Picking Up the Pieces

I have completed Lesson 4 ("Hands Together") of the PWJ "After You've Gone" course! Well, not exactly. I completed the first phase, which was being able to get it hands together, no matter how slow. I'm still at a relatively slow tempo, though it's picked up quite a bit in the past week. I was finally able to post this progress video on Feb. 28 (my goal was to have something to share by the end of the month, so goal achieved!). The next goals for this piece: Slowly increase the tempo to the 100-120 range. Practice playing a solo Possibly work out an intro and outro Lesson 5 is on soloing. I've already watched it, and it's pretty basic: just use the four notes in whatever chord your left hand happens to be playing. So, if the left hand is on F6, then just play something that only uses F, A, C, and D. Pretty easy. I think the hardest part will be coordinating--switching to the next chord solo in the right hand, and remembering the order of the p...

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been in Lesson 5 (Minor Turnaround Progression) of PWJ’s Play Lead Sheets with 7th Chords course. It has some weird (to me) chords—half-diminished, iv7s, etc.—and at first I wasn’t sure I would like it. It just sounded so lugubrious . But I'm a good little Piano With Jonny student, so I bit the bullet and started the lesson. There are four suggested lead sheets for learning and practicing this progression: In This Quiet Hour (Jonny’s 8-bar educational tune for the lesson) Lullaby of Birdland You Don’t Know What Love Is Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise I started with “In This Quiet Hour” and then began listening seriously to the other three. I made a playlist with multiple recordings of each song and listened while driving, working, walking. I didn’t know any of them when I started, but now I know and love them (except maybe “You Don’t Know What Love Is”… just too depressing!). Then I printed out The Great Gig Book as a birthday gift to myself, an...

Folks, I have finished writing my You Are My Sunshine (YAMS) arrangement! Is it ready for performance? No. Will it be ready for the PWJ Student Recital on March 19? Probably not. But are the uncertainties of “I’m not sure what I’ll do in this section” and “I eventually need to figure out an outro” finally behind me? Yes. Do I have every note picked out? Not exactly. But the structure is there—and if the structure is there, the notes will follow. It’s like when I was in college and graduate school, writing papers. The hard part was always the outline. I would spend hours shaping it, developing my thesis, moving pieces around, deciding what belonged where. Once the outline held, the fun began, and I could write a brilliant paper. I don't know how brilliant YAMS will be, but I have to admit that I'm pretty darn proud of it. These two videos are very rough, as I was still working out the structural details, along with a few stylistic ones. In the “Solo” video, I’m experimenting wit...

The PWJ "Love Progression" goes as follows: I - V (over 3) - iii - vi (over 3) - IV - I (over 3) - ii7 - V - I In the challenge, you play each chord (as broken chords) in the left hand for one measure before moving to the next. So in 4/4 time, you have four beats per chord. I decided to experiment and change chords every two beats instead of every four ... and I liked it! The slower pace has an open, contemporary feel. The faster pace feels more circular and driving. A little more Pachelbel, a little less Yanni. Both approaches work, but I decided to submit my faster version for the challenge. The audio quality of this video leaves much to be desired, and reminds me that I need to run the sound directly from my phone into my phone with a cable. Yet another project for my to-do list. For now, enjoy this slightly fuzzy-sounding improvisation on the "Love Progression" for PWJ's February Challenge!

Showing Up Anyway It’s been an interesting stretch at the piano lately. Not dramatic or triumphant, that’s for sure. Just mentally ... expansive, maybe. Life outside piano has been intense, and I haven’t managed a full, uninterrupted hour at the keyboard in nearly a week. The good news is that I'm still showing up every day, sometimes twice a day when I can. Fifteen minutes here, twenty there. “After You’ve Gone.” Minor turnaround practice. Modulations. Transposing. Jonny’s “Love Progression” challenge. Tweaking my “You Are My Sunshine” arrangement. A feeble attempt at re-learning a cheesy love song from the 80s so I can submit a video for PWJ’s “Cheesy Month.” The kind of work that doesn’t make for flashy videos but does steadily rewire my brain. (OK, maybe the cheesy love song doesn’t ... but it’s a good exercise in sight-reading!) I am deep in my PWJ courses right now, especially the Minor Turnaround work, and it is seriously stretching me. Flat 9 inversions. Half-dimi...

