Monthly Archives: May 2009

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4 May, 2009 5:28 AM / Leave a Comment /

Date: 03 May 2009

Practice Time: 1 hour

Material Practiced:

Scales: B-Major: 2-Octave Scale & Contrary Motion

Time Spent: 30 Minutes

Hanon: Review of Exercises 2&3

Time Spent: 15 Minutes

Pieces: Bach – Polonaise & Minuet

Time Spent: 15 Minutes

Comments: Hello everybody, today I practiced after taking yesterday off. I started with a cold opening of the Bach Polonaise. Everything went fine until I reached the last phrase, until I made a flub. I corrected it and it took me about 3 tries to play the piece through without any mistakes. I then went on to the scales and did the same routine as last time, except I was able to play the octave motion a little faster, and I mastered the contrary motion at 60 BPM, so next time I’ll try it at 80 BPM. I don’t really agree with Chang’s claim that the B-major scale is easier to play than the C-major scale – personally, I think while the B-major is a lot easier to play than it seems on paper, the black keys are still more slippery than the white ones so it’s harder to be accurate. After finishing up the scales I played about 15 minutes of Hanon, and then took a five minute break. Afterwards, I did some more repetitions of the Polonaise to reinforce my memory, and then I started to review the 2nd Minuet. I played slowly and made a lot of mistakes at first, but after a try or two I was able to play the first half of the piece at a reasonable tempo without mistakes, though I thought my articulation could use some work. Next time I’ll start on the second half of the piece to finish my review.

As for my hands, they’re ok, but my right index finger felt a bit weak today. It’s not nearly as bad as that weird feeling I felt back in the winter, but as a precation I don’t want to push it. So I may or may not play tomorrow, I’ll decide in the afternoon after watching the condition of that finger.

Posted in: Logs

2 May, 2009 5:59 PM / Leave a Comment /

Date: 01 May 2009

Practice Time: 1 Hour

Material Practiced:

Scales: Review of C-Major 2-Octave Scale, Contrary Motion, Motion in 3rds & 6ths, Triads, Cadences, 2-Octave Single-handed Arpeggios, and Dominant 7th Arpeggios. Also began work on 2-Octave B-Major Scale, along with Contrary Motion at 60 BPM.

Time Spent: 30 Min.

Hanon: Review of Exercises 1&2 @ 60 BPM.

Time Spent: 15 Min.

Pieces: Cold Practice of Bach Anh. 119

Comments: First of all I would like to thank all of my friends for their support on Facebook and otherwise in my recovery process!

I’m still taking it easy, limiting my practice time to about 1 hour. Today I’m not going to practice so that’ll give me an opportunity to rest  my hands. I began my session with a “cold” opening – which means I played a piece straight from memory without warming up. The purpose of this is to be prepared to play anything without the need to warm up. A musician should expect to do this a lot – to be called upon to play without being given an adequate amount of time to warm up. So I was able to play BWV Anh. 119 from memory without any mistakes, which was good.

I then began to work on my scales. I started with a review of C-Major, and it turns out in these months I’ve lost a lot of speed, but I still remember the patterns so I was able to build up my speed rather quickly since I didn’t have to relearn the finger patterns. So right now I can probably play around 60-70% of my maximum velocity.

Since my recovery is still in its early stages, I thought this would give me a chance to try something new. According to Chang, Chopin taught his students to play the B-major scale before the C-major scale. This seems counter-intuitive because the B-major scale uses all the black keys, which would make it seem like a relatively difficult scale. But according to Chang, this is not the case due to a few reasons: first, the black keys let you play with your fingers straight, whereas with the C-major scale you have to curl your fingers. Secondly, the motion of the thumb is in sync when playing the B-major scale, and the transitions happen at the same time in both the left and right hands, where as this is not the case in the C-major scale. Thirdly, the B-major scale lets the player practice the “thumb-over” motion, which is used to play fast passages during which one must use the thumb to reposition the hand.

