So I figured out a jank setup to record the keys from above so HERE WE ARE!! I should probably get a proper tripod sometime but.. for now this'll have to do lol. The vibrations traveled up to my phone when I played too low or too hard so pls excuse the intermittent shaking..

Today's snapshot doesn't cover any new sections; it's a recording of all the sections that I've worked on thus far from the very start of the piece.

The first few letters are what I like to call "preamble"- there's no melody that really sticks out and the repetitive patterns build up into the first time the melody appears. I haven't really taken the time to polish anything before 1:01 and it shows lol oops. From 1:01, the jumps down to the octaves are kind of tough, especially the stretch for the ninth since I have to use my LH thumb to hit both D and E and that's not a jump (or even chord) that I'm used to, but I'm working on it slowly. The stretch isn't too bad since I am allowed to hit the octave D, but it really doesn't come naturally to hit two notes with my thumb..

1:32 is where the melody comes in for the first time and it feels quite comfortable for me now. I'm REALLY happy with the progress I've made on the arpeggios that flow outwards at 1:49!! I still stall when moving to the next micro-phrase and I need to work on connecting the phrases together, but I'm just happy the note and rhythm accuracies are there. It looks a lot more natural than it feels, so that's cool to watch. For this overall phrase, I still need to work on smoothly jumping down to the octaves while being accurate- I can feel the freezing in between jumps but currently I'm unwilling to sacrifice accuracy for smooth connections.. another work in progress.

The first half of the next phrase (2:12) wasn't that hard in retrospect but I was intimidated at first because there's some RH/LH interplay and also I just fudge the ninth at 2:19 because there's no way I can reliably hit that lol.. and I already posted the second half of the phrase in Snapshot #2. Really pleased with how comfortably I can play the sextuplets at tempo, especially with the melody still being conspicuous. Not much more to say here, I've said my piece in the previous snapshot..

There really isn't that much of the piece left but I'm just kind of lazy at this point since I've gotten past the halfway point lol. The arpeggio I was worried about seems doable with a specific fingering so I'm not as worried anymore, but there's a Lot going on in general for the rest of the piece so.. time to work at it..... more practice for jumping to octaves and also just descending octaves and also TONS OF ARPEGGIOS yippee T___^ but I can't believe I'm actually managing to nail the arpeggios I've already learned?? As someone with basically no technical background... I am amazed lol

It's pretty interesting to look back on the first post for this piece and compare with ~2 weeks later. I've made progress, but not enough to satisfy me.. I'll need to keep working hard on closing out the piece properly. A lot of the remainder of the piece is the climax and it sounds REALLY NEAT if played properly.... hoping I can do it justice.