Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

The good news is, El Pelele is memorized, and I've learned the Presto movement of Haydn's "Great" E Flat sonata. The bad news is, I bruised my thumb practicing incorrectly. Have you ever bruised your fingers practicing? I've never heard of this. It crossed my mind that maybe I have diabetes and my thumb is going to fall off. I don't think that's the case, though. I think what happened was that last week I was practicing on the piano in my teacher's studio, which is a fairly new Steinway, so it's beautiful, but a little bit stiff and dull, so I was working extra hard to make it ring. I think I was pounding, because now I have a bruise on the side of the knuckle of my thumb. How embarrassing. Apparently I don't know how to play the piano. I spend all this time telling my students to play on the tips of 1 & 5, and saying, "Up, up, up!" to my students, but apparently I'm playing "down, down, down". I need to learn how to go "up, up, up"! I don't think I can just quit practicing while my thumb heals, so I've been practicing really carefully today, up on the tip of my thumb. Duh.

After I get the Presto movement memorized, I think I'll work on learning all my other recital music, and wait on memorizing anything new till I can play it all.