Late Hands https://speleva.com/ 2026-08-02T09:00:00Z Two years in: the Chopin E minor prelude at forty beats a minutehttps://speleva.com/2026/chopin-e-minor-prelude-forty-bpm/2026-08-02T09:00:00ZThe first piece I chose because I loved it rather than because a book said so. Twenty-five measures, a left hand that moves a half-step at a time, and eleven weeks so far. Six weeks of plateau, and the two changes that ended ithttps://speleva.com/2026/six-week-plateau/2026-03-01T09:00:00ZFrom mid-January to the end of February nothing got better and some things got worse. What the log showed, and what I changed. Sight-reading one line a day, and why I hated it for three monthshttps://speleva.com/2025/sight-reading-one-line-a-day/2025-10-19T09:00:00ZA daily habit built around a single eight-measure line of music never played twice: how long each line took in July versus October, and what changed in my eyes. The first real piece: a Burgmüller arabesque and about forty hourshttps://speleva.com/2025/first-real-piece-burgmuller-arabesque/2025-06-01T09:00:00ZOp. 100 No. 2, two pages, one bad measure. What forty-one logged hours over nine weeks looked like, and the tempo ladder that eventually got it to speed. Six months of habit: the twenty-minute rule and the days I skippedhttps://speleva.com/2024/twenty-minute-rule-six-months/2024-12-15T09:00:00ZWhat the practice log says after 183 days: which weeks I missed, which time of day actually worked, and the small rule that turned good intentions into a habit. Week one: middle C, a sore wrist and a bench that was two inches too lowhttps://speleva.com/2024/week-one-middle-c-sore-wrist/2024-06-02T09:00:00ZThe first seven days at a used digital piano: finding middle C, learning why my wrist hurt by Wednesday, and the fix that cost nothing.