Practicing

A while back, I remarked upon the impulse buy of a couple piano books. That was all very well and good, except that I noticed something: I'm not that good of a pianist anymore. Well, to be fair, I never was any great shakes on the keys. I was more impressive than, say, most people who've never taken lessons, and I was furthermore competent enough to pass the piano proficiency exam then required of music majors at Kenyon College. Still, I was very limited as a pianist. I took lessons for 6 or 7 years when I was younger (up through 10th grade) before dropping it because I grew too busy with high school things. Whatever I was, I wasn't as good as 6 or 7 years of study should leave one. The problem was that I didn't have the passion for it to sit down and practice with the necessary regularity.  Practice, they say, makes perfect; not practicing usually doesn't.
As I said, I had to pass a proficiency exam in college, for which the department provided some lessons for free, starting in the sophomore year. The summer prior to that, I decided to take piano lessons again, this time from a nun at a nearby convent (I also, on a whim, took some Latin lessons with another nun). I really got into the piano lessons (less so with the Latin) and made good progress that summer. When I went back to school in the fall, I put myself into my lessons wholeheartedly and made good progress. I also made the mistake of passing the exams at the end of the year, which meant no more free lessons for me.
That, my friends, was the last formal piano schooling I had. Since then, my attention to the instrument has been sporadic at best. This is not, in case you hadn't figured it out, a formula for improvement--quite the opposite, in fact. In my job as a music teacher, I was forced to maintain some sort of relationship with the instrument, but it was a passing acquaintance at best.
So. While I was looking at piano books on Amazon, I came across a book called Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises -- Complete Piano Technique by C.L. Hanon. The reviews were good and it seemed like a good idea, to work on my basic technique. At some point after I stopped taking lessons, I realized that one of the factors that had held me back was poor fundamental technique. My teacher hadn't been strict about proper technique and I didn't know any better, so I developed a lot of lazy habits that hampered my development. I am hoping that this $7 book, if diligently applied, can make a real difference in my playing ability.
It arrived yesterday evening and this evening before watching Lost I spent almost an hour on the first exercise. These exercises are patterns meant to develop "agility, independence, strength and perfect evenness in the fingers, as well as suppleness of the wrists... furthermore, these exercises are calculated to render the left hand equally skilful with the right." All of this, of course, is found amidst flowery late-19th-century prose, but still, I feel like I can trust this Hanon fellow.
The practice of these exercises is conducted with a metronome to keep time and one gradually speeds up how fast one plays these exercises, starting at a metronome marking of 60 (1 beat each second) and speeding up to a marking of 108 (just under two beats per second). In my near-hour of practice, I didn't get there. Not even really close, and that's just one exercise, 1/60th of the whole book. It was kind of frustrating at times when I couldn't make my fingers do what I wanted them to do as fast as I wanted them to do it, but on the whole I really enjoyed the practice. It can be like a form of meditation. My fingers are a bit tired, but I feel like I made some good progress tonight and, what's more, I already want to get back to practicing again.

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