Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

I tried the Substack thing. I'm still doing the Substack thing, but I have an audience (albeit a tiny one) with Substack, and there is this expectation that the articles there actually be "written" and not just rambled. I like to ramble. When I'm dead, they'll say, "Didn't she ramble!" So I'm moving back to Blogger, where I have zero audience members and no obligation to write nice, tidy essays that I must edit endlessly before leaving them well enough alone. Occasionally, if I write something good here, I may fix it up for Substack. But mostly I'm going back to my old schedule of posting nearly every day about whatever piano-related topic I happen to be thinking about at the moment. If you, imaginary audience, would like to see what I've written on Substack during my break from Blogger, you can find it all here . I'm not linking to this blog from Substack because I honestly don't want a bunch of readers that I will then have to f...

Back in January, I wrote about my modest plan for the first half of 2026. In a nutshell, I wanted to spend six months becoming less of a piece-collector and more of a musician: building fluency in stride, harmony, and lead sheets; developing a smaller number of creative projects; and maintaining just enough repertoire to keep sharing music with other people. And guess what. I did it. I did all these things. Excuse me while I pat my goal-oriented self on the back. I'm actually not very goal-oriented, but years of life experience have taught me that I'll never make progress if I don't set manageable goals. And I set manageable goals back in January. I started the year with no "list of pieces to learn." None at all. I did end up learning two pieces, both of them "core" courses in the Piano With Jonny ragtime/stride track: After You've Gone and Ode to Joy. I'm planning to play After You've Gone at the PWJ recital in June, and I expect to have Ode...

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...