It's been a good practice day!

How many hours have I practice today? I'm not sure. It's really hard to keep track when you do it all piecemeal. But tonight I sat down after dinner to play through everything one last time. I'm about halfway memorized on Chopin's 4th Ballade, and about 3/4 memorized on Rachmaninoff's 4th piano concerto. For the third piece for my jury, I'm preparing "Midsummer's Nocturne" by Copland. I was thrilled when I finished practicing and my husband chimed, "You sound great!" He almost never compliments my playing, so I felt that was a real compliment. And I will say, I'm sounding great.

I have a new practice strategy that some of you might want to try. Because of the studies that I've read stating the value of mental practice, and that mental practice is almost more helpful than actual physical practice, I've decided to include it in my practice strategy in a more deliberate way. Some of you know that I practice my music in small sections (1/2 a measure to 4 measures, depending on the difficulty of the music). Usually I try to play each section 10 times perfectly before I move on to the next section. With memorization, this is very helpful for me. So I decided to take lucky 3 and lucky 7 and do mental practice on the 3rd and 7th time through a section. I don't always remember to, but when I do, I think it's helpful. It gives my hands a chance to rest, and gives me more focus for all the other times. Give it a try and tell me what you think.