Happy 4th of July!

Hope you had a great 4th weekend. Mine was ok. I definitely slowed down a bit this weekend on the practicing, partly because I actually didn't have the time, and partly because it is a holiday weekend after all.

Saturday's memory progress (July 2, 2011):

Chopin Op.17 Mazurka, no.1 - 0.4/2 pages or 20%
Op.17 no.4 - 0.33/3 pages or 11%
Ravel Waltz No.3 - 0.4/3 pages or 13%
Ginastera Mvt 1 - 4.5/7 pages or 64%
Beethoven - 7.66/11 pages or 70%

Sunday I basically just maintained what was already memorized.

Today (July 4, 2011):

Chopin #1 - 0.6/2 pages or 30%
#4 - 1/3 pages or 33%
Ravel Waltz #3 - 1/3 pages or 33%
Ginastera mvt 1 - 4.83/7 pages or 69%

And... Crap! Writing this, I just realized that I forgot Beethoven AGAIN. Poor Ludwig. I have to stop doing that. Tomorrow I will start with Beethoven and learn the rest of that 8th page!

Decided to wait til tomorrow to paint my nails again. That Essie I used last week was kind of a fail. It needed pretty constant touching up/redoing. Sometimes it would just peel off! I'm back to a Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polish this week. Stay tuned to see what color!

Yesterday's Progress

Last night I broke out of what's become my 90-day routine (of vegging on couch or reading, too tired to go anywhere) and went to Jaleo with my friend. This isn't my restaurant blog so I won't go into detail, but let me just say that I'm still recovering from the salt coma I was in after a sad set of tapas last night. Needless to say, I forgot to blog!

So! Yesterday's memory progress:

Chopin Op.17 No.2 - 1.2/2 pages or 60%
Chopin Op.17 No.3 - 1/2 pages or 50%
Ginastera mvt 1 - 3/7 pages or 43%
Ravel Waltz #2 - 1.6/2.6 pages or 62%

aaaaand....
I realized yesterday that I completely forgot about Beethoven the day before, so yesterday I did a Beethoven catch-up, plus more memory!

Beethoven Variations - 7.17/11 pages or 65% - I have memorized all of Variation #5 - this means that all I have left of the Beethoven to memorize is the last variation and the coda! Woo! (Of course this last variation/coda is longer than all the other variations.)

Hopefully my morning caffe' latte will wake me out of this salted groggy state and I will start today's practicing sooner rather than later.

Memorization Progress

I plan on having my entire program memorized by July 18th (Happy Birthday, Mom!) One way of calculating this plan is to count the total number of pages, and then divide that by 30 to figure out the number of pages I would need to memorize each day to meet that goal. The other day I tried to count the pages, but the number was getting so high (and scary) that I stopped. But I've found my courage, and I'm going to start posting my memorization progress in terms of page numbers. I tried to create some graphs but it was way too hard, so you'll have to read the numbers and imagine the pie charts yourself.

As of today, 6/21/11 (Happy Summer btw!) I have memorized:

Liszt Rhapsody - 4 of 9 pages (44% including the coda!!!)
Beethoven Variations - 4.5 of 11 pages (41%)
Ginastera movement #2 - 4.5 of 6 pages (75%)
Ginastera movement #4 - 6 of 7 pages (86%)
Ravel Waltzes - 1.5 of 25 pages (6%)

Today was a good day, and I finished memorizing the coda of the Liszt! Learning this Rhapsody has been interesting. I've always been kind of scared of Liszt, but I'm finding it very pianistic. Pianists use this term to describe music that "fits" well under the hands - it's almost like you just put your hands on the keys and they know how to arrange themselves to play the music. Not all music written for piano is like this. It is often the case when the composer is also a great pianist.

The coda was a little confusing with the middle notes in the right hand octaves, but it's up in the old noggin now!

Nail polish update: It's starting to fray a bit at the edges and will need a touch up tomorrow. I'm honestly pretty impressed with its staying power.