January 30, 2020--Practice Blog

A hard day. Contemplating changing careers because of it...and the previous couple of days. Just stupid stuff. Day started with a doctor's appointment. Nothing off. Went to pick up dog who was getting groomed. Had lunch at a Chinese buffet before getting to the church to practice for a couple hours. Went up to work. Did some piano practicing and taught an organ lesson. We are starting all new material, so just worked out some practice issues and started working on fingering and notes. (Vidas, I'm teaching your Bellows and Contrabourdon from ABC's to the student. I'll try to send a video when they are learned and ready.) Went and got some classwork ready for tomorrow and practiced until choir. Choir rehearsal wasn't bad, but some of the students have the attitude that we should feel privileged to just be in the room with them. Considering we are four weeks from a concert that they don't work on outside of choir time, it is a bit concerning. It was at this point that I started to receive the emails. One student who hasn't attended class yet emailed me to explain that she was still sick and had to go back to her parents house for at least the weekend if not the entire next week. Wants to know how I'm going to help her catch up. This is going into week 4 of a 15 week class. ARGH! Then got another email about a student who will not be in class because of an incident on campus and that I need to find a way to make all the material available to them online. Would like to just put the entire class online, then not have to see the bored stares during class and deal with the outrage of students who end up failing the course due to lack of preparation and/or doing the homework. Frustrating. Then to have a student tell me he can't practice in the evening (and during the day...) because he "needs to spend quality time" with his pregnant girlfriend. I had to explain that then he needs to practice during the day rather than sit in an empty room and play strategy games on his phone. Grrr.... Sorry to rant, but it does feel like a career crisis at this point. And it's better to do it with faceless people online than to explode on a student or class.

On the organ, I got a good practice in on Bach's BWV 617 and 618. I'm planning 617 for this Sunday (and for the Secrets of Organ Playing Contest this week) and 618 on the first week of Lent, if not the week before it. I also spent a good bit of time on Vierne's Finale from the First Symphony--I was getting a bit concerned with this piece as the third page is REALLY hard. I have it at about half speed. However, the first two pages are pretty much in my fingers at that speed and I worked on pages 4-8 today and got them up to that speed. Just the coda left. Tried to continue working on BWV 536. The notes are there, but the speed is the problem.

On the piano, I worked on memorizing the fugue development in Beethoven's Op. 101 and trying to memorize Bach's C minor prelude from WTC I.