So I decided to go straight to the B-major scale rather than review the G-Major and D-major scales. It was very interesting, indeed, I had to keep my fingers straight and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. contrary motion, though of course, was still pretty challenging since the thumb transitions aren’t in sync. Since I don’t have a teacher yet, I’m still don’t know for sure how the “correct” thumb-over motion is supposed to feel like, but the motion I felt was definitely different from the one I used on the C-major scale.

I closed my session with some Hanon, which was much like practicing the C-major scale, since I noticed that I still remembered the finger patterns, but I couldn’t play as fast as I had previously. So I kept the speed at 60 BPM, which is around 56% of the recommended maximum speed.

As for the condition of my hands, there was no pain, which was good. I did notice a little soreness in my right hand which probably came from fatigue. So, that’s why I’m taking the day off today. I don’t feel any of that soreness now, so I’m probably recovering, which is good.

Today is a double-post, so I’ll include the previous day’s practice below:

Date: 30 April 2009

Practice Time: 1 Hour

Material Practiced:

Scales: Review of C-Major 2-Octave Scale, Contrary Motion, Motion in 3rds and 6ths, Triads, Cadences, 2-Octave Arpeggios, and Dominant 7th Arpeggios.

Time Spent: 15 Minutes

Hanon: Review of Exercise 1

Time Spent: 15 Minutes

Pieces: Review of BWV Anh. 119 – Polonaise

Time Spent: 30 Minutes

Comments: So, this was the first day back to practicing. It was pretty much an impulsive choice, as after class was over I thought to myself, “Hey, I feel like practicing today!” So, I headed over to the music building, got myself a practice room, and started practicing scales. I didn’t bring my metronome with me so I guess my tempo was around 60 BPM. I played considerably slower, though I noticed that a lot of my muscle memory remained. I also reviewed my Hanon, and I made sure to keep it slow so I wouldn’t over exert myself. I also reviewed the Polonaise, which to my surprise, I still had memorized.

My hands felt pretty good, no pain, but my fingers still lock a little, but that doesn’t interfere with my playing, really. The main thing I’m worried about is just getting my confidence back, which I hope will come with time.

Posted in: Logs

1 May, 2009 2:06 AM / 1 Comment /

To my musician friends and teachers:

I suppose I should have made this public sooner, but I wasn’t sure about myself then, but I am now. I decided to tag all of you since as musicians, you of all people should have some understanding of what I’m going through. If you’re wondering where I’ve been all this time, you should know that I’ve been spending the semester rehabilitating some injuries that I sustained last year, and again about four months ago. Anyways, beginning sometime around March of 2008, I began to experience pain in both my shoulders along with a nasty grinding noise that accompanied the bowing motion of my arm. I honestly had no idea what was going on since I didn’t even practice that much – around 3 hours/day compared to the 12 hours/day that a few of my friends do. For the time  being, I just thought pain was something that musicians had to live with. I’ve heard that Pinchas Zukerman constantly takes Advil to ameliorate the constant pain that he has. So, I gutted it out for about 9 months until my viola playing deteriorated to an unacceptable level. At the time, my piano playing was still OK, so I called it quits on viola and started focusing on the piano.

Things were going great until I started feeling that weird feeling that I explained in the last post. Indeed,  I did practice the full 3 hours the day after, but I have since forgotten what material I played and how it sounded so I won’t update this blog with that information. Anyways, on that day I simultaneously dislocated the extensor tendons in five of my fingers. So, all of a sudden most of my daily tasks became very uncomfortable, such as typing, cooking, brushing my teeth and so on and so forth, so I decided to see a doctor. I first saw a doctor at the sports medicine clinic at UT, who decided to give me a few blood tests to rule out some common conditions that she suspected me to have. When I got the results back most of them were normal, but I had a speckled pattern of anti-nuclear antibodies, and I had a borderline ANA Titer of 1:40. In otherwords, the tests indicated a presence of abnormal antibodies in my blood. She suspected that I might be showing signs of early Rheumatoid Arthritis, a disease where the body’s immune system attacks it’s own connective tissue, such as tendons, ligaments, and cartilage, which could possibly explain the dislocations in my fingers.

