Rhythm of the Week

Anchored by my lesson on Fridays, the musical aspect of my week has developed a distinct rhythm.

Saturday: The day after my lesson. My lesson usually gives me a lot of food for thought, so in that sense I should be able to get a lot out of a Saturday practice session. However, practicing on Saturdays requires me to drive 7.5 miles from home to Practice Facility (and back) when I would typically have no other reason to do so. So…I practice maybe 40% of Saturdays.

Sunday: When I haven’t practiced on Saturday, I simply must practice on Sunday, or I might as well write off the whole week. Besides, practicing on Sunday tends to be a leisurely thing. I can practice in the middle of the afternoon and not have to watch the clock—a very different situation from my practice during the work week.

Monday: Practicing after work tends to come easily to me on Mondays, though I do have to watch the clock to make sure I leave enough time for evening obligations at home. I have the luxury of not having to get worried yet if my etude, scale work, and/or piece still sound like crap.

Tuesday: No practice due to a standing Tuesday evening obligation. 

Wednesday: The weakest link. I always intend to practice on Wednesdays, but work tends to go long, and my energy level seems to be low. I am also starting to feel the pressure because I know that if I skip practicing on Wednesday, I have (realistically) only one more practice session before my lesson. I did practice Wednesday of this week, and it was horrific! Here are my lame excuses for why:

• I practiced in a new place—call it Alternative Practice Facility (APF). I wasn’t 100% sure how much of my noise was getting out and didn’t know who could be walking by and hearing me, but knew it could be some people who know me in my non-musical life, so I was playing self-consciously. That’s never good. 
• APF had no stand, and I had not brought my own. Had to jerry-rig a way to keep my music upright. 
• I was wearing a skirt, so whenever I played on the E string, my bow hand ran into fabric. I couldn’t practice standing up due to the aforementioned jerry-rigged pseudo music stand. I need to relearn how to play in a skirt.
• I had not pressured myself to make much progress on Kreuzer #6 on Sunday and Monday (“Plenty of time left this week to practice!”), so the last two or three lines were still a bit of a train wreck. On Wednesday, I was telling myself that I only had one more day to get it together. It didn’t help.
• I had not pressured myself to make much progress on the last half page of Bach on Sunday and Monday... (see above.)

Thursday: A must-practice day; the last chance to get things together before my lesson. Not coincidentally, I tend to practice longest (maybe 75 minutes) on Thursdays. Luckily, things usually come together by then (by my standards), so I feel fairly comfortable going into my lesson.

Friday: I go straight from work to my lesson, and have 15 or 20 minutes to warm up very quietly with a practice mute—there is no practice room-type place to air it out and accomplish anything. Within my lesson, though, and mentally, I accomplish a lot thanks to Ms. L.’s good advice.

So in a lazy week, I practice three times (Sunday, Monday, Thursday). (Wow! That sounds incredibly lazy.) In an average week, I practice four times (Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday). In a diligent week, I practice five times (Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday).

Captain Obvious says that if I am going to make more progress, I need to aim for more diligent weeks. In the meantime, I just need to learn from these wise words I found in magnetic poetry yesterday near Alternative Practice Facility:

Author unknown. Photo by TR, 22 February 2012