Picking Up the Pieces

 Now that the doctor has cleared me to play piano as much as I want, I sat down last night to work some more on the bluesy Silent Night from a few days ago . I just turned on the camera and started to play. I ended up cutting out about half of the video (the first half, where I was still working things out), so here is the second half. I want to give it more of a boogie-woogie bass (broken octaves, walking up and down), but for now I'm just using the familiar old blues shuffle. You can tell as the video progresses that I'm loosening up more and more. By the end I'm practically dancing in my seat. It is so good to be able to play like this! And I didn't even delve into the many runs and riffs I've learned! There will be time for that later!

I went to the orthopedist today so he could diagnose whatever is wrong with my wrist. He is pretty sure it's a small ganglion cyst. The cyst is the shiny area right next to the boo-boo on my hand. (Gotta love eczema in winter.) What is a ganglion cyst? From Google AI: A ganglion cyst is a fluid-filled bump that usually appears on the wrist or near a joint or tendon sheath. Ganglion cysts are round, small, and filled with a jelly-like fluid. They can feel firm or spongy, and can be translucent. They most often appear on the back of the wrist, but can also occur on the front of the wrist, base of a finger, ankle, or foot. Most ganglion cysts are painless and don't cause other symptoms. However, if a cyst presses on a nerve, it can cause tingling or muscle weakness. The cause is unknown, but they are thought to be caused by repetitive microtrauma. They are more common in younger people and women, and are often found in people who play sports or other activities that involve repeat...

Once upon a time, almost a year ago, I wrote about feeling like I was locked in a "gray little room," worlds away from feeling freedom at the piano. I'd had many years of lessons and could play, but I was tied to the sheet music. Or if I was improvising, I would fall into the same old pattern in the left hand and could hardly advance beyond the actual tune in the right hand. I felt trapped, and I'd felt trapped for nearly all of my piano life. I wanted to play jazz. I wanted to play blues. I wanted to be able to "ragtimify" any song. I could hear the arrangements in my head, but I didn't know how to play them. Last night, I started picking through "Silent Night" with a blues shuffle in the bass. And ... I improvised. I riffed. I rocked. I had so much fun. I hated having to go to work today because all I wanted to do was stay home and play this bluesy, boogie-style Silent Night. I feel like I am walking on air. That rusty lock has broken, and ...

Yesterday was the Piano With Jonny annual student awards, and I won a ragtime performance award! It was quite an honor because there are a lot of good pianists, including ragtime pianists, in the PWJ community. Most of the awardees had been in PWJ for multiple years, so I felt particularly honored as a first-year student. Here is the clip where they announced the award! This honor has inspired me to think about my future long-term goals. Barring further issues with my wrist (and elbow), I think I have big plans for 2025. Ragtime First, I want to learn three new Scott Joplin rags: Pineapple Rag, Elite Syncopations, and The Ragtime Dance. I want to learn them in that order--in other words, from the easiest to the most difficult. The plan is to average four months per piece, with the hope that Pineapple Rag will take a little less than that so I have more time for the others. These will be more challenging than my pieces from 2024 (Maple Leaf Rag, Solace, and The Entertainer). Not only a...

I started running again about three weeks ago. I used to run a lot, but I haven't run regularly in years. Every time I start to increase my distance, I end up with an injury. Every time--no matter how careful I am. Still, I'm trying again. I found a doable Couch-to-5K program online and started with an easy run-1-minute-walk-1-minute workout. Now I'm up to running 5 minutes and walking three minutes. For my next run (tomorrow night), I'll run 5 minutes and walk two minutes, four times. My latest run: Run 5 min, walk 3 min, X 4 (plus warmup and cooldown) It feels so good to feel like an athlete again. I'm definitely not an athlete, but I feel like one when I'm running. It feels good to break a sweat and to get short of breath and then recover and then run again. Piano isn't a sport, but the feelings are similar. It feels good to know I'm in shape, pianistically. I can't tell you the amazing feeling of looking at a difficult passage in Liszt, and then ...

