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Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate this feast of a holiday. For the rest of you...feel free to join us on Thursday for a day to eat, drink and give thanks.

My achievement is learning two pages of "I'll be home for Christmas" in two days. I'm going to accompany my husband for the piano party here at my place on Dec 8. I've been at an academic conference in Washington DC for a few days and really missed my piano but I'm sluggish at getting back up to practice mode. My brain feels scattered...ever have that feeling??

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@torquenale: Having too many things to think about at the same time, it's not good... At least your teacher don't think as you If she told you're improving, why not to believe? I'm sure she's right!
One of the reasons that led me to play the piano was just the fact that I have many things to work at the same time. It seems a contradiction, but it is not. My goal was to have a liberating moment of all the daily stress ... And it worked.

@earlofmar - What is the "Tausig exercise" you're learning?

@JimF - I have no idea... Tomorrow we'll discuss the alignment of the episode.
And congratulations for your achievements! That is an huge collection of pieces to work and play.

Well that's quite an AOTW wimpiano. You won't sleep through the night for months Just kidding, congratulations, what's her name?

Welcome to PW

I can't play it through yet but working on it. Each each day I do a few minutes of it to see if I can get the stretches and gradually what was impossible a few months ago is beginning to be possible. You can see a demonstration here

Although you're kidding it's very likely to be true

Her name is Naomi and she and her mother are doing well.

Thanks all for your congratulations!

In the few minutes I've got left these busy days I'm starting to practice the Old French Song from the same Tchaikovsky album.

Oh awesome! Thanks for sharing...I'm gonna try this!

That's interesting. I'll give it a try

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

A lovely name.

Have you looked at the Tchaikovsky recital thread? Old French Song is already taken but there are many still open if you want to join in.

I'm messing around with that one too Wisebuff. It will take me more than two days though. That one and Let it Snow are the two new Christmas songs I'm working on. Brushing up some older ones as well.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

I'm looking at The Christmas Song right now in my fake book. So pretty... 20 different chords... yikes.

All the easy songs are taken Instead of posting the recordings in the recital thread I'll post them in the Ecco Fatto Café by April. Leaves me (I hope) enough time to practice.

Looking forward to it! YAY, I love the ECCO FATTO Café, I just enjoy hearing people new to piano play for us. A great place to get one's feet wet too. Very supportive and helps you conquer your fears about putting yourself "out there".

I have finally figured out and notated a good fingering for my enhanced score of Someone to Watch over Me. I had a simplified version that I learned quickly, but found it rather plain vanilla and so got into fleshing it out by adding fifths and different inversions to it. The bass line was single notes! This seems to be never ending as it led me into studying same tone and close tone chord voicing. I'm still not sure if I'm done with it but it sure sounds better/fuller than the original score. I find this a great AOTW (actually the month+ ) I like to figure out for myself things that aren't in my music books, it's rewarding but it does stifle my practice playing a bit.

Now I'm back to practicing my Christmas pieces. Made fresh copies from my book as I tend to mark them up a lot while learning them and they soon begin to resemble Jackson Pollack paintings. That's about it for this past 6 days.

This is cool. I've been doing that with a couple of simpler arrangements of songs, too - I'd love to be able to do it on the fly, instead of having to memorize my arrangements, but I'm not there yet. But it's really fun. Sort of Mr S-H's F.O.A.M. method in miniature, for me

Cathy

@Ragdoll - That's great Ragdoll. If it sounds better now, then it's OK, for sure. Congrats!

Wow, everyone is so busy! Love reading the news!

Special congrats to Wimpiano on the arrival of Miss Naomi ! May she live a long, happy and healthy life, surrounded by those who love her.

Ragdoll - that's very cool!
JimF -you're really playing some great music!
Wisebuff: safe travels and try to just relax!

Earlofmar - interesting stuff you're doing there!

My AOTW is that I've made a breakthrough on my Clementi - several stumbling blocks have been moved out of the way. I am not finished by any means, but I'm over some major challenges.

@jotur
heh, me too. I have to think about it first, then try it, then write it into the score. I also sometimes fail to recognize a triad in 2nd or 3rd inversions and have to look at each note to see it's an inversion that I could identify in root position easily. It's all pretty new to me still but fun anyway.

Thanks CarlosCC, it's slow going right now. I hope it becomes easier as I do it more.