Picking Up the Pieces

Here are my piano goals for March 2024. I'll divide them into categories for easier reading. For those items that are nearing completion, I'll also include a "what's next" to show that I'm already thinking ahead to the next goal. Both my classical and ragtime goals are pretty ambitious, so I may end up selecting one or more easier pieces as alternatives. Classical I know Chopin is Romantic, not Classical, but anyway ... my goal for March is to have the entire F Minor Nocturne by memory and performance-ready by the end of the month. My "performance" will probably just be a video that I post here. What's Next: Hopefully Mozart, Rondo alla Turca Ragtime As with the nocturne, my goal is to have "Maple Leaf Rag" by memory and performance-ready by the end of the month. What's Next: Either "The Entertainer" or "Solace" ... or something else. Seventh Chords Dominant Sevenths! Just as February was a deep-dive into the maj...

Here is my goals recap for February. I didn't really start February with discernible goals, so I'll just list the accomplishments. I have learned "Misty." It's still a little shaky in places and I don't think I'll get to the soloing element of the challenge, but I will have it solid and ready to perform/video for the PWJ Facebook group by the end of this weekend. I can play through the nocturne . Now it is time to memorize anything I haven't memorized, and really work on getting the difficult sections feeling smooth and natural. I can play through Maple Leaf Rag . As with the nocturne, it's now just a matter of memorizing anything that isn't memorized (i.e., the transistion sections and the D section), getting things up to speed, and working in any stylistic touches I want to include. I've gotten pretty good at major sevenths , both playing them and understanding them. I enjoy doing the exercises, and they will now be part of my standard w...

 Y'all, it is Piano Lesson Week in my life, and I am here for it. This afternoon I meet with Eric for my classical (well, Chopin's F minor nocturne and Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag") lesson, and Thursday I meet with Quentin for jazz. I'm looking forward to both lessons, for different reasons. I meet Eric every other week, and so far, our main focus has alternated between my two pieces; a month ago it was the nocturne, then two weeks ago it was Maple Leaf Rag. So I imagine this week we'll primarily work on the Chopin again. I've started playing through the whole piece, at slow tempo, several times a week, but my focused practice has been on the following sections. (Note: The section names are names I've given them; they aren't official titles!) 1. The Transcendence : This section (measures 77-82, also 83-85) is so beautiful, but it has been a bear to learn! Once I have all the notes in place (a challenge in itself), it will start out light and airy ...

I'm very excited. My deep-dive into major sevenths is coming to an end, and I'll soon be embarking upon the wonderful world of dominant sevenths. I'm very familiar with dominant sevenths already, but I'm looking forward to gaining the same kind of deep understanding of them that I have with the major sevenths. I'll continue to do major seventh exercises every day as part of my warm-ups. I'm a little concerned that my brain and hands are going to get confused between major seventh and dominant seventh exercises, but I suppose I'll survive. Here are a couple of videos where I'm doing two of my major seventh exercises with the metronome at 80. The broken chords feel a little rushed because they are, but they're going to get more flowing as I practice them more. I don't know if you can tell, but the white-key sevenths (second half of the broken-chord video: E, A, D, G, and C) flow more naturally for me than the black-key sevenths.

 I am in my fourth and final week of learning "Misty." The goal for this week? Hands together. There are some jazz solo options available, but I'm kinda feeling ready to move on to something new. This piece has been difficult, partly because the whole jazz language is unfamiliar to me. But I want to finish it, and I'm getting close. This rendition is far from perfect, and you'll hear plenty of flubs and pauses before you get to the end. I'll post a "final version" soon, probably this weekend, where (hopefully) all of those will be ironed out. (It is freezing in my house, hence the long-sleeves-halfway-down-my-hand look.)

Recently I watched a webinar on music memorization. The speaker covered the various tools we use to memorize -- music analysis, motor memory, visual memory, auditory memory, etc. Someone asked if fast practice was a good tool for muscle memory. I don't remember what he answered, but I realized at that moment that I'd forgotten all about fast practice . I used to occasionally (OK, more than occasionally, which was too often, but still ...) engage in fast practice, where I played a piece a good bit faster than I'd been practicing it, and even a good bit faster than the recommended tempo. There was something about forcing the faster tempo that made the piece easier to play at tempo the next time. Only problem is, I have always loved to play fast. Quiet, mousy little me actually has quite an inner showoff that comes out occasionally, even I'm only showing off for myself. So I can fall into a habit of playing too fast, or playing the piece all the way through, and then getti...

 Here is my video from week 3 of the "Misty" challenge from Piano With Jonny . It's right-hand only, and I'm a little nervous about putting the right and left hands together. The right hand/melody part wasn't too hard (though some parts were tricky), but I'm still trying to get the left hand to feel smooth and natural.

