Kally Bryant's Senior Blog

Tuesday - May 23rd, 2023 @ 5:30 pm Hours today: 4 Hours total: 61 Today I started the morning by uploading every video I have from the last two weeks onto my computer. This took painstakingly long and I wanted to cry out of frustration. Not all of them are uploaded yet but they will be by tonight. After a long while of that, I went to see Cheryl again and pick up some stuff from her. We chatted for a while about the entirety of my project and went over a few things, before I got lunch and came up to Proctor to get some final recordings. Today was by far my most frustrating day yet, especially when I was trying to get the recordings. Both the chapel and the music studio were locked when I got here and I had to ask a faculty member to let me in. The pianos in the music studio are not nearly as nice as the chapel but I had to take what I could get. I spent so long recording before I could get one that was half decent, and then I had to keep recording more just in case that good one wasn’t

Monday - May 22nd, 2023 @ 4:00 pm Hours today: 4 Hours total: 57 Today I had to drive my brother to school, so I got an early start to practicing after getting a quick coffee with Helen. The two of us immediately started with practicing Vienna , by Billy Joel, since we are playing it at graduation. It went very well, considering that I haven’t been able to practice with her for two months while she was in Europe, but I definitely need to practice a bit more before Saturday. I then started working on Fantasie for a good two hours. I didn’t work on anything in particular today, just clearing up parts in preparation for recording tomorrow. I then left Proctor to go see Cheryl. I played with her for about an hour and a half, and we wrapped up the piece together, working on bits and pieces here and there to make the piece all the more better. Even though I didn’t make substantial process on anything in particular today, I put in a lot of work and I’m content. This is the chord music that I

Saturday - May 20th, 2023 @ 11:00 am Hours today: 3 Hours total: 53 Today, I was planning on sleeping in but was not able to, so I just decided to start practicing and get the day done earlier. I spent the day at home again, but actually stayed focused and worked for a solid three hours. I focused a lot on the articulation of the second page and beginning of the third page. That section has accents on the first note of each set of four for the first phrase, then it switches to accents on the second note of each set of four. I’ve been having a very hard time with that, and can’t really seem to get the accent on the second notes, probably because my hands are relatively small and it’s hard for me to play forcefully with my pinky. But it definitely got a little bit better throughout the day. I wasn’t able to work on dynamics as much as I’d liked to have since my piano isn’t super capable of making any sorts of dynamics. My pedal was clicking and bothering me so I tried playing without the

Saturday - May 20th @ 12:00 pm Weekly reflection 2 This week, I didn’t make quite as progress as last week, which was kind of disappointing. Much of what I’m working on now is fine details, such as tempo, dynamics, articulation, and voicing, and I’m having a harder time staying motivated when it’s harder to see the progress that I am making (since it is less significant than learning the actual notes and rhythms). That being said, I definitely worked very hard and learned how difficult it is to make a piece sound performance quality. I could definitely feel myself gaining a better understanding of the piece as a whole while working on all of the dynamics and such. I think that in the next few days, before I get my final recording, I will definitely be able to execute the piece better now that I’ve worked on the fine details. I also definitely improved my sight reading skills this week, as I tended to get bored while working on Fantasie Impromptu . Sight reading is so much fun because I

Friday - May 19th, 2023 @ 3:30 pm Hours today: 4 Hours total: 50 Today I wanted to get up and grind, so I took Ray to school and went to the music studio and worked for three hours straight. I started to play Fantasie when I realized that I might actually have memorized the entire thing. I still can’t play it at performance quality, and I need to work on dynamics, articulation, and tempo, but at least I can play it all memorized. I played it through without the music; the middle section was super rough as it’s slower so less muscle memory is involved, but I was super proud of myself for being able to do it. Below is a recording of one of my memorized attempts. As you can see, there are many times where I get lost and have to really focus on where to go next. As I mentioned before, I still need the music so that I can work on dynamics and articulation, so that is what I will be working on in the next few days. Once I left the music studio, I played a little bit more when I got home bef

