Be careful what you wish for..........

So......I said I needed to challenge my abilities on the piano. So......I volunteered to help Dale Jesse and test out his arrangements as he puts them into sheet music to sell. So.....he sent me the first piece. ARGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is a beautiful piece. He took Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A-minor (that I actually could play at one time), Carol of the Bells and O Holy Night and tied them all together.

He sent it to me on Saturday the 7th and I was given a week to play it and then give him feed back. First obstacle: I don't have a printer. Second obstacle: I couldn't find my jump drive and kept forgetting to buy one until yesterday. So I didn't get it printed out until today.

It actually isn't that hard of a piece but it looks a little intimidating so I went to his play list on his FB site and listened to it while I followed along reading the music. The music he sent me has no dynamics written on it yet. I've already found a couple of problems with the way he's written some of the rhythms, they don't quite work out the way they are suppose to (at least for me they don't). Plus I just want to be perfect at it......like yesterday.

Then the two Christmas songs we are singing for choir have some tricky accompaniment. They are really neat arrangements of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear". I'm used to Rhonda picking out songs that I just have to run through the accompaniment a couple of times and I'm good. These will take a little practice time.

Then the piece Robin brought over that she is singing on the 22nd. It's called "The Olive Tree". Pretty song but the accompaniment has the triplets from hell in it.

So I will be putting in a lot of piano time because that is the way I roll. I practice and practice until my hands ache and then I practice some more. Why? Because I have to be perfect!!!! I blame it on my piano teacher that I had the longest Mrs. Wasden from when we lived in Colorado Springs.

She gave out gold stars for perfection within specified time frames depending on the piece of music. Then at recital the student that had the most gold stars received an award and a box of chocolates. I can proudly say that I was the recipient of this honor every year that I took from her.

Also she wouldn't let us play for the recital unless we had both pieces (we each played 2 songs) memorized and perfected. So you see besides the fact that I am a perfectionist already Mrs. Wasden just made it worse.