This morning I worked on the “stride” section of “You Are My Sunshine.” I started writing it as kind of a joke, thinking, “How dissonant can I make this and have it still sound like ‘You Are My Sunshine’?” But then it started to grow on me, and I made some changes, applying what I’ve been learning in my “After You’ve Gone” stride course. So now this section is deliciously rife with 6ths, 9ths, and diminished chords. Not the epitome of sophistication, but I’m excited to move beyond triads and dominant sevenths. For some reason, I’ve struggled with the final measure or so of this section. With the left hand striding on F major, I descend chromatically from an F6 (3rd inversion) to a diminished chord—which diminished chord, I have no idea. Maybe an F diminished? On the keyboard, I’m playing B, D, F, and A♭. From there, the left hand switches to C7 and my right hand descends chromatically to a C9 (B♭ on the bottom), then plays what I think is a C with a flat 9, but which also look...

When I was a kid (and a teenager… and honestly even into my twenties), my greatest temptation at the piano was speed. If there was a run, I wanted it faster. If there were sparkling sixteenth notes, I wanted them to blur. I loved pieces like Mozart’s Sonata in A Minor (K. 310)  and Schubert's Op. 90, No. 2 because they gave me an excuse to race. I could play fast, or at least I thought I could. And I was more than happy to demonstrate that fact. The problem was that fast and good are not the same thing. Back then, my teachers would say things like, “If you can’t play it at 60, you can’t play it at 120.” I nodded. Then I went home and promptly practiced at 120. What I didn’t understand at the time was that playing fast before something is secure doesn’t save time. It adds time. Or, more accurately, it wastes it. I would “learn” a piece, but it was never really solid — never fully mapped in my head or dependable in my hands. If you’d asked me where the harmony was going, or why that...

 The sample tune for PWJ's Play Lead Sheets with 7th Chords course, Lesson 4 (Chromatic Walkup Progression), is titled "My Heart Is Jumpin'". The lesson focuses on that delightful chromatic walk-up progression, which is used in Ain't Misbehavin', Makin' Whoopee, and It's Only a Paper Moon. It practically begs to be played in a stride style! This progression has easily been my favorite so far. I spent about four weeks on this lesson. It was definitely more involved than Lesson 3 (Extended Turnaround Progression), which took about two weeks. Part of that was difficulty; part of it was me. I worked it in multiple keys, tried different left-hand approaches, and of course experimented with stride in tenths. So that took time. I made this "graduation" video earlier this week and have since moved on to Lesson 5 (Minor Turnaround Progression). I shared it on the PWJ page without expecting much of reaction (since it's just a Foundations course, no...

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 ...

I bit the bullet. I signed up for the Piano With Jonny Student Recital on Thursday, March 19. It’s in the middle of the workday, which means I’ll either be working from home with a very strategic “lunch break” or taking the day off entirely. Given how busy things have been lately, I kind of like the idea of a day off. What will I play? "You Are My Sunshine," of course! I’ve known for a while that the only way this arrangement will ever reach the finish line is if I give it a hard deadline. Otherwise, it remains "this fun thing I'm working on" forever. Now it has to become something real . Like the velveteen rabbit. So I have five weeks to prepare. I think that's enough time. Thinking Strategically Last night I divided the arrangement into 13 sections and tried to rate each one from 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “needs serious work” and 5 meaning “performance-ready.” The rating system fell apart pretty quickly, though. Some sections are musically finished but not d...

This was the best I could do for my "graduation" video. St. Louis Blues is now officially a maintenance piece. It's something I can play on maintenance days and also as a technique-style warmup for practicing the blues scale. I'm thinking I can also use it for a transposing exercise. (Everything is a potential transposing exercise these days!) As I played this rendition of St. Louis Blues, I could practically feel the small, fussy spirits of certain former piano teachers perched on my shoulders. Sit still. Don’t sway. The music is not about your body. Every time I leaned into the groove, one of them wobbled. By the time I hit the last chorus, I’m pretty sure a few had fallen off entirely. Anyway, I love this piece. It's so much fun. And yes, I'm dancing--and maybe I'd play those runs more cleanly if I weren't. But this is blues, not Bach, and being in the groove matters more than getting all the notes right.

Tall Nick (the new piano) and I did not get along very well this weekend. Several of my projects (Lead Sheets Lesson 4, After You've Gone, and St. Louis Blues) felt ready for a video I could share on PWJ. So I decided that on Saturday, in addition to practicing my maintenance pieces, I would make a few videos. Ha. Haha. I could write about my adventures with all three would-be videos, but I'll limit this blog post to After You've Gone. Saturday morning, with the family gone and the house all to myself for many glorious hours, I sat down at Tall Nick, ready to record a good progress video of After You’ve Gone. It was a reasonable goal; I’d been working on the left-hand stride and right-hand melody for a couple of weeks. I had it by memory and felt comfortable with it. I was basically there . Ha. Haha. What followed was a familiar spiral: take after take, none of them good. I would get lost after the first measure, or I'd make it through the whole song and then crash and ...

