Okay, well I later found out that the performance was only for non-pianists. That doesn't mean I'll escape though - just that I'll probably have to play it in front of the class later in the month!

Piano is definitely harder though. I'm used to the key weighting of a keyboard...

Oh yes, I'm at uni! Life is hectic as you might guess. The fire alarm went off on the first night I was here! (thankfully not since)

For the past two to three weeks, I've been practising around 2-3 hours a days on it - longer than I ever have done before. I've also managed to play the second (slower C# major) part of the piece reasonably well too.

Anyway, I have actually been improving - less wrong notes in all the 'awkward' parts (bar 7, 8, 11/12, 14, 16, and all of 30-40) and slightly smoother timing overall. You'll find that mastering the last 10% of a difficult piece of music requires 90% of your time and perseverance. In other words, getting noticably better is a slower and slower process towards the end.

And the reason for all this?

I have to play in front of the my tutor/s at university so they can assess my piano skills! Of course, this wasn't the original reason why I started out playing the piece, but I might as well use it this opportunity. I've also been practising Scott Joplin's 'Maple Leaf rag', and have got quite good at that too.

The only problem is; I don't know how well I'm going to play on a proper piano, since I've been using an electronic keyboard! (the keys are slightly easier to press down and there are no loud/quiet dynamics). I'll have to see if I can put in a bit of last minute practise on a real piano. Wish me luck!

I'll try and put a recording online if they have the equipment at uni.

Now up to 100-105 BPM for that part! My ryhthm is still not perfect throughout the whole tune though. I still have problems on the seventh bar for example (the bar where the melody climbs very high).

Let me quote something from the beginning of the music book - it always makes me cringe:

There seems no fear that the Fantasie-Impromptu will suffer from neglect, as it is the joy of the amateur, who usually transforms its presto into a slow, blurred mass of badly related rhythms and its slower episode into a long-drawn, sentimental agony

Now why do I feel that was written just for me? :)
I'm gonna just have to practise each and every 3 bar combo a dozen times each - I'm not going to let this this tune beat me =P

I'm still working on that impossible part.

Up from 75 beats per minute now to an impressive 90bpm. I need at least 128bpm or even 140bpm to get up to actual speed. 90bpm sounds like a tortoise in comparison! Anyway, it's the last 40bpm (from 90 to 128) that's going to be really hard to attain. Maybe I won't ever even reach it properly without thumbling the notes.

But that's a great thing about practising on keyboard - I get to play a competition with myself trying to beat the record.

Well, it's been over a year now since I last wrote in this blog. I somehow managed to get side-tracked (like I always do) with updating my site, lots of reading, exams, and even writing a small game.

But now, I also have a real incentive to practise further as I'm off to uni in the autumn to study music (plus computing)! Yay! It'll be the university of East Anglia - can't wait :)

But it's down to a couple of reasons that really put me off the piece for so long. Firstly, the keyboard I was using to practise was limited to four octaves. This makes the high notes somewhat tricky to reach ;) ..Secondly, the beginning of the third page really put me off... Here's a midi courtesy of Classical Archives.com (yes - I've been writing about it for long enough, you now have permission to finally hear it ;)

The tricky part is the part just after the big chromatic scale drop at 50 seconds, but especially from 53 - 56 seconds. To get it right, I have to practise over, over and over again, more so than anywhere on the first two pages (and some of those parts were tricky). It's hard because you have to go really fast, span a whole octave (bigger hands than mine would probably make this easier), and play some tricky notes all at the same time. But at least now I have a full size keyboard to reach the upper notes, and occasional access to a proper piano so I can get the dynamics (quiet and loud) right.

Anyway, playing the piece after a year (occasionally inbetween) was an interesting experience. Just like riding a bike, you never forget how. Though, okay, it did take a around 20 minutes to get back to quality of playing that I was at last year.

Finally, I'm not just limiting myself to this one piece - I'll be trying to improve my awful sight reading ('sight reading' is where you have to play a piece you've never seen before). At the moment, I'm up to grade 7 in piano, but my sight reading is probably grade 2 standard (possibly up a couple of grades due to practise in the last two weeks though :D).

Oh yeah, thanks both for your (year old) comments!