Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
πΉ I have 15 pieces in progress right now π³
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Yep. Fifteen. Chopin Polonaise-Fantasie. Ginastera. Godowsky. All three movements of Chopin E minor Concerto. Scriabin Nocturne for left hand. Gershwin-Wild arrangements. Bach/Brahms Chaconne left hand. Villa-Lobos. That list can feel like too much. I hear it all the time... sitting down to practice and scanning through everything, feeling like you're failing all of them. Like you have to touch everything or you've abandoned it. I built a practice tracker that fixed that. Not by reducing the repertoire. But by making one decision per piece, per day: That's it. Three options. The morning I first used it, I looked at my fifteen pieces and felt... calm. π§ββοΈ I'm still on the waitlist for the Vigo International Piano Competition, which means every practice session counts. I can't afford scattered. This tracker is how I stay sane and productive. I made you a video walking you through exactly how it works. βWatch the video β β Have you ever felt scattered across too many pieces? Hit reply and let me know. Play On, |
Lisa Spector, Piano Ninja
Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
Growing up, I swore by altered rhythms. Hours and hours of dotted-rhythms drilling my Chopin Γ©tudes. Five of them, on my debut recital at age 14. I don't practice that way anymore and haven't since high school. I posted about it on Instagram last week and it did not go over well. Most people pushed back hard. Fair enough, Instagram reels are short, I didn't have room to explain the alternative. So here it is. My real problem with altered rhythms comes down to one thing. When I'm doing a whole...
I've been playing Amy Beach's "Dreaming" at the same tempo for years. It felt like an andante tempo, as the composer wrote. Then I heard Greg Anderson play it slower. I'm talking seriously slower. π’And I stopped mid-scroll and was mesmerized, because something clicked that I didn't want to admit. My tempo wasn't wrong because it wasn't Andante. It was wrong because I'd never questioned it. Here's the thing nobody tells you about tempo: it doesn't just live in your fingers. It lives in your...
You know the moment. You're three lines out from That Passage and your stomach already knows it's coming. π³ Hands tense. Breath gets shallow. You start playing the mistake before you've even reached the measure. I used to think the fix was more reps. Drill it until the fear goes away. But no matter how many reps, it was hit or miss for years. The fear isn't about the notes. It's about what your body does when it feels it coming. Here's the first thing that changed it for me. SMILE π Tension...