Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

What does it feel like to learn music under deadline pressure, the way a working musician has to? Apparently, I have given myself the chance to find out. On Monday I did a dumb thing and signed up for the Piano With Jonny Student Recital on June 18. The problem: neither of my two potential recital pieces is quite ready. If the recital were July 18, I’d be able to take my pick. But it’s June 18, which means I have about four weeks. So here’s what I’m working with. After You’ve Gone I learned Jonny May’s stride arrangement of After You’ve Gone earlier this year, but the improv solo section was giving me headaches, so I set it aside. I picked it up again a few weeks ago and found I have renewed interest and something of a vision for what it can become. I could sit down and play the version I learned earlier for the recital right now — muddle through the improv section, play the simple stock outro I added a few days ago, and call it done. And that may indeed be what I play on June 18. But...

So maybe this weekend wasn't the best weekend of my life. There was the weekend I gave birth to my daughter. The weekend I got married. And the six-month “weekend” I spent thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Still, this past weekend was pretty darn good. My daughter was working or going to friends' graduation parties, and my husband was away on a business trip, so I had the whole house to myself. And it was glorious. I practiced piano for over two hours Friday night. Nearly three hours on Sunday. And Saturday? Three hundred and thirty-seven minutes. More than five and a half hours. At least twice what I would normally practice on a Saturday. I finished the day feeling almost euphoric. Intensely alive. When I walked, I felt like I was floating. My heart felt so light, it was like a helium balloon lifting the rest of me along with it. I don't even know how to explain this weekend. So much of it I don't want to explain because it was my private weekend. I don't want to ...

I had kind of an awakening during my “After You’ve Gone” improv practice session yesterday. I didn’t realize it at the time, but as I watched the video (below), I realized I’ve hit a milestone. I’m no longer wondering “am I doing this right” but am instead thinking things like “how do I want this to sound?” I’ve stopped thinking like a student and started thinking like an arranger. But whew, it has felt like a long road to get here. The Piece and the Problem I started Jonny May’s advanced arrangement of “After You’ve Gone” in January. It’s a wonderful and challenging arrangement with stride tenths in the left hand and a swinging melody full of slides, rolls, and crunchy harmonies. And of course, Jonny encourages you to come up with an improvised solo. I struggled through the arrangement itself for a couple of months, and it sounded passably good (not great) by the end of February. But the improv section? Couldn’t do it. Even using the “easy” four-on-the-floor left hand, I just kept hit...

It’s hard to believe I’m already a week into Phase 2 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . I did have to take a couple of days of forced right-hand rest due to a mild case of stride-pianitis, but the break turned into an unexpected opportunity for left-hand work and mental practice. This morning I resumed practicing with both hands, starting with one of the strangest passages in the piece: the pedal point section. ( Here is my video from when I was first learning it.) Harmonic Mismatches Pedal point can feel like a harmonic mismatch. The bass stays the same while the upper voices change. It creates a sense of unrest, a prolonged need to resolve. It’s a wonderful little device, but hoo boy, it takes time to master. One must apply a “willing suspension of disbelief” and just learn the dang notes, trusting that yes, everything will finally, satisfyingly resolve. I go into detail on this section in my previous blog post (linked above) and also in today’s video. Essentially you...

Phase Two is that stage of learning a piano piece where you've learned the fingering, the notes, the rhythms, and the harmonic structure, but you haven’t yet started making music. It’s the stage of slow practice, dynamics work, chunking, rhythmic variations, and slowly, ever so slowly, bringing up the tempo. Phase Two is where the metronome comes into its own. And Phase Two is a grind. It’s hard. It’s nitty-gritty detail work. It feels like one step forward and two steps back, every day, every measure. It comes after the excitement of Phase One, when everything is new and progress feels obvious. Phase Two isn’t exciting the way Phase One is. But it is exciting. It’s a grind, and a grind, and a grind, until suddenly: You play through that difficult passage at 80 bpm five times in a row. You stop consciously thinking about what you’re doing, but your hands still know where to go. The tricky cadence at the end of the section becomes automatic. The runs you drilled an...

I’m now in the “Major 2-5-1” course at Piano With Jonny . I’m still in Level 4 (Early Intermediate) when it comes to theory, though this isn’t my first time learning these progressions in all keys. But it's been a while since I’ve practiced them like this. Lesson 1 focuses on root-position chords . It also includes the I6 alongside the IMaj7, which I think is a good addition. Here I am playing through the exercise once with the backing track: I haven’t worked much with backing tracks in the past. They make me nervous to keep up with, particularly because of my deafness. It can be hard to distinguish my piano from the backing track, and once I get nervous, I can lose the beat. But when I use the Altec Lansing Mini LifeJacket speaker, I can crank up the backing track volume. Then I can’t hear my own piano all that well, but that’s OK because I already know the keys. Other Variations The next lessons will cover the progression in various inversions, which is how I originally learned t...