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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, I need to buckle down and get serious about it.

What does "getting serious" about this "fun" piece mean? It means I have to practice it like it's Bach. Or Chopin. Or any other challenging piece I've ever committed to.

I need to think in individual measures, not sections. I need to work on transitions from one measure to the next. I need to play those left-hand jumps ad nauseam until I can play them at breakneck speed with my eyes closed. I need to be (shudder!) a perfectionist.

(Oh, who am I kidding with that parenthetical shudder! My inner perfectionist relishes the opportunity to come out and play.)

So one of my goals over the next couple of weeks with the stride section is to drill, drill, drill those individual measures and pairs of measures ... and then groups of measures, and so on. I started doing this earlier this week, and the muscle memory seems to be taking hold.

And now, for ...

Breakthrough #2

Because I was taking such a lackadaisical approach to this "fun" piece, I'd never even bothered to sight-read the whole thing and see if it was even within my grasp. Realizing this, I'd made a goal of sight-reading it over the weekend, and I finally got to it Sunday evening.

And ... It Didn't Go Well

I am a fairly good sight-reader, but ... to put it mildly, the experience left me feeling deflated. OK, it was a train wreck that left me with questions and doubts. How did I think I could learn this difficult piece? Am I so arrogant that I think I can just sit down and learn anything I want? And what madness made me think that this piece might be like the Khatchaturian Toccata I played in college: showy and impressive, but not all that difficult once you work out the notes and the rhythms?

I briefly entertained the idea of just finishing up the stride section, calling it a day, and moving on to something else.

Enter ... Lesson 3

Monday morning, I watched Jonny's "Bare Necessities" Lesson 3 video. And everything changed.

What is it about that Jonny May? The man has a gift for teaching. Really, he could probably make a Piano With Jonny how-to video on "La Campanella," and I would be like, "Oh! Is that all there is to it? Sure, I can do that!"

When I finally started to work on the ragtime section in earnest Monday evening, I did so with confidence that this was well within my abilities ... and I was pleasantly surprised at how easily it came to me this time. There's still work to do--a lot of work, as this piece is no walk in the jungle--but I was able to memorize the left hand and most of the right hand in one sitting.

Here is the sight-read I did Monday after watching the video. It sounds much more like an actual song than Sunday's sight-read, which didn't sound like potential music at all!

The breakthrough? Not only did I commit to seriously learning this piece, but I got a whole new sense of confidence about it. Jonny's teaching videos are like magic pills that enable me able to play anything I want to. Or at least they give me the shot of confidence I need in order to think, "Yes. I can do this."

I know I'll be able to pull off this ragtime section, as well as the rest of the arrangement of this wonderful song. It'll take time, but I'll get there!

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