So, I went to a Rheumatologist and she ran some more specific tests for RA and other autoimmune diseases. I remember being scared shitless after seeing the positive result on that last test. Thankfully the more specific tests showed normal levels, so the Rheumatologist concluded that I most likely didn’t have RA or the other diseases she tested me for, to my relief. She did say that the positive ANA Titer did leave me at risk for future autoimmune disorders, so I’d have to keep an eye on that.

About a month ago, I started feeling numbness in both my hands, legs, and face, so the Rheumatologist sent me to a Neurologist who did a nerve conductivity test to make sure my nerves were functioning properly. It was pretty cool I guess – she stuck a bunch of needles in my arms and legs and used a machine to control the movement of my fingers and toes using electrical currents.  So it turns out that I have Ulnar Nerve Entrapment along with Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome, to my surprise. We still have no idea if the numbness has anything to do with the dislocations in my hands so I’m still in the process of seeing doctors to get a diagnosis. Two weeks ago I started having vertigo, which still persistently annoys me.

I have a few speculations as to what’s causing all this, but I won’t know for sure until I get a diagnosis from a medical professional. For one thing, I’m a hypermobile person. This helps most musicians, but for some people it causes a lot of pain and difficulty. I can do a lot of things that most people shouldn’t – for example, I can bend all of my fingers backwards and make them touch my forearms. I can do the splits, and so on and so forth. I’ve read that hypermobile people do tend to suffer more from tendon dislocation and nerve entrapment than most people do. So maybe it’s that, but I don’t know. I saw a hand specialist over spring break and he said there was a surgery to correct the dislocations, but if I didn’t root out the cause of the problem, the dislocations would recur and I’d be back where I started. So, my current plans are to see another specialist in May to see if he can give me some insight. He’s the team doctor for the Houston Astros, and I heard he’s good. Pretty neat, huh?

So during the semester, I’ve spent most of my free time going to the gym to improve my muscular strength and stability. I also started doing cardiovascular exercise to improve my fitness as well. So I ended up having a lot of free time since I haven’t been in orchestra and haven’t been practicing. I got around to running about 7 miles/a day and feeling great until I hurt my ankle. I have no idea what that was but there was a lot of pain and grinding noise that came from my left ankle as I walked. So, in the meantime I started using the elliptical to maintain my cardio. I used to think it was a machine for women and unmanly men, but it’s actually harder than it looks. So, after my ankle healed I decided to go for a two mile run and that felt great, so the next day I did three miles, and the day after that I did three miles again. And then, I ended up getting shin splints so it’s been frustrating. My shins feel a lot better now, so I’ll probably go running again, but more gradually this time. Anyways, strength training has been great. I’ve seen good improvement in my shoulders and hands. My shoulders don’t hurt nearly as much as they did before and they’re almost back to normal. My fingers still lock in place but they’ve slowly been regaining their range of motion.

Today I decided to practice for the first time in a long time. I kept my session short – about an hour long, to test the waters. I practiced C-major scales, arpeggios chords, and cadences, along with a little bit of Hanon, and the Bach Polonaise. To my surprise, I still had it memorized. So there wasn’t any pain today, and I felt pretty good. Tomorrow I plan to play too, and I’ll still keep my practice session short. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get going again. Most people don’t know how playing an instrument can vastly improve your memory if you memorize everything you play. Last semester, my memory was so good that I was able to get all A’s without even studying. But this semester hasn’t been so good. I have to actually study and I’m making mistakes on my tests. But my grades are still relatively good.

Anyways, I’m just asking you all for your support and I’m eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to play with all of you when I was healthy. I understand that most people in the world don’t have the opportunity to play classical music, so I know that I should be grateful for the opportunities chance has given me. I miss it a lot though and I hope to get back to practicing soon.

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