Kally Bryant's Senior Blog

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 imp...

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 ...