Part of the reason why I record some practice sessions is that the anxiety of performing seems to strike me just as hard regardless of the performance type. A USB stick in a keyboard, or a person examining me, the anxiety is the same. Which is handy, because I can expose to myself to it before the exam!

I made so many mistakes in these practice runs because, for some reason, I start overthinking as I'm playing and that causes me to forget things I've done a million times before.

Anyway, here they are - warts and all. Not my finest, but moments of excellence in there; ish.

Debussy

Mosowski

Iles

My other thing is getting good at the piano again. I'm always quite proud of myself when I tell folks in tech that I did "half a music degree" but for a long time (2013-2025) I stopped being good at playing the piano. For a long part of that period, I didn't even have access to a piano.

In 2005, I passed Grade 7 Performance (13 years after my Grade 6 Practical) and realised that I still had a talent for it, even if I was massively out of practice. (For anyone who cares, this isn't the official performance I submitted online, as that's not allowed.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=132hdCzFZDU

Grade 8 is my target for 2026, and I'm hoping to take the exam in Summer 2026. Progress is good and I'm sharing my practice runs of the pieces, mistakes and all, online as a form of accountability. Here's my performances March 27th - Enjoy!

No.2: Scherzino (10 Pièces mignonnes) Op.77 - Moszkowski

This piece is a roast. There's not much in the way of articulation marking, except a couple of stylistic phrase markings and a bunch of dynamic markings. The biggest challenge is just playing all of the right notes, at the right speed, for the full performance.

La Fille de Cheveux de Lin - Debussy

Turns out I like this kind of music, and I didn't realise I did. It feels like you could spend an entire lifetime perfecting it, and it'll never be right. I've gone full-circle on playing with too much freedom initially, moving to learning it with a metronome, and now I'm trying to free it up again; I think I've begun to make that change fairly successfully. This is a weird one, because it's probably performance ready for the exam, but there's still things I'd like to improve.

On the Sunny Side of the Street - Arr. Iles

ABRSM classical exams always throw a few jazzy pieces in, and I gravitate towards them (note Fly Me to the Moon in the Grade 7 recording) because my grade 1-5 exams were the ABRSM jazz exams which were great fun, and stopped at grade 5. I find playing this kind of music naturally easier, just through practice but it also feels like its cheating. Jazz ensembles don't play this kind of thing. They aren't usually given long, perfectly notated, sheet music to be interpreted like a classical musician. So while it's fun to play, and should be an easy win in the exam, it's not exactly realistic of playing in a jazz ensemble.

Anyway, it's fun and 30 points in the exam. I'l take the (relatively) easy win here.

I recorded these on a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-875 via USB recording, which is why the piano sounds so unnervingly "real", yet fake. I'm not a fan, but don't own a good enough microphone to do it justice. Also, my dog sings along when I play which is majorly distracting.

In software engineering, especially as an IC, 35 means you're no longer considered young among many of your peers. That's a weird sentence to type. 35 isn't old. I don't feel old, and most people would laugh at the idea. But in this industry, it's enough tenure to start asking different questions.

I'm lucky. Fifteen years into a career I love, I get to show up every day and build cool stuff on the internet. The people I work with are great. By any reasonable standard, I've found my place in the system. I know many of my peers feel similarly.

But there's a question that keeps coming up among those of us around this age, with about this much time in tech:

What's your other thing?

Here's what I mean. With the rise of generative AI, the dopamine hit of building something from scratch - toiling away to debug every tiny issue, shaping raw logic into something that works has started to feel like a waste of time. There's stuff to build, and AI can sweat the small stuff so I can focus on the big, audacious visions. That's a genuine joy. But it removes the crafting part of the job. Or at least the part of crafting that I, personally, got satisfaction from.

Progress is going to progress. There's nothing I can do about that, and I'm content to use AI at work. It makes me more productive, it keeps my employer happy, and the work is still interesting in a different way.

But the thing that filled my cup outside of work? That was also coding. Building things on my own time, for the love of the craft. And I know I'm not alone in that.

Which leaves two options:

Refuse to use AI. Code everything by hand. Sure, I could do that. And I'd get left behind. Progress will continue whether I participate or not. This benefits nobody, least of all me.

Fill the crafting gap elsewhere. My personality thrives on toiling over small, difficult problems. I got genuine joy from a class of technical puzzles that will probably not exist for much longer. That's the gap.

So find the thing that fills it. Whatever AI has hollowed out for you, find a way to put something back. It's a normal thing to feel, even if it's happened faster than any of us expected. Filling that gap is what will let you keep loving your work - without mourning the parts of it that are no longer asked of you.

My other thing is throwing myself head-first in to getting good at the piano again.