I had wrist pain this weekend, so I wasn't able to move forward on some of my weekend goals . I still got some good practice in. I have dorsal wrist impingement , according to Dr. Google. Technique My plan was to work on Czerny Ex. 2. It's an exercise primarily for the left hand, and it was my left wrist that was hurting, so I started Ex. 4 instead. (I wasn't crazy about Ex. 3.) I learned it pretty easily and will work on getting it up to speed this week, and I'll return to Ex. 2 when my wrist pain is gone. Liszt I am through most of the C Major section in Liszt! It's not as difficult as the B Major section (though it sounds like it is). It's still not easy, so I'll work on it a bit more before moving on to what's next. Jingle Bells Rag The goal was to increase the tempo to 100. I spent quite a bit of time on the right hand since my left hand was hurting. Last night I finally brought the left hand in. I'm very close to having it hands-together at 100...

We are a week into December, and I haven't practiced nearly as much this month as I did in November. I should be able to get some good practice in this weekend. My daughter has volleyball stuff both Saturday and Sunday, so I'll be out of the house a bit to get her to and from. I'm also planning to work out on Sunday afternoon. Other than that, I'll be home--washing sheets and towels, cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, and practicing the piano. Oh, and I need to go Christmas shopping. I keep forgetting. Anyway, onward to the piano goals! Technique I have the Czerny Exercise 1 at a good clip. I've started learning Exercise 2, which is even more delightful than Exercise 1. While Ex. 1 focuses mainly on the right hand, Ex. 2 is very left-hand heavy. I've played through the first half (luckily, it's an easy sight-read), and my goal for this weekend is to simply learn the second half and become comfortable playing the whole exercise before I start upping the tempo...

I finally have some progress videos to share! There were all one-off videos because I had no time to re-record things until they were perfect. These are progress videos anyway, so you'll hear a few unplanned pauses, wrong notes, and tempo inconsistencies. But it's sounding like music! And that is my current low bar for this piece! I am focusing really hard on bringing out the melody notes throughout. That is a harder task than you would think, but I'm getting there. Here is the first section, which introduces the theme: I don't have a video of the second section because I accidentally deleted it. But below is the first cadenza, which follows the missing second section. This seemed to take forever to learn, but now that I have it, it feels very natural under my fingers. I'm still playing it slowly and deliberately; speed and expression will come, but not just yet. Here is the B-major section that follows the cadenza. It includes the gorgeous modulation to C major. It...

Today when I opened my practice journal on PWJ , I saw that I've put 484 hours of practice in since joining PWJ on January 30. My home for 484 hours (so far) this year. Wow. Four hundred and eighty-four hours. God willing, I should hit the 500-hour mark in another ten or twelve days. Five hundred hours of practice! At that rate, I'll hit 10,000 hours in just 20 years! 10,000 Hours? Honestly, I wonder if I've put 10,000 hours of practice in by this point in my life. I've never tracked my practice time until this year, so I have no way of knowing. I have had some years where I've practiced this much (and more), but then there have been years of almost no practice. (Five minutes later ...) So, I went into Excel just now and estimated my hours of practice every year since I started playing in 1974. My very first practice session, at age 4, was after church one Sunday evening. I worked and worked and worked at playing "Just As I Am." I have no idea how long it ...

Y'all, I love my piano-practice tracker. I enter my time every day, and I could seriously look at all of my stats for hours. Because I have no piano videos to share with you today and I've already discussed my December goals, I will now share my practice tracker with you, using my November stats. Click on images to make them larger. Part I: Data Entry and Daily Leaderboard When I'm practicing, I enter all of my information into the PWJ Practice Log. Then, when I'm at my laptop, I enter it into the practice tracker. Not only does it show the total minutes and hours spent practicing each day, but it automatically highlight the piece/project with the most time entered. This then feeds into my daily leaderboard. The greater the number of "wins," the darker the cell with the number. Part II: Totals and Averages This section shows the total minutes/hours for each piece for the month. It also shows how much time I'm spending, on average, on each piece. To do that...

