Break time

It’s spring break, so that means my Monday and Wednesday for this week are free from band practice and free from pressure to demonstrate a little progress and improved capability in playing the five pieces we are learning.

Yeah, right.

All it means is I’ve got to continue to practice and improve and demonstrate twice as much improvement once we get back in the rehearsal room. The way I figure it, the director is probably going to expect these pieces to be ready to go and sounding pretty much like they are going to sound on the night of the concert, a little more than one month hence.

Just the same, if I want to take it easy and then hunker down later, this is the last week I can do so until after April 17. Good thing that my new jazz blues lesson book arrived. It gives me something to look at and makes me want to sit at the piano and learn some new stuff, and after I get tired of that, I work on tunes. Plus, my piano instructor gave me a new practice method/exercise to develop my left hand stride ability, and it allows me to play a bunch of tunes that I like, albeit in a truncated, staccato fashion built solely on quarter notes.

Long story short: spring break is no time for rest.