Piano practice blog focused on stride, ragtime, blues, and more, with daily notes on technique, repertoire, and the process of learning music more deeply.
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Goals (Again), and Some Music
My goals, at least those in the classical music sphere, seem to oppose each other:
(1) To refine my skills to what they were when I was studying with Deborah, and maybe even go beyond that.
(2) To have fun and not take piano so seriously that I drop everything else in my life.
When I was studying with Deborah, at least for the first year or two, I practiced several hours a day most days. I was working full time, but my husband was rarely home and I didn't have kids at the time, so I could do that. I can't now ... but I'm going to be tempted. I know that.
Anyway, I didn't come on here today to write about my classical music goals. I want to discuss a goal that's kind of a jazz goal, but, really, it's just a general goal.
I want to be able to do the kind of thing I'm doing here with "The Long and Winding Road," only in a much more sophisticated, creative way.
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I want to have a better sense of what notes will work with improvisation, and what chord substitutions will be most successful. I know that a lot of improvisation is simple exploration, and I'm good with that. But I need some degree of structure to explore--like a hiker needs trails and blazes, or a poet needs a working knowledge of meter, rhyme, and metaphor.
I want to be able to sit down with a piece of music in front of me and think not in terms of the written notes (as we do with classical music) but in terms of chords. No, not even chords. I want to be able to think in terms of intervals and progressions so that I can look at that music and play the song in my own way, in whatever key I want, maybe even playing with the meter. And I don't want to be married to the meditative, broken-chord, new-age-piano sound that I keep falling into.
(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...
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 ...
In the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes , Billy talks about "reading the dots." He didn't want—or need—to "read the dots," meaning the music notes on the page. He had developed his own rock 'n' roll piano style and, after a few years of classical training, he left the dots behind. I didn't want to read the dots, either, once upon a time. As a little kid, I had a good ear and could quickly figure out just about any tune on the piano. But in first grade, I finally started piano lessons, thus beginning my life with the dots. The Wall of Dots Between Me and Music I hated the dots! I wanted to learn them, sure, but it was so hard. If my teacher played what was written, I could play it right back for him. But if he asked me to play it from the dots, I felt like I would pop a blood vessel in my brain. It was so frustrating for my six-year-old self to have the code to a simple tune sitting silently before my eyes and not be able to crack it and bring th...
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