## 🎯 Activities Practiced - **Technical Exercises** - Focus: C major scales, C major chords, G major scales. - **Repertoire** - Focus: Keyboard Musician - **Sight Reading** - Focus: Keyboard Musician ## 🏆 Notes & Observations - C major scales. Was finally able to do both hands in parallel without looking! Several times. I notice that when doing scales some fingers end up striking harder than others, leaving the tone uneven. How do I control that? Probably need to slow it down and be more intentional. I will probably have a tendency to speed out of impatience. - Learned Gmajor scale. Practiced RH/LH individually and in contrary motion. I thought it'd be relatively simple to pick up up because it has the same fingering as C, and for the most part it *was* simple, had some unexpected challenges - In this scale, LH 2 and RH 4 play Fsharp, but if you're playing in contrary motion (which I try to master first bc it's been easier for me in Cmaj), they aren't played at the same time. But they really really really want to do it at the same time. If RH 4 plays Fsharp, LH 2 instinctively tries to go up at the same time. Not an issue in C because the "topography" is even all the way through. - Moreso for pesky LH, because 2 has to go up on Fsharp it sometimes try to go up on Csharp when it's supposed to play C. Keeps wanting to repeat the same motion. Especially when I'm playing with both hands and don't focus on it as much. - C major chords. LH and/or RH, ascending and descending.Seeing good progress, but I have some notes - Index or middle finger, depending on which one is not being used to hit a key, have this annoying habit of shooting up when playing the chords (which are played 125 or 135). Should talk to instructor about it. - When RH and LH are diverging (meaning I'm playing in contrary motion and RH is ascending, LH is descending), I do well playing without looking using the pinching technique. When RH and LH are converging (meaning I'm playing in contrary motion and RH is descending, LH is ascending), the pinching technique to play without looking doesn't work as smoothly. I have ascertained that this is because when converging, the thumb is the "leader" used to figure out where to go, and when diverging, the pinky is the "leader", and the thumb is waaaaay better at it. - I should try starting my practice with chords one of these days - On Trust - I am learning some cool things about trust (in myself). As much as is reasonable, I'm trying to train myself to be able to play these fundamentals without looking at the keyboard as early as possible. I feel like there's definitely a connection between my less successful attempts and this instinct I have to look down. I find myself instinctively looking down for two reasons - To check where to put my fingers before playing the chord. I want to get to place where I trust that my fingers simply *know* where to go. - To verify that I played the right keys after playing the chord. This one is an interesting exercise in trust, because I *already don't* need to look down. I can hear when it's not correct! It sounds bad! Therefore I can hear when it is correct, and should trust my ear, because the "false lookdowns" (for lack of a better phrase to describe looking down even when I am correct) are hindering me. - Played em broken, for fun. This goes significantly better. I think the incremental movement makes me trust where I am more. - Might be burning too much of my session time on the technicals. I feel extremely energized right now to spend 2 hours practicing, but that won't always be the case. When I'm at that point, need to timebox the amount of time spent on scales and chords, so I can focus on music. After I got through all this I was.a bit tired. - Keyboard Musician. Redid Unit 1 trying to feel the music and have fun with it -- as much fun as one can with this level of music ;) My favorites are probably Prelude p10, Ballet p11, Two Peasant Dances p12. Keeping em in mind for recording progress. - Sighreading. Did some of the exercises in Keyboard Musician. There were hand position changes. Don't wanna talk about it XD ## 📊 Quick Stats - **Duration** (min): 123