Picking Up the Pieces

Tall Nick (the new piano) and I did not get along very well this weekend. Several of my projects (Lead Sheets Lesson 4, After You've Gone, and St. Louis Blues) felt ready for a video I could share on PWJ. So I decided that on Saturday, in addition to practicing my maintenance pieces, I would make a few videos. Ha. Haha. I could write about my adventures with all three would-be videos, but I'll limit this blog post to After You've Gone. Saturday morning, with the family gone and the house all to myself for many glorious hours, I sat down at Tall Nick, ready to record a good progress video of After You’ve Gone. It was a reasonable goal; I’d been working on the left-hand stride and right-hand melody for a couple of weeks. I had it by memory and felt comfortable with it. I was basically there . Ha. Haha. What followed was a familiar spiral: take after take, none of them good. I would get lost after the first measure, or I'd make it through the whole song and then crash and ...

January is St. Louis Blues Challenge Month at PWJ! I actually started this challenge about six months ago , got frustrated, and moved on to other things without finishing it. The challenge itself isn’t so hard, but I just could not get the G minor blues improv under my fingers. When the challenge was announced on January 1, I decided to revisit it. Now that I’m learning more about transposing, I thought maybe I could finally come to peace with this G minor blues. As is my wont, I no longer seem capable of just playing what’s written. Instead of simply playing the 12-bar A-section arrangement (which is all the challenge requires), I’ve created a whole combobulation: Intro from PWJ Blues Endings 1 course (ending on D7) 12-bar A section (the actual challenge) 12-bar B section (using a lead sheet) A-section repeat 12-bar solo using runs from PWJ 10-Lesson Blues Challenge 2 course A-section repeat with octave displacement throughout 12 bars of unstructured jamming (chords, rolls, general ma...

Well, I’ve been having some fun with ChatGPT. I regularly use ChatGPT to help me define my piano goals for each month (and for the year), and to determine how much time to devote to each. I’ve also asked some philosophical questions about my move from classical student to ragtime/stride/blues pianist. And I ask lots of theory-related questions, and ragtime-related questions, and… well, that’s my primary use of ChatGPT. I’ve also asked questions relating to my work—not so much about how certain things work, but things like “Can you proofread this email?” and “Does this revision make sense from an engineering standpoint?” It’s been helpful, though at times I’ve had to say, “No, that’s not how that works.” And then ChatGPT responds with, “You’re exactly right to call out my mistake.” Conversations like that make me wary of trusting its “knowledge” too much. Anyway, people have been posting ChatGPT caricatures of themselves lately, so I thought I’d have some fun. I asked it to make a caric...

January was a good month for piano, even though I spent about eight days in North Carolina without my Roland, and even though I was without a left hand for a week and a half thanks to a ganglion cyst. We’re expecting snow on Saturday, so I’m not sure how much practicing I’ll get done this weekend; one downside of a digital piano is that it needs electricity to work. Still, I’m a goal-driven creature, so it’s time to think about February. My original January goals were to: Share a "You Are My Sunshine" (YAMS) performance on the PWJ page Post periodic updates on my progress in Foundations and "After You’ve Gone" Get through at least one Analysis course Keep up with all maintenance pieces Despite the month’s challenges, I managed to do all of that with one exception: I haven’t played "Jingle Bells Rag" a single time. That said, I still have at least three more practice sessions ahead of me, weather permitting. I’d planned to break down my practice time like t...

A few days ago, I mentioned that I’d shared a rough version of my "You Are My Sunshine" arrangement with the PWJ community. I got some feedback, which I appreciated, but I’ll admit I was hoping for more pointed critique. I wanted someone to really poke at it and tell me what wasn’t working. Then Jonny May himself commented. He said many generous things about the arrangement, which meant a lot. But what mattered more were the specific suggestions he offered for how I might push it further. That kind of feedback is even more valuable because it gives me something to work on instead of something to simply feel good about. At Tuesday’s “Ask Jonny” Q&A, I worked up the nerve to ask him about possible introductions. He paused, played around, thought out loud, and gradually assembled a handful of ideas on the spot. None of them felt rehearsed. All of them were clever, musical, and full of personality. Watching that process was at least as valuable as the ideas themselves. He eve...

About a week ago, I recorded this video showing my progress with Lesson 2 of After You’ve Gone (AYG). It features the “intermediate” stride left hand. I was planning to move on to the advanced version (with tenths), but then two things happened: (1) pain in my left wrist, and (2) an unexpected five-day trip to North Carolina (where all I have is a little Yamaha keyboard). I initially thought about shifting my focus to Lesson 3 (right-hand stylizations), and I did that for a couple of days. But it was really hard to practice those on my toy-adjacent Yamaha, so I decided to set AYG aside until I could get back to a real piano. Friends, I will be back at my real piano tonight! My wrist is feeling fine, so I have the option of returning to Lesson 2 and starting the advanced stride section, or staying with Lesson 3. I may try to do both, but I’m not sure that’s the wisest approach. I’ll probably work primarily on the left hand, while regularly reviewing the right-hand stylizations as I mas...