I am about three weeks into my month-long deep-dive into major seventh chords. I have learned so much , and I was thinking I was ready to move on to dominant sevenths ... but then I discovered all of these exercises on PWJ that I could (sort of) play through but that didn't feel natural or automatic. So, I've decided to finish out the month by really concentrating on becoming better at these exercises. They include block and broken chords from the root position, going both ways around the circle of fifths and moving up and down chromatically; broken chords up and down the keyboard; block and broken-chord inversions; and movement from the I to the IV. I've mostly practiced the broken inversions and the chromatic movement (see video for an example), so I want to become better at moving around the circle of fifths. I can do those exercises slowly (with the metronome at 40 or 44), but the goal is to get them up to 60/120. As I was working on making the short video above this m...

 A few days ago, I wrote about how I'm learning "Misty" as part of a challenge group on Facebook. Week 1 focused on learning the melody only. The notes weren't hard at all, but the challenge was in memorizing it. Week 2's challenge--the stride-style left hand (LH)--was harder. Not only was I dealing with rootless voicings (something relatively new to me), but there were things like 13th chords with flatted ninths, and such. I studied and understood the theory (to a point), but mostly I just memorized hand shapes/positions. Yes. I have memorized the LH section. I can't believe it, really. I mean, I can't remember why I walk into a room most days. Or where my keys are, or what I did with my phone, which was in my hand not two minutes ago. But I memorized the LH to "Misty." In this video, you might notice that my hand gets to the chords a fraction of a second before I actually have to play them. This is because (1) it's good practice to get int...

In any song I write, I have what I'll charitably call "my signature sound." I wrote about it a few weeks ago . It's the repetitive, broken-chord sound, root-fifth-root-fifth-root-fifth pattern, ad nauseam . I know it sounds crazy, but I never could figure out what else to do with my left hand. So anytime I played anything where the music wasn't dictated to me on a page, I would fill in the accompaniment with this signature sound. A few days ago, I posted a tune/accompaniment that I came up with while working on major severth chords . I didn't realize it until a day or two later, but it's kind of a big deal this little song uses block chords instead of the old broken-chord signature sound in the left hand. This is huge! I'm choosing not to kick myself for not getting to this point when I was in my teens. At this point, I'm just happy to be returning to the fundamentals and filling in the gaps that have held me back all these years. I don't hate ...

My study of 2-5-1 progressions, and of major sevenths in particular, has been so enlightening. I am baffled as to why I never did this before, when I was younger and had a better attention span! Ah well, I'm doing it now, and I'm thankful for the opportunity. I've spent the last few weeks becoming intimately familiar with major seventh chords. I've done block chord exercises, ascending broken-chord exercises, descending broken-chord exercises, inversion exercises following the circle of fifths, and more. I've made so many little discoveries here and there -- how the second inversion is really just two major thirds a half-step apart, and how the first inversion is really just a minor chord a major third up, plus the root a half-step up. Or how going from a major seventh in the root position to the fourth up in the second position just involves moving the top two notes down a couple of notes. Funny, as I was typing the above, I thought about how "all this music-t...

"The Transcendence" (my title for it), cut and pasted for the blog. This morning, as I practiced the section of the Chopin nocturne that I call "The Transcendence," I became momentarily overwhelmed by a sense of profound gratitude: gratitude for Chopin and his music, gratitude for the miracle the is the modern piano, and gratitude for my ability to practice and play this magnificent music. I also realized something I'd never thought about before: As pianists, we get to experience the music up close, in a way that mere listeners never do. Sure, they can listen to Rubinstein on their earbuds and feel like the pianist is right there with them. But the pianists themselves? We can slow the music to a crawl, practice the inner voices only, gain a greater understanding of all the parts by playing hands separately, etc. Non-pianists can't really do that. A non-pianist can listen to multiple renditions of Chopin's F Minor nocturne and they can wonder at the beaut...

About three weeks ago (has it only been three weeks?), I posted The Rusty Lock and Key , about how there seems to be a locked door between where I am and where I want to be with regards to the piano. I wrote with a sense of hope, but, at the same time, I knew it would take time for me to break out of that dark little room. And it would take dedication and perseverance—two things I’ve been lacking. Yes, it would be a while before the key started to turn. Months, most likely. Or years. Well. It’s been three weeks, and the key is starting to turn. I’m not there yet, but I have a whole new sense of hope. This is due to several things: Quentin – This is the guy I’ll be meeting monthly for jazz piano lessons. We’ve only met once so far, but he gave me some valuable exercises that I’ve been doing assiduously every morning before work. The Mark Levine Book  – I’ve had this book for years and never got past the third chapter because I couldn’t understand it. I went ahead and skipped that ch...