Jan 1 (Aria)

OK, I'm cheating a little bit - I started working on this one about two years ago. There was a lot that I was being sloppy about, though, and my practice time today was spent counting one particularly weird measure and making sure I held down the right notes - and more importantly, making sure I *released* the right notes. There is no pedal anywhere in this piece; any sustaining notes must be done manually, and there are some tricky ones in there. One in fact is downright impossible! I had to fudge it - and I'll need to do some close listening to better pianists than I to figure out how they deal with it.

At any rate, I won't be spending two weeks on the Aria. I did make a mistake at the end of the recording, which I left in. But in my defense, I was wrestling with Garageband and that's not my first take. My first take was actually quite a bit better, but the software stopped recording after 8 bars. Hopefully in the next couple of days I'll be happy with this one and move on to the next one - which I've also already started on.

Thanks for listening, and see you tomorrow!