March 27th Piano Practice

My other thing is getting good at the piano again. I'm always quite proud of myself when I tell folks in tech that I did "half a music degree" but for a long time (2013-2025) I stopped being good at playing the piano. For a long part of that period, I didn't even have access to a piano.

In 2005, I passed Grade 7 Performance (13 years after my Grade 6 Practical) and realised that I still had a talent for it, even if I was massively out of practice. (For anyone who cares, this isn't the official performance I submitted online, as that's not allowed.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=132hdCzFZDU

Grade 8 is my target for 2026, and I'm hoping to take the exam in Summer 2026. Progress is good and I'm sharing my practice runs of the pieces, mistakes and all, online as a form of accountability. Here's my performances March 27th - Enjoy!

No.2: Scherzino (10 Pièces mignonnes) Op.77 - Moszkowski

This piece is a roast. There's not much in the way of articulation marking, except a couple of stylistic phrase markings and a bunch of dynamic markings. The biggest challenge is just playing all of the right notes, at the right speed, for the full performance.

La Fille de Cheveux de Lin - Debussy

Turns out I like this kind of music, and I didn't realise I did. It feels like you could spend an entire lifetime perfecting it, and it'll never be right. I've gone full-circle on playing with too much freedom initially, moving to learning it with a metronome, and now I'm trying to free it up again; I think I've begun to make that change fairly successfully. This is a weird one, because it's probably performance ready for the exam, but there's still things I'd like to improve.

On the Sunny Side of the Street - Arr. Iles

ABRSM classical exams always throw a few jazzy pieces in, and I gravitate towards them (note Fly Me to the Moon in the Grade 7 recording) because my grade 1-5 exams were the ABRSM jazz exams which were great fun, and stopped at grade 5. I find playing this kind of music naturally easier, just through practice but it also feels like its cheating. Jazz ensembles don't play this kind of thing. They aren't usually given long, perfectly notated, sheet music to be interpreted like a classical musician. So while it's fun to play, and should be an easy win in the exam, it's not exactly realistic of playing in a jazz ensemble.

Anyway, it's fun and 30 points in the exam. I'l take the (relatively) easy win here.

I recorded these on a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-875 via USB recording, which is why the piano sounds so unnervingly "real", yet fake. I'm not a fan, but don't own a good enough microphone to do it justice. Also, my dog sings along when I play which is majorly distracting.