Picking Up the Pieces

I'm continuing with Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy as part of Rebecca Bogart’s Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge in the Piano With Rebecca B community. Day 6 The theme for today's challenge is "Try Something New." Ironically, that led me back to something very old: a tried-and-true classical exercise—practicing in chunks of 2, 3, 4, and even 5 notes to smooth out scale and arpeggio passages. The "new" part was shifting into classical mode. Or at least what I think of as classical mode—that focused, nose-to-the-grindstone mindset that says, "I'm going to do whatever it takes to make this two-measure section perfect." I set aside the part of my brain that wants to analyze, improvise, and arrange, and just focused on the notes. It was refreshing. I've been doing so much improvisation and arranging lately that it felt good to sit down, look at the page, and say, "Music, just tell me what to do, and I will do it! "...

This evening I reviewed the B section from this morning and considered changing it from yellow to red (after changing it from green to yellow this morning). I kept it yellow, but it has definitely given me more of a challenge than I expected. Working on the Solo A Section After that, I moved on to the solo A section. The two passages in this batch are four measures each, and the smaller sections definitely made my practice sessions more manageable. I spent 15 minutes on each passage, using the following techniques: Practicing in tiny chunks/rhythms: Because this section has some scale and arpeggio work, it made sense to practice in small chunks, or rhythms as I call it. This is very similar to one of the techniques Rebecca recommends for speed. I'm not going for speed right now so much as muscle memory, and this technique is good for that. Memory: Because we're looking at scales and arpeggios, this section has been easier to memorize. I can't say I can play the whole thing...

As part of Day 5 of Rebecca Bogart ’s Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge , the focus is supposed to be speed. I’m not there yet. Nowhere close. I do use her tempo-building techniques in other work—I leaned on them quite a bit in Pineapple Rag , and I’ll be using them tonight on After You’ve Gone as I prep for the graduation video . But for OTJ, speed is going to have to wait. Day 5 Today we leave Batch 1 behind and begin Batch 2. Batch 1 included the eight-measure intro and the sixteen-measure A/A′ section. (There are also two more A sections later—A″ and A‴—so I guess I got a head start on those as well.) Batch 2 consists of: Passage 1: B section (8 measures) Passage 2: solo A section, part 1 (4 measures) Passage 3: solo A section, part 2 (4 measures) The solo A section is firmly red (difficult), so I’m breaking it into smaller chunks. It has eight additional measures I'll address in Batch 3 next week. This Morning’s Practice: Passage 1 I originally marked Passage 1 as gree...

As part of Day 4 of Rebecca Bogart’s Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge, the focus was on identifying leaps and taking steps to make them more reliable. It’s fair to say that the stride arrangement of Ode to Joy has its share of leaps. 🙂 Day 4 The left-hand leaps didn’t get much attention today. They show up in almost every measure, but they’re not a major concern for me because I am the ragtime queen (she writes modestly). Right-hand leaps are a different story. There aren’t many in Batch 1, but there is one spot where the right hand jumps up an octave to begin a short descending run, and that one deserves attention. Today's Wins My biggest win today was locking in the eight-measure intro . It’s not especially difficult, but there are a couple of spots that needed work—the move from A9 to Em7 in the left hand, and the final measure with the augmented chord. I focused on those trouble spots using 3b3 (play three times slowly, take a short break, then repeat). Once those felt...

A few days ago, I set a hard deadline for After You’ve Gone . My plan is to make the graduation video this weekend and be done with it. After a few months of working on it, that feels like the right call. I’ve learned so much—stride tenths, coordination, some improvisation vocabulary—and I even used some of the ideas in YAMS . By any reasonable standard, the Piano With Jonny "After You've Gone" course has done its job. There's still a part of me that really wants to be able to perform  it, and that's where my struggle has been for the past few weeks. And I feel like I'm not even close. I Think This Is What Happens When a Piece Is Too Hard This piece has never quite settled for me. The arrangement section still feels slippery. I can play the rolling tenths, but it feels like my fingers are wearing roller skates—nothing is fully grounded. (Maybe it's my smaller-than-average hands.) And even though I switch to the easier four-on-the-floor for the solo/improv...

As I work through Rebecca Bogart's Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge , I'll be posting more extended updates here on my blog. Days 1–3 Day 1 was analysis, listening, and generally scoping out the territory of the music . The road trip to Florida last week turned out to be Day 1, even if I didn't label it that way at the time. Day 2 was fingering and the start of my first "batch": measures 0-7 (intro), 8-15 (Section A), and 16-23 (Section A'). Day 3 (today) was about recognizing patterns and continuing work on Batch 1. Batch 1: Intro, A, A' The intro isn't difficult, and it will likely be one of the two easiest sections in this piece. Still, the syncopation is a little tricky, so I took some extra time with it. I've already memorized it, as the chord progression is pretty straightforward and the melody is just a single line (no harmony notes). There is one big augmented chord at the end that required some focused work. Sections A and A' ar...