What To Do with the Left Hand

(Written yesterday)

I recently ordered a book titled Playing Solo Jazz Piano by Jeremy Siskind. And then last night, I watched his video on playing solo jazz piano ... and I learned some things that I can do with my left hand! Better yet, none of the information, even in the "Advanced" section, was over my head! The rusty old key is starting to turn. I didn't have much of a chance to play after finishing the video, but I'm looking forward to playing some tonight. I should be getting the book in the mail soon, too, so ... I'm kind of excited!

(Written today)

I couldn't help myself. I had to do it. I had to sit down at the piano and see if I could put some of these ideas into action. I picked a song at random -- Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are" and proceeded to try playing just the root in the bass and embellish the melody as much as I wanted to. Of course, I ended up falling into a few patterns:

1) Adding chords to the melody

2) Playing slow broken chords (at least the 1 and 5) in the bass

3) Making a usually-upbeat song slow and meditative

None of those patterns are bad, but I'd like to get to where those aren't my default. Particularly with items 2 and 3.

Anyway, here is my meditative version of "All the Things You Are." Sadly, I accidentally cut the end of the video off in order to make it fit in a YouTube reel, then deleted the full video from my phone, not realizing what I was doing.

My next goal with this song (and it will be this song throughout) will be to try improvising with some of the other methods Siskind covers in his video. I do want to see if I can make it more bouncy and upbeat.

Comments

old lady said…

Would love to hear the ending! Beautiful song.

1:56 PM

Rethinking Bare Necessities

Today's breakthrough moment (there are actually two of them) focuses on "Bare Necessities." As you'll remember, I discovered Jonny May's arrangement back in early March and immediately decided to learn it. I printed out the music, started the course, and proceeded to learn the stride section, posting a few videos of my progress. Ha. I bet those videos make it look like I was making progress. I guess I was ... but not really. And I realized something this weekend that I hadn't before: Because I was thinking of "Bare Necessities" as a "fun" piece, I wasn't practicing it seriously or diligently. I wasn't treating it as something I wanted to master. This mindset might work with an easier piece, but this arrangement isn't easy. The result: despite a little progress at the outset, I wasn't moving forward. I was stalled. Breakthrough #1 The first breakthrough was realizing that if I truly want to learn this piece and play it well,

March Goals Recap/Looking Ahead to April

It's April 1, and time to revisit the goals I set for last month. I practiced a total of 50.45 hours in March, averaging 1.62 hours (or just over an hour and a half) per day. Realistically, I practice about 45 minutes to an hour a day on weekdays, and I usually get at least one longer practice (or multiple shorter practices) in on one or both days of the weekend to bring the average up. CLASSICAL GOALS Chopin, F Minor Nocturne March Goal: Have entire piece by memory and performance-ready. I have about 90% of the piece by memory, but I still have some work to do before it's performance-ready. The only two sections that I don't quite have are "The Agitation" and the "stretto" section with the seventh chords. I'll work on both this week and will have them both memorized before the weekend. April Goal: Finish memorizing, and polish, polish, polish! My focus now is really on phrasing and dynamics. I have the notes down, even in the difficult passages. Fro

Maple Leaf Rag Breakthrough

Oh, Maple Leaf. Where to begin? At the Beginning I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I learned the A and B sections of Maple Leaf Rag back in the 1990s. I can’t tell you if it was early, mid- or late 90s, but it was during those 10 years after I’d graduated college, when I was playing a good bit of piano but not taking regular lessons from anyone. I don’t remember teaching it to myself at all. I just know that, at some point, the first half of Maple Leaf Rag was part of my two- or three-song repertoire of pieces I’d be able to play by memory over the next 25 years. It was always sloppy and I knew it, but people loved it, and so I played it if there was ever a piano around. Back in January, I decided to properly re-learn those two sections, and to finally learn the C and D sections of this wonderful piece. I worked on these over the next month or two, learning (and-relearning) the notes pretty quickly ... but it took time to memorize, and also to get everything to tempo surpassing a

Picking Up the Pieces

Search This Blog