As I said I planned to do in my previous post, this week I decided to make a practice log on Google Sheets to keep track of what I’ve done. Having this be public will hopefully also serve as a means of keeping me accountable, which will also hopefully increase the time I spend practicing.

And increase, I would like it to. I did say in my first post that I my initial goal would be to just practice any instrument three times per week. I technically achieved that this week, but barely. The main reason for this is that I was reluctant to practice was the stress of my plan to film myself later (even though that didn’t end up happening). I wasn’t looking forward to playing for the camera, and I think that sapped me of any pleasure from playing my instruments, so I was reluctant to sit down with them. My initial hope was to film my progress every week, but upon reflection I think it will be better to only film at key points throughout the term or just when I feel like it. What I want most from this inquiry is to gain back my joy of music, and it seems like forcing myself to film every week would actually be counterproductive to this goal.

Nonetheless, I was able to make some progress with each instrument because despite my low amount of time spent practicing, it still exceeded last week.

For flute I spent most of my time practicing two octaves of F and G major scales. As I had hoped, this did help me refamiliarize myself somewhat with more of fingerings. I was pleasantly surprised that I found myself familiar with them enough to try sight-reading a few pieces from my beginner-level flute book, A New Tune a Day: Performance Pieces for Flute from the Boston Music Company. My sight-reading skills are still rusty, but the pieces in this book are simple enough that I was able to follow the music and know how to correct if I made a mistake. Its arrangement of Amazing Grace (see photo for copyright information) is quite basic, so I decided to practice playing it in an octave higher than it is written in order to specifically work on my breath control for high notes. This turned out to be a good idea because I struggled to produce sufficient air to switch between notes of high- and mid-range, as well as to maintain good pitch and tone. This week I will continue to practice that, as well as continue to work on different scales and songs from this book. Also, I found that the muscles in my face got tired quite quickly which did inhibit my ability to play longer than the 25 minutes I spent with it. This means I should try to practice more frequently in order to build up the strength in my embouchure again.

This week on piano, I worked mainly on technique exercises for E♭ major and C minor because they have the key signature for the portion I am working on for the song I want to play, The Wellerman. I think that last week I said that it was written in E♭ major, but it is actually written in C minor – I mixed them up because they have the same key signature (so both scales use the same black keys on the piano) and I wasn’t paying enough attention. I also spent a fair amount of time working on this section of the song, which is one I used to play decently well (but no longer do, as I lamented in my last post). While I am still far from the level that I used to be at, I think I made decent headway. My goal for next week is to be familiar enough with the portion of the song that is written in C minor that I am able to properly hone it and work on it, as well as start to relearn the next section written in a different key signature.

I have detailed the specific things I would like to work on for each instrument, but more broadly I want to increase the total time I spend practicing each instrument. I don’t know whether that will manifest as more practice sessions or just longer practice sessions, but regardless I think it is clear that if I want to progress more, I need to put more time into it. I hope that my public practice log will be effective in keeping me accountable to that…