Hey Blog,

I am writing for my music midterm check-in and I’m super excited to tell you about my progress! I have been learning Prince of Heaven on the piano and last week I talked about some of the struggles I have been having with the piece. Despite these struggles, I spent this week really focusing on my piece.

For this term check-in, my goal was to be able to play the right hand smoothly and all the way through without stopping. And I did it! I spent a lot of time practicing this week in preparation for my personal deadline. Rather than simply trying to find a piano around campus, I booked the individual practice room several times; booking it guaranteed that I would have a space to practice and forced me to be there to practice.

The link to the video is here: https://youtu.be/735NxA4EoKM

I had a friend film the video for me because I realized that I wouldn’t be able to play and hold my phone to film and I don’t have a tripod. The song has three verses and goes through the chorus twice.

I found it easy to play (especially since I had just come off a week of daily practice). However, I found that the timing was the hardest thing to keep steady. Without my left hand or a recording of the song playing in the background, I was worried I would speed up the song. There are some points in the song where there is solely the left hand playing; this forced me to count the beats out in my head to make sure I did not get off beat. In the video, you can sometimes see me bopping my head and hands up and down – this is how I kept a steady beat.

I wanted to self-evaluate my work so here are “two stars and a wish” about my video:

Star – I played it all the way through without hesitations or stopping.

Star – I played it with correct fingering and correct timing.

Wish – I played one note early and had to play it twice because of this mishap; next time, I should make certain it’s the correct time to play.

I have really enjoyed diving into this piece and I can’t wait to learn the left hand!

Logging off for now,

COordt 🙂