Getting There

Welcome to Ragtime Thursday!

I have no Bare Necessities video to share with you today. Ten minutes into the morning's practice session, I remembered I had a dentist appointment at 8 a.m., so I needed to hit the road. Hence, no videos today. (I may update this post a little later if I'm able to get a video tonight.)

Last Night's Practice: Slow and Measured

Last night I practiced both the Mozart and Bare Necessities with the metronome, at slow tempos -- not so slow that I got distracted, but slow enough that I felt like I had plenty of time to think about where my hands would go next. It was a wonderfully satisfying experience to be able to play each piece at a slow but recognizable pace, and to play them without missing a note.

Of course, I did miss a note every now and then. And when I did, I stopped, backed up a measure or two, and played it again. If I missed the note again, I stopped to drill. If I didn't miss it again, I kept going.

I did this several times for each piece. I ended up practicing the Mozart for about 50 minutes, and Bare Necessities for about 45.

Almost There

Once I was done practicing, I went upstairs to change into my pajamas. And then it hit me:

I'm no longer in the dark tunnel of learning Bare Necessities. I can see the end.

The light at the end of the tunnel. The end of the road. The finish line. Pick your metaphor.

I'm at the point now where I'm just working to bring up the speed and figure out what I want to do with dynamics and articulation. I can play this piece. I understand the theory behind each measure (except for those outro measures). I have enough muscle memory to be able to play them without thinking intently about each note. The ragtime/stride jumps are becoming internalized. I'm getting this.

One of the people on the PWJ Facebook page talks about "interiorizing" a piece of music, and I think that's where I am with this one. I'm slowly making it my own as I become more and more familiar with it, repeating passages and exploring the possibilities of expression.

I'm so excited. It may be a month or more before I get it up to speed ... or it may be less. But I'll get there. I'm getting there. I'm so happy.

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The Rusty Lock and Key

I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, the lock isn't opening. I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust. That dark little room is my ...

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Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

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 ...

Picking Up the Pieces

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