Liszt memorized in 1 more day!

Still making headway on my memorization progress!

As of today, June 27, 2011, I have memorized:

Liszt Rhapsody - 8/9 pages or 89%
Beethoven Variations - 6.5/11 pages or 59%
Ginastera 1st mvt - 2/7 pages or 29%
2nd and 4th mvts - totally memorized!
Ravel Waltz #2 - 0.6/2.6 pages or 23%

Liszt will be completely memorized tomorrow, because the last page I have to learn is almost exactly like the page I learned today! Woo!
I've started learning the 5th Beethoven variation, which is a funeral march. It's actually very fun! And even a little funny :)
Ravel Waltz #2 - it is so beautiful, and it reminded me why I chose this set of waltzes. Really lovely.
As far as my bright orange (Braziliant) nail polish goes, it's a little weird to watch my fingers on the keys. Sometimes when my hands are moving quickly, I see green. Which is weird, since there's no green nearby. Hmph, science.

2nd week already?!?

Today was Day 9. Tomorrow will be 80 days remaining, and I can't believe that!

Today I did a lot of memory "maintenance" but also memorized more of the Liszt and Ginastera.

Liszt: 7.6/9 pages or 84%

Ginastera mvt 1: 1.55/7 pages or 22%

I took a break from memorizing more Beethoven and Ravel today, and instead just focused on becoming more comfortable with what I've already memorized. For the Beethoven, I only have Variations 5 and 6 left, so I feel pretty good about that.

I took my Fairy Teal nail polish off a couple of days ago with the intention of reapplying, but never got around to it. I think I've been feeling a little bummed the last couple days while practicing, and I'm wondering if that bright nail color wasn't actually motivating me to keep going. Well, we will find out this week with my new color, Essie's Braziliant! I almost didn't find the color but luckily spotted a special display at CVS all by itself. I'm going to paint tomorrow.

I've also chosen the color for the following week, but you'll have to wait and see. (Hint: It was an Allure readers' choice bright color.)

Confession: I still haven't read all the Ravel notes, etc in the Alfred edition. But I will... soon...

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.