Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

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...

This is my brain on piano. In my journey through the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge at Piano with Rebecca B , I’ve reached Day 26 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . Today I began my Batch 4 revisit and introduced Batch 2 into my Phase 2 work. No video today, as I also focused on my ii-V-I progression exercise and videoed that instead (stay tuned for a blog post!). Batch 4 Revisit, Day 1 Today I revisited the Very Red Batch 4 for the first time in a week ... and I can play it! It’s slow and still needs a lot of work, but I can play it . My fingers know where to go! This morning I drilled the left hand separately, then the right. Both need to become automatic, and the hands-separate work will help me eventually play this passage at tempo without having to stop and think. I did some hands-together work near the end, but the real value today was in isolating the hands. Phase 2 Work For Phase 2, Batch 1 is on Day 2 and Batch 2 is on Day 1. Say that three times fas...

I had a great practice on Batch 3 yesterday and a good one on Batch 1 today. To remind you where I am: it’s now Day 25 of the 28-day Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge  at Piano with Rebecca B , where I’m learning Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . The challenge schedule currently has me on my third day revisiting Batch 3 after a seven-day break. At the same time, I’ve started my Phase 2 schedule, which overlaps with the challenge schedule for a few days. That’s OK. For Phase 2, today was Day 1 of Batch 1 , which includes the intro and A section . Whew. That sounds more complicated than it really is. I’m just glad I have spreadsheets to keep me organized. Day 24, Batch 3 Yesterday I focused on Batch 3 . One of the day’s suggestions was to play the passages with emotion : anger, sadness, joy, whatever. So naturally I picked anger, which seemed like an appropriately strange fit for a piece called Ode to Joy. What surprised me was that channeling anger made me forget th...

I just scrolled through the blog and realized that it's been so focused on Ode to Joy and the 28-Day Challenge that I've failed to give updates on the other things I've been up to. Foundations: Major 2-5-1 Progression: This is going well. Right now I'm just in Lesson 1 (root-position chords), and I can play them, but not at the recommended tempo. I'm spending about 10 minutes a day on this, and I expect I'll be ready for Lesson 2 before the weekend. Jazz Soloing I: I just started this learning track on the Piano With Jonny site. So far, the first couple of courses have been review for me (diatonic chords, guide tones, etc.). I'm excited to be on a new learning track after completing Analysis, which I loved. I hope to love this one just as much! A lot of this course focuses on soloing over the 2-5-1 progression, so I'm hoping to work some of that into my Foundations practice. After You've Gone: As I mentioned a few days ago, I brought this one back ...

I am now on the cusp of Phase 2 of learning Jonny May's Ode to Joy. Phase 1 was all about learning the notes, locking down the rhythms, and refining the fingering. In Phase 2, I will focus on: Dynamics Articulation Phrasing Voicing Tempo (starting at a very comfortable 60 bpm) Memorization Dynamics This is a relatively short piece when played at tempo (about two minutes; less if you're Jonny May), and it would be easy to just play everything loud. But I want the left hand to be a steady presence—not too loud, not too soft—while the right hand does its thing. And the four-on-the-floor sections should, I think, naturally be a little softer than the boom-chick sections. The fun, crunchy transitions between sections should also be just a hair louder than what came before. So I have work to do there, though the dynamics do make sense and mostly come naturally. I just want to make sure they come naturally in performance, and that will take deliberate practice. Articulation and Phrasi...