December is going to look a bit different from my previous piano months. Instead of five or six main pieces/skills to focus on, I'm only going to have two: Technique (15%) and Liszt (30%). The rest of my work will be to review almost everything I've done this year and be ready for a (not actual) performance by January 1, 2025. Also different for December is that I'll be dividing my maintenance pieces into the categories of ragtime, blues/gospel, and classical. Here are the details. Technique (15%) I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I love Czerny's Thirty New Studies in Technics, Op. 849 . I'm still on Exercise 1, but I've been working diligently to build up speed while remaining accurate and clear. Dynamics are also a consideration, so I've been working on that, too. The goal tempo is half note=100, and I'm at half note=80. so I've made progress. I expect to start Exercise 2 in early December and will spend a few weeks working on it. I'...

Whew. This piece has been harder than anticipated. (Aren't they always!) True, it is easier than "Bare Necessities." I didn't expect to breeze through it, but I also didn't expect to still be struggling after six or eight weeks. It doesn't sound bad. I can play through it pretty well. But it doesn't sound great . It doesn't sound polished . It doesn't sound professional . I don't feel confident about it, and confidence is key. Some Changes Granted, I've made some changes that have taken some time to learn. I've replaced a few of the jumps with octave walkups/walkdowns --partly because I like the sound, but mostly because it allows me to focus more on some tricky jumps in the right hand. I've also made a few fingering changes that I'm having to re-learn, and that takes time. The High-Octave "Jingle-Bell" Section I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the high-octave section toward the end. I go back and for...

I had hoped to put three hours a day into piano this weekend, and I came close! I put in FOUR hours on Saturday, but then I only practiced an hour and a half on Sunday. I had dropped my daughter off at volleyball practice at 1:00, but then she got sick, so I had to go pick her up and take her home. And then I had to be back at the gym (about 20 minutes away) for a 2:30 parent meeting, and then I had to do the week's grocery shopping on my way home. So I pretty much drove back and forth yesterday from 12:30 to almost 4:00. Because I had a sick child, I made a big pot of homemade creamy chicken noodle soup for dinner, which took up a good part of the late afternoon. And then after dinner, we put up the Christmas tree and further decorated for Christmas. By the time all that was done, I only had energy to sit on the couch, pet the cats, and look at the pretty tree while we listened to Christmas music. I did practice early yesterday morning, though, and I got some good work done. I...

I suppose I should think about my weekend piano goals. It looks to be a good weekend for practicing. Technique I've been doing a smattering of different things for technique lately. I started Czerny's Op. 849 (Thirty New Studies in Technics) and have been workinng on the first exercise for the past few days. I also have my Oscar Peterson book and the usual scales, arpeggios, inversions, Hanon, and octave exercises. I've been putting about 15% of my practice time into technique this month, and I think I can already tell the difference. My main technique goal will be to master Exercise 1 of Czerny . I can play it at quarter note=80, but the recommend tempo is HALF NOTE=100. So, quarter note=200!! That will probably be impossible for me, but I'd like to get it to a nice, fast tempo. The Entertainer This one is sounding good--amazing, actually, considering I've only been working on it for two weeks, and not every day. It's come back and is pretty solid except for a ...

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was considered a Creative Person by both myself and others. I could sit down and spin out a story or an essay, with or without any kind of a writing prompt. I was always scribbling down poems or ideas for novels. I've written several novels, and I've half-written a few dozen, from first chapters to entire first drafts. I haven't published anything because I am a scared little mouse and always have been. I was musically creative, too. I've written a number of songs, though it's been a long time. I always felt a great desire to write music, but I would get stuck in the same old chord progressions and the same old arpeggiated left-hand groove . One of the greatest gifts of Piano With Jonny is that I have broken out of those stale old habits. Yet, I still struggle to reclaim my old creative self. I get angry at myself for missing notes when, really, all I'm doing is making things up. The "missed" note is a note other t...

So much for my weekend of unlimited practice time . Thanks to a case of wrist pain, I only practiced for about an hour on Saturday. I felt better yesterday and practiced for a little over two hours. So, I got three hours in total. Not bad, but nothing close to the five or six hours I'd anticipated. Weekend Practice I spent a lot of time on Liszt , but I am very frustrated about this piece. I could learn it, but I can't figure out what fingering to use. I am missing Deborah, my piano teacher from Asheville. She would have me work out a fingering, but then she would adjust it as needed, actually writing it onto the music, and when I would try her fingering, it was like a miracle had happened. She helped me to become better at working out fingerings, but Liebstraume is a special case becuase there are so many tenths (which I can't reach), and so many options for which hand will play certain notes of the melody. I messaged her through Facebook to see if she might be up to an on...