Thursday - May 18th, 2023 @ 7:30 pm Hours today: 4 Hours total: 46 I spent the day at home, so I wasn’t quite as productive as I wasn’t super motivated to play on my crumbling piano. I worked pretty consistently for an hour on Fantasie , before going through all the sheet music I have been organizing and sight reading some fun little pieces. After making myself lunch, I repeated the same two hour cycle, working for a bit then fooling around for a bit. Even though I call it “fooling around”, sight reading is actually incredibly beneficial and I can feel myself getting much better at it just by “fooling around”. I’ve gone from sight reading simple popular tunes with easy left hand chords to being able to read easier Chopin waltzes, like Waltz in A Minor , and even parts of his Prelude in Db Major , a personal favorite of mine. I spent a little more than four hours total playing today, and even though I wasn’t quite as productive as the last few days, I still feel like I got a good amount

Wedensday - May 17th, 2023 @ 3:00 pm Hours today: 7 Hours total: 42 Today, I started off my morning organizing more sheet music at home; it’s a miserable task because of the sheer amount of stuff I have to go through. I left to take my brother to school and was lucky enough to find that the chapel was unlocked for faculty meetings, so I was able to start right at 8:45 when I got here. I worked on tempo for a super long time before my right hand got tired and started to hurt. I took a break and futzed around with YouTube and tried once again to upload some videos, one was successful but the other wasn’t. I went back to work on note accuracy and then started playing some other pieces because I got bored. My new sight reading challenge for myself is Debussy’s Reverie ; it is such a beautiful piece and it’s not very difficult so I am going to try and read a little bit more of it every day. I then fell down a YouTube rabbit hole of beautiful professional performances of my favorite pieces,

Tuesday - May 16th, 2023 @ 3:30 pm Hours today: 5 Hours total: 35 Today, I spent about an hour and a half practicing and organizing sheet music at home before driving up to Proctor to drop my brother off. That was all pretty boring and I didn’t get too much done since practicing at home is pretty miserable. After coming up here, I went out to breakfast with a friend and got to school at around noon. I helped her with her project for a quick second before starting to practice in the chapel. I worked on Fantasie Impromptu for a bit before getting bored, but I was able to play it all the way through a few times. It’s a pretty draining piece and I need to fix my posture so that I don’t get so tired midway through. Below is a (rough) video of me playing it through; I am definitely rushing and totally fell apart at the end but it’s the best vid I got today. Hopefully tomorrow I will make more progress and get some better footage.

Monday - May 15th, 2023 @ 2:30 pm Hours today: 5 Hours total: 30 Today I woke up around 9 am and slowly made my way to my piano. I didn’t really feel like being super productive so I sight read some Christmas music for a while, which is always fun. I had to look for some books which took a while because all of my music is so disorganized, and I definitely want to organize it all at some point this week. I left to go see Cheryl again at 11:30. I spent about an hour and a half with her, playing old pieces first and then showing her my progress on Fantasie Impromptu . She was really excited with how far I have gotten, as I am as well. We then spent some time playing around with a traditional Brazilian piece called Tico Tico no Fuba , a piece she had never heard but one that I have known for a while. That was super fun. After leaving her house, I drove into Concord to get food and then back home before coming up to Proctor for lacrosse practice. During all that driving, I listened to my fa

Sunday - May 14th, 2023 @ 5:00 pm Weekly reflection My biggest takeaway from this week is how much progress I can make when I dedicate a lot of time to working on something I’m excited about. I started working on this piece in March, but was only able to dedicate about two hours a week to it; but this week I’ve made so much more progress than in the last two months combined (which makes sense since 25 hours a week is a lot more than 2 hours a week). It was really crazy to see how much more of the piece I could play on Friday than I could on Monday. While it was a little hard to stay focused on some days, I would say that my practicing went as planned, and I made the progress that I had hoped to make, if not more.  I think the part of the piece that I made the most progress on is the lyrical middle section. When I played with Cheryl on Monday, I could barely play through it, hands separate. Now, I can play the entire thing hands together, with some struggle spots, but much, much improve

Saturday - May 13th, 2023 @ 4:30 pm Hours today: 3 Hours total: 25 Today I got to practice in the chapel! It was unlocked so I just walked right in and started practicing. I love playing in the chapel because everything just sounds better on the nicer piano in the nicer space. I recorded myself a bunch so that I could listen back and work on certain areas that need help. I spent two hours straight working on the entirety of the piece, focusing on timing and tempo, before moving onto some of my other pieces I’m reviewing. Below is a video of both the A, showing where I was at this morning. Hopefully by next week I will be able to play through the whole piece with limited mistakes. As you can see, I cannot play it as fast as I was trying to in this clip

