For accounting purposes it is easier for my weeks to start on Monday and end on Sunday, rather than start on Thursday (when I got the piano) and end on Wednesday, since that is how I track my time for everything else I do. Week 0 (Th 8/14-Sun 8/17) I spent 11 hours playing the piano. I may have overexerted myself because my forearms feel a little carpal-tunnely, as they were wont to do when I used to play computer games.
I’ve got the first 19 bars of Prelude memorized (I have to think about it, though, and pause for a long time at certain points–definitely can’t recall at speed), and the next 16 I haven’t looked at at all. It’s a natural stopping point since he starts in G and through a mysterious sequence of chord changes ends on a G one octave down. Presumably he should then work his way back up in the next 16 bars, but, since that part is completely unknown to me, it amuses me to suppose that I can practice by beginning on the (second) highest G on the keyboard and simply repeat these 19 bars, moving towards the low end one octave at a time, until there are no more Gs left on the keyboard. I shall call it “The Idiot’s Staircase.”
I realized that, this summer, I split my time between Disney and the paper, and as a result got nothing done for either project. Therefore, I don’t think I ought to split my time between too many projects. So, I’ve decided to just totally eliminate Minuet from my program. It’s very difficult (at this stage, for me) but honestly, sounds kind of childish, so I don’t think the difficulty to nice-sound (euphony?) ratio is worth it. (By contrast, the difficulty to euphony ratio for Prelude is quite low.) On the other hand, I have heard that one shouldn’t work very hard on one piece, but should rather work on several pieces at once and slowly improve on all of them. I don’t know.
Progress report:
Prelude: 19 out of 35 bars memorized, can play maybe 4 at speed
Minuet: returned to the store for a full refund
Alfred’s: around page 30 of 95 (there are many sketches (I wouldn’t call them full pieces) of varying familiarity. Sight reading is getting better with these easy pieces.)
Revolutionary: learnt the first chord. It’s a G7 with 2 extra notes. So, completed… 5 notes out of about… 1000?
[Edit: 84 bars. Maybe 20 notes per bar on average, so closer to 1600 notes. Where can I find an exact count?]
Revolutionary Etude in 2 Years 
March 22, 2010 at 6:05 am |
hey, i think that it’s pretty cool that you have such a goal
actually now that i think about it, i’ve been playing for a year and a half
and my piano teacher has me working on the revolutionary etude as well
i guess at this point i’ll have to learn the whole piece by august, but i feel as though i can get this done wayyy sooner
i’m in the middle of page two but i should be on page four in no time since most of page 3 and 4 are repeats of page 1 and 2
May 10, 2010 at 4:09 am |
Good luck! Let me know of your progress.
October 2, 2010 at 8:30 am |
Hey, I don’t know if you remember me or not but I commented on your blog saying that I was going to attempt what you were attempting. Well it didn’t work out for me. Every time i’d play the damn piece for a while, i’d hurt my wrist. I started working on bach a bit ago and my techniques gotten a lil better. Now when I play the piece it barely hurts my wrist.
However, at this point in my musical life, i’ve been working on technique and composition a lot more than memorizing other people’s music.
So I gotta wonder, has it been 2 years since you started playing and did you actually learn the piece before 2 years?