  It's rare that I have a weekend that offers potentially unlimited practice time ... but I just may have that this weekend. And if I do? I want to take deep dives into a few different areas. First Cadenza of Liebestraume I've already broken down the cadenza theoretically, and it makes total sense--it's just a back and forth between D-flat minor and E-flat major in various inversions. But playing it is not so simple, and I feel like I need a good, long practice session to get it comfortable and automatic under my fingers. Blues Improvisation I diligently do some blues improvisation every single day, usually for 10-15 minutes in the mornings while waiting for my daughter to get ready to go to school. But I want to take some time to (1) improvise alongside actual recordings and (2) improvise alongside the backing track provided by PWJ. All of my improvisation so far has been just me and the piano, and I'm feeling a need to add something. I don't need a long practice s...

Working my way through the Oscar Peterson book , I present to you two versions of his Minuet 2. The first version uses straight rhythm while the second uses a swung rhythm. This book is turning out to be a good resource for sight-reading and technique. The pieces aren't very difficult (so far), so I'm able to learn them quickly and focus on technique. I'm not crazy about my sound at the very beginning of the first version in this video; it's a little harsh and wooden. I may record a better video later. For now, this is all I have! Click here to see his Minuet 1.

Oscar Peterson was a great jazz pianist of the 20th century. I think he's my favorite jazz pianist because so much of his jazz is so bluesy. Years ago, I purchased his Jazz Exercises, Minuets, Etudes, and Pieces for Piano ... and I don't know if I ever opened it. Last week, reader, I opened it. And it is delightful. The first section consists of finger exercises and minuets. Even though these are very simple, they are good exercises. I've decided to work my way through the book as an element of my technique work. His first minuet sounds like Bach. I suppose I could jazz it up with swung eighth notes and some slides and turns, but for now, I'm just playing it as written because it's so beautiful. Enjoy!

How have I managed to go a week without posting here? The good news is that I've been practicing. I've also been working from home for the last few days. At work, when it's time for a break, I open Notepad and work on my next blog post. At home, I practice piano (or do laundry). I've made a few tweaks to the November goals over the past week. Here are the original goals, compared to the updated ones: Below is a summary of the changes. Taking Jingle Bells Rag Out of Maintenance I had moved this one to maintenance, thinking I would just play it a few times every few days and move on. But then I found that I really wanted to work on it, and I needed to spend a lot more time on it than I'd allotted. So I pulled it back out of maintenance, made it a main piece, and gave it a 15% goal. Decreasing Other Percentage Goals To give Jingle Bells Rag that 15%, I had to decrease my percentage goals for The Entertainer, Blues, and Maintenance. The Entertainer: A 5% decrease was an...

It really helped me to write yesterday's blog post . I was feeling frustrated with my lack of progress this month, despite having some good, intense practices, as well as a few days where I worked over two hours at the piano. Laying everything out and seeing how truly all-over-the-place my priorities have been, it made sense. So I felt better. Most importantly, I'm able to make changes for November. Below are my goals, broken down by project. I still think I may be a little too diversified this month. If that's the case, I will set The Entertainer aside until later. (But I hope I can keep all of these plates spinning.) Liszt, Liebesträume: 25% This is going to be a major focus for November. This is one of my dream pieces, and I think I'm ready to start working on it. It's a brand-new piece for me, and I may end up having to adjust this one's percentage to 30%. I'll know in a week or so. Blues Theory and Practice: 25% As I wrote yesterday, I've felt very ...

Time to do some serious thinking about my November goals. October was pretty much a wash. If I look at where I was in my October goals post from a few weeks ago ... I really haven't moved forward all that much. Granted, we had a hurricane and I lost a week of practice. But, even with many days of an hour or more at the piano, I really didn't make any significant strides. Even after I took "Liebesträume" out of the running. Why? It's the Fire Hose, Dummy It's the age-old problem: I have too many projects, and not enough time. I've been drinking out of the proverbial fire hose. Even if I average 2 hours of practice a day (currently, I'm averaging about 1.5), I can't make the kind of progress I want to make. So, I need to either (a) increase my practice time, or (b) lower my expectations. Or (c) limit my projects even more. Realistically, I can't increase my practice time all that much. I can shoot for an average of 2 hours a day, but I'll be...

