Picking Up the Pieces

Oscar Peterson was a great jazz pianist of the 20th century. I think he's my favorite jazz pianist because so much of his jazz is so bluesy. Years ago, I purchased his Jazz Exercises, Minuets, Etudes, and Pieces for Piano ... and I don't know if I ever opened it. Last week, reader, I opened it. And it is delightful. The first section consists of finger exercises and minuets. Even though these are very simple, they are good exercises. I've decided to work my way through the book as an element of my technique work. His first minuet sounds like Bach. I suppose I could jazz it up with swung eighth notes and some slides and turns, but for now, I'm just playing it as written because it's so beautiful. Enjoy!

 How have I managed to go a week without posting here? The good news is that I've been practicing. I've also been working from home for the last few days. At work, when it's time for a break, I open Notepad and work on my next blog post. At home, I practice piano (or do laundry). I've made a few tweaks to the November goals over the past week. Here are the original goals, compared to the updated ones: Below is a summary of the changes. Taking Jingle Bells Rag Out of Maintenance I had moved this one to maintenance, thinking I would just play it a few times every few days and move on. But then I found that I really wanted to work on it, and I needed to spend a lot more time on it than I'd allotted. So I pulled it back out of maintenance, made it a main piece, and gave it a 15% goal. Decreasing Other Percentage Goals To give Jingle Bells Rag that 15%, I had to decrease my percentage goals for The Entertainer, Blues, and Maintenance. The Entertainer: A 5% decrease was a