Piano Time on the Horizon!

OK, so maybe I'm not going to the beach, but I do see some quality piano time on the near horizon of my life!

It's Friday, and my family has no plans for the evening. That means I will (metaphorically) clock out at 5:30 or so, and then I descend up on Henry the Grand and spend a few hours practicing ... oh, I don't know ... Schubert, probably.

We do have a few things planned for tomorrow, but just a few. I'm hoping to spend a good chunk of the morning with Henry.

And then I have Sunday afternoon. A whole afternoon with Henry!

My husband and daughter are tossing around the idea of going to the beach for the first few days of the Thanksgiving holidays. I am gently encouraging them to go and have fun. Meanwhile, I'll stay home (since I don't have vacation until Thursday) and ...

PLAY THE PIANO! (when I'm not working, of course)

And write. And think. And walk. And read. And do all those things I never have time for.

Most important is piano. I am going to have time with my piano.

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The Rusty Lock and Key

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I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...

Picking Up the Pieces

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