When I went to Facebook this morning, I saw that a pianist and singer named Gordon Mote will be performing at a local church tomorrow night. I'd never heard of him, so I went to YouTube to see if I might be interested in seeing his performance. Wow. I'm going. Not only is he a great pianist, but he's hilarious. And he's blind. How can I miss this? I may drag my teenage daughter with me because I don't want to go by myself. Here is just one of his videos. There are many more. I've watched about three so far, and will be listening to him as I work for the rest of the day.

I don't have many words to type today. This morning I decided to return to Bare Necessities, which I haven't really worked on for a couple of months. I've worked on my stride piano technique a lot with Jingle Bells, but I've purposely kept BN in the background, thinking it would be good to take a break from it. I had it to a good tempo, but not the goal tempo. So what better than to let it marinate, or maybe simmer, for a while on low while I worked on other things? So, I returned to it this morning, and it was one big practice session of frustration. Did the practice do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. Am I on the verge of a breakthrough, in the deep darkness that comes before dawn? Maybe. Probably not. I don't know where I am, or what to think, or what to do. There is very little piano-playing in this 5:39 video. It's mostly me whining and being frustrated. I'd planned to make a series of videos this morning of my progress in getting BN back up to speed ... but...

I started the major blues scale course at PWJ a few weeks ago, and I (sadly) haven't given it as much time as I should. It's also been challenging. In this video, I'm playing a few different versions of the scale, all using the same I∆-vi7-ii7-V7 progression in the left hand: swung 8th notes with chord shells/Charleston rhythm in the left hand 16th notes with chord shells (I was thinking in triplets with Charleston, but the result sounded like 16ths Weird.) 16th notes with whole notes in the LH accompaniment (Note: I recorded this at 5 a.m., so I had the piano volume on low ... which is why you can hear my fingers thumping on the keys.) Why This Was Hard I: The Scale This was not easy to learn! First, there was the matter of the scale. The C major and minor scales are very automatic for me because I've been playing them for years. The C minor blues scale has also become very automatic, as I've been improvising on it every day for the better part of a year. But the ...

 Ah, those ambitious weekend goals ... I had some good goals for the weekend and, as expected, I did all right on some of them. I practiced for about 3.5 hours total, which is not a lot for a weekend ... but, considering I was in North Carolina most of Saturday and Sunday, I'll take what I can get. Solace My Solace goal was to be able to play it smoothly with increasing tempos. I'm getting there--which is good, considering that Solace got the most attention this weekend. It's still quite slow (about 48), and it needs to be about 65. I get kind of frustrated because I'll feel like I have it, but then I have a memory lapse in some spot where I never have memory lapses. It's like walking through a field full of gopher holes. I'm happily walking along, and then suddenly I'm on the ground with a twisted ankle. The twisted-ankle moments come mostly in Sections A, C, and D, which are the three sections I know best. Section B sounds good, but I'm struggling a li...

It's a little difficult to think about piano goals for the weekend, as I'm leaving for North Carolina tomorrow and probably won't be back until mid-afternoon Sunday. So, I won't get a lot of piano time in. At best, I'll get an hour, maybe 1.5 hours tonight, and an hour or two Sunday afternoon. I could also consider squeezing in a half-hour or so tomorrow morning before I leave. So, maybe I'll get more practice time than I thought. If I do, here are my goals for the weekend: Solace I have the entire piece memorized and am now working on just a few spots where I tend to pause when playing through slowly. I'll continue working on that and then begin increasing the speed. The suggested tempo is something like 65, and  I'm currently playing it at about 35. My weekend goal will be to (1) eliminate the habitual pauses and (2) increase the tempo to ... maybe 45 or 50. Jingle Bells Rag Lately I've been working a lot on (1) "hot-potato" practice in ...