Picking Up the Pieces

I think I'll be ready to make a graduation video for After You've Gone by mid-month ... and that's despite being nearly derailed after weeks of progress. The culprit? The pedal. Or the lack of one. I explain more in the video: I've made a lot of progress on this project over the last couple of weeks. The left hand jumps feel genuinely automatic now, and I honestly had started to wonder if it would ever get there. The right hand is doing what it needs to do, and I have to admit that my rolls and punches are sounding really nice. Even the improvisation is starting to click, though that's the part that still needs the most work. But then I cut the pedal, and it was like learning a different piece. I almost never play completely pedal-free, unless maybe it's Bach ... and even then I'll sneak a little in. So removing it in stride piano—where I primarily used it to connect my rolled tenths—was kind of a shock to my system. It threw off my timing, my tone expecta...

 Here is my PWJ recital performance of "You Are My Sunshine," starting at around 51:20. I am a big nerd and forgot to put the cat toy away, but I'm still very glad I got through this without any major mishaps.

March: Where the Plans Went Awry March is almost over, and my spreadsheet tells a pretty clear story: I missed most of my targets. I had planned to spend 65% of my time on Core work, split evenly between Foundations, Skills, and After You’ve Gone. In reality, Core ended up at 49% , and within that, Skills took over, with modulation and transposition getting most of my attention. Foundations and After You’ve Gone got the short shrift. In hindsight, the reasons aren’t all that complicated. First, I picked up “Danny Boy,” which wasn’t in the plan . It’s built on the Misty progression, so I told myself it could count toward Foundations, but most of the actual work was on modulation and transposition. So Skills ballooned, and everything else got squeezed out. And then I ended up dropping "Danny Boy" after all, so now that feels like it was wasted time (though it was good to work on the skills). Second, YAMS took more time than expected. It ended up at about a third of my practic...

It is so good to be back in "After You’ve Gone." I was a little afraid the three-week break would undo everything, but the first section is still there. I think that’s a testament to the effectiveness of the practice techniques I’ve picked up from Piano With Rebecca B and Molly Gebrian . This week I’m back in the solo section. The idea here is pretty straightforward: build the right-hand melody mostly from the notes already sitting in the left-hand chords. I really like this approach: fewer decisions, more actual playing. I made this short practice video yesterday, walking through where I am in the process. This phase of the AYG journey makes me really appreciate how Piano With Jonny structures things. It’s not that the steps are easy—they’re not—but they’re broken down in a way that makes them doable. First, block the right-hand chords while keeping a steady, blocked four-on-the-floor pattern in the left hand. Then start breaking up the right hand—one or two notes at a ti...

After writing down my new "required" and "optional" lists for the lead sheet courses , I realized I'd literally done everything on the list for Lead Sheets Lesson 6. And I thought I had at least two more weeks to go before I'd be ready to move on. So last night, instead of having a standard practice session on Lesson 6, I made this video, shared it with the PWJ group, and called it a day. I also decided to axe the Danny Boy Challenge . The music is so beautiful, but the intermediate version doesn't feel challenging enough (hence my desire to "make it my own project"), and the advanced version ... well, I don't want to say it's too hard, because I could sit down and play it from the sheet music right now. But the concepts—extensions, alterations, etc.—are beyond what I'm learning now, and it just took too much mental energy to both play it and understand it (much less transpose it). This time next year I'll have a better handle ...

I've been working through the Lead Sheet Level 4 courses for a while now, transposing to multiple keys, experimenting with different styles, doing some improvisation (or what might pass for it). But I keep getting stuck on one question: when is it okay to move on to the next lesson? I never feel like what I have is good enough, though I'm aware I tend to hold myself to absurdly high standards when it comes to piano. I just want someone, anyone, to say, "OK, Nina, you've done enough. Move on."  What Jonny Said  I asked Jonny about this at this week's Ask Jonny show. His response was completely valid: when to move on really depends on your goals. Which sent me back to think harder about what my goals actually are and how these courses relate to them.  My Relationship with These Courses  The lead sheet courses focus heavily on jazz ... but jazz really isn't my thing. So these lessons have been kind of like Brussels sprouts: I do them because I know they'r...