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[Day 37]

Gym - Light, Glute-focused Lower Body 💪
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Today was brutal. Coming off of being out of town the DOMS from my overly intense upper body day were hitting me hard. The irregular sleep and lack of consistently good food choices while out of town all caught up to me on this leg day. I made it through, but I was dragging.

If my DOMS continue until tomorrow, I may have to take an extra day off of lifting and just do some heavy cardio. My pecs, front delts, bis and tris all feel absolutely demolished. And when just trying to do hanging leg raises, I had to give up due to the intense near tearing sensation in my lats.

I suspect tomorrow my lower body is going to feel like it got hit by a truck as well.

Organ 🎵
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I got my new organ shoes. Much better than the previous ones, particularly in heel height and I got them a tad smaller. They are snug, but not overly so. There's not a lot of play in the toe, which is what I was aiming for. I'm sure once they break in they'll be extra comfy.

I was a little less accurate and they'll take some getting used to. I tried some Gouin just to specifically feel out the heel action, then jumped into The Complete Organ Method mostly reviewing material. I also decided to add extended range staggered octave scales since the written examples in the book were giving me such fits. Slowly, but surely that is improving.

Trumpet 🎵
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Did my flow studies in the previously mentioned manner focusing on working from different sets. Really enjoying it.

Then I dabbled with a few simple etudes from the Kopprasch 60 Selected Studies I picked up at the convention. Most of this is maintenance work essentially, but I just need to play enough to build the sort of chops foundation I need to be able to focus on the range work I'm intending to do.

Piano 🎵
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It's been a pretty intense day of piano. I did detail work on most of my current accompaniments and read through the rest.

My wife played through Crusell with me. At the tempo she was reading it with me I was essentially performance ready, but the actual soloist will be going quite a bit faster. I did find that it's probably the easiest accompaniment to hide in. The clarinet is busy and despite the accompaniment being fairly tricky, it's harmonically straight forward enough to fake your way out of lots of spots without being caught.

Our run of the Rossini was exactly the opposite. Despite it probably being the easiest from a technical standpoint and being fairly straight forward, there were just a lot of spots where it was hard to line things up. As predicted, she pushed the tempo (and I let her get away with it) during an easy section only to cause us to both go "Oh #$%@" when we got to the bits that require faster subdivision in her part.

Unfortunately, the whole thing feels like it drags and is obviously meant to be played at a blisteringly virtuostic tempo, but the student playing it probably won't be able to perform it even as quickly as my wife was essentially sightreading it. I'll have to make sure my part is rock solid to catch him.

Drum Set 🎵
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I dabbled a bit with the drum set we picked up cheap a while back. I got some good books to work from. One of the books I think I will start recommending to pianists. Many of the problems pianists have is understanding vertical alignment and rhythmic composites.

This book essentially just lays different rhythms against a straight, steady quarter note. While this can be used and explored with multiple limbs on the drum, a pianist could just as easily take these exercises and use them to pat rhythms on their lap (alternating putting the quarters in the right/left while putting the more complex rhythm in the opposite hand and then switching).

In fact, I think this might be one of THE answers to the question of "what can I practice away from the piano." Anyone going on vacation should get this book and drill through it. It's immensely cheaper and more approachable than the Ottman.

As far as drum specifics go. While I obviously have some coordination advantages, I'm also keenly aware of the subtle unevenness in my playing that's driving me nuts. This is owed mostly to be just not having settled into technical efficiency obviously.

[Monthly] July was a month of...guitar! I'm following this book and made it to book 2 after enthusiastically practicing for 1+ hours everyday. I thought that a few months of violin would help with the finger pain at the start, but nope! At least it only lasted a few days...so maybe it helped after all? Currently learning chords, slowly shifting to first and second positions, and working on overall smoothness of finger transitions. Also practicing playing multiple notes at a time, like in piano. I'm starting to recognize some common note combinations, woot woot. And at least there's no bass clef to worry about. 😂 I'm also working on various other etudes/exercises for fun, so I don't get too bored!

I hope to work slowly but steadily on this second book and see how far I get by the end of the month! Hopefully I can learn a nice little piece to play for my mom when she comes back home next month :D

I hope you are all having a swell summer! Let me know what's up!