Practice makes tired

Due to an extremely surprisingly small amount of homework, I spent a lot of time in the practice room this weekend. I mostly worked on one piece by Ravel that I am working on for piano right now. I spent far more time practicing in the last few days than I had in any similar period of time before. It was a huge help in learning the piece, but sucked a lot of energy out of me. I found that when people came in to talk to me while I was practicing, I was unable to concentrate on what they were saying, and could hardly keep a conversation going. While I was practicing, I could concentrate extremely well on the piece, but then as soon as I had to think about something else, it was as though a wall had been built up around my brain to protect it from extraneous thoughts...

Just some observations.

Time

I just got back from school, where I practiced for 4 hours. It was fun, and reminded me of how good it feels to put a significant amount of work into something, and to be able to see the difference. It's really a shame that I take lessons during the parts of my life during which I have the least amount of time to practice; if I could practice this much every other day, I think that I would be able to make a great amount of improvement. Perhaps I will make a more concerted effort to practice, or even to take lessons during the summer and winter breaks.

We had our concert at the Hawthorne Theater the other night, which went amazingly! It was wonderful to be able to perform in a venue which had pretty decent sound, and it felt so good that 20 or so of our friends made the trek out there and paid the money to see us perform. I hope that we will get some more opportunities to perform around Portland in the near future. I'll post some videos soon :)

What I've been listening to today:

Songs of Maurice Ravel, performed by Gerard Finley

Preludes by Debussy

Ancestor by Throw me the Statue

The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens

Ferris Wheel by the Swingle Singers

Practicing

Today, my band (it's called Bella Novella) tried out a new way of practicing, utilizing headphones, a drum machine, microphones, etc., to attempt to minimize our impact on our neighbors/housemates. It was a strange experience to sit in a garage with three others, listening to each other's instruments through headphones. I think it was a mixed bag in terms of results; on the one hand, we had to concentrate on timing to a greater extent than normal, and were able to pipe a metronome through to keep the tempo consistent (revealing some things to work on that we might not have noticed otherwise). On the other hand, it is difficult to practice on instruments/amplification different to what we use in concerts (we certainly couldn't play this way every practice, or when learning new music). However, practicing this way does open up the opportunity of practicing more often, as well as at more convenient times of the day. I imagine that us huddled in a circle around a bunch of equipment singing without accompaniment must have looked quite strange to any passers by, though!


Here's a link to our first EP

http://bellanovella.bandcamp.com/album/in-uniform



What I've been listening to today:
Symphonies 1, 4 by Mozart
Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel
Symphony No. 5 (Choral) by Philip Glass
Sun Giant EP by Fleet Foxes
Serenade by Leonard Bernstein