time target with a view to putting more time into the scales. Incidentally the scales you saw me practicing weren't new - I just hadn't played them for a while 🙂and was trying to pick up where I'd left off as it were. Back to basics I think. Thanks for the suggestions and interest.

[@airpac1873]

@@ShanesPianoJourney No problem. Although I do have a lifetime membership to Pianote, and have access to a lot of instructors, I’ve never really had the availability of a real live one. Sitting next to me as you are so lucky to have, so my first couple of years was just a mismatch of trying out different things, in a rather unorganized mess! Along came Cassi Faulk, the Classic Piano instructor at Pianote, with a video called Hand Independence Boot Camp. That was the first time I was introduced to any kind of a structured Practice Routine. I liked it enough to adapt it as my daily, lifelong practice routine. It is super easy to change, and adapt new stuff to, and I can make it as long or as short as I want depending on any given availability of time. The routine I explained to you earlier was just one of those steps. You can already play a scale up and back down the keyboard with both hands together, with correct fingering, so all you are doing is starting that process in the middle of the keyboard with the correct starting fingers of each hand on the Root Note and moving in opposite directions, one octave at a time and then returning to the root were you started. Yes it does take a bit to get used to but you get the hang of it fairly quickly. I was taught to always challenge your brain, and that is what I try to do for at least a part of my daily practice were I try something new or a different way to do the same thing. There are lots of ways to spice up and practice scales so they are not Boring and mundane! If you are ever interested in a demo of my routine, I’ll be more than happy to make a video…. Robin

[@ShanesPianoJourney]

Hi Robin - Nice to have a name to associate with the handle :-) I've run your comments past Jane who had positive things to say about them - she thinks your scales practice is quite broad and covers a lot of the things she recommends to her students. She hasn't taught me contra motion yet as there are a few other things she wants to teach me before that that help provide the foundation, but it will be coming. Challenging the brain is one reason I'm learning piano, so I understand where you are coming from. I don't want you to go to any major effort, but if you did happen to have a camera on you at some point when you are practicing, I would be keen to take a look and see what I can take an integrate into my own routine. Jane doesn't have a view on when in a practice session scales should be done, but does agree that it may be good to adopt your approach of doing them first - I've kind of been having my dessert before my vegies :-) And she's expecting me to increase my practice time to have more scale practice, so I'll be able to integrate some other variations as well now that the time allocation is effectively doubled.