Friday - May 12th, 2023 @ 3:30 pm Hours today: 4 Hours total: 22 Today started off strong; I got in a good two hours of practicing, playing through Fantasie Impromptu fully three times. Obviously, it wasn’t up to tempo and had many little struggle spots, but I was still able to play through it fully. I broke it up into sections like normal, and worked on measures 13-24 over and over again. Below is a me playing it at the beginning of the day, so it’s supposed to be much faster in reality, but I was able to speed it up quite a bit by the end. I then switched locations and went to the chapel (that piano is so much nicer) and continued to work for another half hour or so, enjoying the sound of the beautiful piano. I then just practiced some old pieces for another hour and a half or so before leaving to go help Lauren with her photography! Pretty chill day overall. Video link: https://youtube.com/shorts/zIg7WYkL08I?feature=share (Because of the format, I can't put the video in the blo

Thursday - May 11th, 2023 @ 6:00 pm Hours today: 4 Hours total: 18 Today was unfortunately not as productive as yesterday. I stayed home to practice on my own piano, despite its crumbling condition. I noticed after warming up that I had left my tote bag with all of my music in it at school :( so I did my best with an online pdf of the fantasie and grinded for about an hour. I wasn't as productive as I had hoped I would be today, so I switched to some sight reading with whatever music I had at home; I played some jazz, popular, and christmas! I tried to record some of my fun little sight reading pieces, but my phone has no storage so I have to go through and delete some stuff tonight. I took a brief break and returned to the piano for another hour of “practicing” (but really just playing the parts I already know how to play). I kept getting frustrated so I got up and left, and listened to some classical music on the way up to Proctor to close out my unproductive day of piano.  Lesso

Wednesday - May 10th, 2023 @ 1:30 pm Hours today: 5 Hours total: 14 Today was by far my most productive yet. I got to the music studio at 8:30 this morning and have not left the building as of yet. I sat down on the grand piano for the first two hours; I spent about an hour on the 3rd and 4th pages of Fantasie Impromptu , and another hour going over the middle theme. I moved to the wall piano because Alyssa had a glass in the ensemble room, and continued to work on the middle section for about another hour. Before today, I could barely play the left hand through, but by the end of my practice section I was able to play through the entire middle theme hands together! I took a break and did some sight reading (as well as a little guitar) for another hour, and spent my last hour playing through the entire piece a bunch of times, not quite up to tempo but I was still able to play from start to finish. I don’t think I have ever played for five hours straight before, so I set a new personal

Tuesday - May 9, 2023 @ 3:00 pm Hours today: 4 Hours total: 9 Today, I woke up too early but could not fall back asleep, so I got some bright and early practice at 6:30 am. After an hour I had to drive my brother to school, so we headed up to Proctor. After dropping him off, I grabbed a quick breakfast with Lauren and returned to the music studio to play some more. We did a quick photoshoot by the piano for her senior project, and then she left me to grind on the right hand of Fantasie Impromptu . I played through the entire piece on my right hand about three times before tiring out and turning to some other pieces to take a break. I returned to the fantasie and reviewed the left hand before trying to play the piece hands together - and failed miserably. But that's for tomorrow! I spent a total of three hours straight in the music studio then called it quits and went for a walk after getting lunch. Not the most successful day but one of hard work nonetheless. An early failed attemp

Monday - May 8th @ 3:00 pm Hours spent today: 5 Hours spent total: 5 Today, I woke up around 10 am and sauntered into my barn to start practicing on my crumbling baby grand with a clicking pedal and non existent dynamics. After about fifteen minutes of fooling around and playing whatever came to my mind, I started to dial in and practice the A section of Fantasie Impromptu . I spent a little less than an hour working on my own before driving into Concord to meet with Cheryl, my mentor and lifelong teacher. When I arrived at her house, we chatted for ten minutes while I played with her new puppy, Bailey, and then sat down at the piano to play for another two hours. We started with Clair De Lune , a piece I first played in middle school but have been working on bringing back, and then moved on to Liebestraum, my favorite piece of all time. I enjoyed spending about an hour on these two pieces, as Cheryl and I pointed out moments to bring out dynamics, as well as places to speed up and pla