Foundations Tuesday: Turnaround Progression

A week or two ago, I went through Lesson 2 of the Lead Sheets course, which focuses on the popular "turnaround progression" (I explain it a little here, before getting rudely interrupted.)

My Struggle with the Lead Sheets Course

I am having trouble connecting this course to my piano goals of playing and writing/arranging blues, ragtime, and gospel. This course seems more focused on cocktail jazz piano, which I am not interested in. I do think it's good to learn the progressions, though, and learning to play (without thinking) in inversions is valuable time spent. Also, if I decide to start playing at nursing homes, it will be good to know how to play anything from a lead sheet.

So, I am sticking with this course. It's been slow going because I have so much other stuff going on (in both life and piano). On Saturday I bought some colored sticky-tabs and started marking pages in my three giant real books so songs with different progressions are easy to find. (Part of my lack of motivation with this course has simply been not wanting to dig through literally 1,000 pages to identify all of the Cycle of Fifths and Turnaround songs.)

Recognizing Progressions

As I drove my daughter to Athens (GA) Sunday afternoon, I let her listen to her music for the whole ride over. She played a Phoebe Bridgers cover of a John Prine song, "Summers End." As I listened, I thought, "That's a turnaround progression." So when I got home a few hours later, I played it ... and it was indeed a turnaround progression.

I've identified these progressions (both Cycle of Fifths and Turnaround) several times listening to music in the car. They're very easy and basic, and I've always sensed when one song sounded a lot like the other ... but I didn't have the language to describe it, and I didn't understand the theory behind it. Now I'm beginning to do that, which is a big deal.

Making Progress with Progressions

Yesterday morning I picked up a new lead-sheet piece, "The Way You Look Tonight." I played through it for about 15 minutes and ended up with this video. It's definitely not perfect, but it's not terrible. Most importantly, I'm not playing broken chords in the left hand, and I'm not going to the root position every time. So that's progress!

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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,

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

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