January is St. Louis Blues Challenge Month at PWJ! I actually started this challenge about six months ago , got frustrated, and moved on to other things without finishing it. The challenge itself isn’t so hard, but I just could not get the G minor blues improv under my fingers. When the challenge was announced on January 1, I decided to revisit it. Now that I’m learning more about transposing, I thought maybe I could finally come to peace with this G minor blues. As is my wont, I no longer seem capable of just playing what’s written. Instead of simply playing the 12-bar A-section arrangement (which is all the challenge requires), I’ve created a whole combobulation: Intro from PWJ Blues Endings 1 course (ending on D7) 12-bar A section (the actual challenge) 12-bar B section (using a lead sheet) A-section repeat 12-bar solo using runs from PWJ 10-Lesson Blues Challenge 2 course A-section repeat with octave displacement throughout 12 bars of unstructured jamming (chords, rolls, general ma...

Well, I’ve been having some fun with ChatGPT. I regularly use ChatGPT to help me define my piano goals for each month (and for the year), and to determine how much time to devote to each. I’ve also asked some philosophical questions about my move from classical student to ragtime/stride/blues pianist. And I ask lots of theory-related questions, and ragtime-related questions, and… well, that’s my primary use of ChatGPT. I’ve also asked questions relating to my work—not so much about how certain things work, but things like “Can you proofread this email?” and “Does this revision make sense from an engineering standpoint?” It’s been helpful, though at times I’ve had to say, “No, that’s not how that works.” And then ChatGPT responds with, “You’re exactly right to call out my mistake.” Conversations like that make me wary of trusting its “knowledge” too much. Anyway, people have been posting ChatGPT caricatures of themselves lately, so I thought I’d have some fun. I asked it to make a caric...

January was a good month for piano, even though I spent about eight days in North Carolina without my Roland, and even though I was without a left hand for a week and a half thanks to a ganglion cyst. We’re expecting snow on Saturday, so I’m not sure how much practicing I’ll get done this weekend; one downside of a digital piano is that it needs electricity to work. Still, I’m a goal-driven creature, so it’s time to think about February. My original January goals were to: Share a "You Are My Sunshine" (YAMS) performance on the PWJ page Post periodic updates on my progress in Foundations and "After You’ve Gone" Get through at least one Analysis course Keep up with all maintenance pieces Despite the month’s challenges, I managed to do all of that with one exception: I haven’t played "Jingle Bells Rag" a single time. That said, I still have at least three more practice sessions ahead of me, weather permitting. I’d planned to break down my practice time like t...

A few days ago, I mentioned that I’d shared a rough version of my "You Are My Sunshine" arrangement with the PWJ community. I got some feedback, which I appreciated, but I’ll admit I was hoping for more pointed critique. I wanted someone to really poke at it and tell me what wasn’t working. Then Jonny May himself commented. He said many generous things about the arrangement, which meant a lot. But what mattered more were the specific suggestions he offered for how I might push it further. That kind of feedback is even more valuable because it gives me something to work on instead of something to simply feel good about. At Tuesday’s “Ask Jonny” Q&A, I worked up the nerve to ask him about possible introductions. He paused, played around, thought out loud, and gradually assembled a handful of ideas on the spot. None of them felt rehearsed. All of them were clever, musical, and full of personality. Watching that process was at least as valuable as the ideas themselves. He eve...

About a week ago, I recorded this video showing my progress with Lesson 2 of After You’ve Gone (AYG). It features the “intermediate” stride left hand. I was planning to move on to the advanced version (with tenths), but then two things happened: (1) pain in my left wrist, and (2) an unexpected five-day trip to North Carolina (where all I have is a little Yamaha keyboard). I initially thought about shifting my focus to Lesson 3 (right-hand stylizations), and I did that for a couple of days. But it was really hard to practice those on my toy-adjacent Yamaha, so I decided to set AYG aside until I could get back to a real piano. Friends, I will be back at my real piano tonight! My wrist is feeling fine, so I have the option of returning to Lesson 2 and starting the advanced stride section, or staying with Lesson 3. I may try to do both, but I’m not sure that’s the wisest approach. I’ll probably work primarily on the left hand, while regularly reviewing the right-hand stylizations as I mas...

I’m learning to transpose songs using numbers. Numbered chords (I, IV, ii7, V7, etc.) were already familiar to me, so that part of PWJ’s Transposing from a Lead Sheet course felt comfortable. But transposing the melody? That's a whole new ballgame. It’s not just “this is a I chord, this is a IV chord.” It’s assigning a number (the scale degree) to every note in the melody and memorizing them. I know this is going to get easier. In fact, it already is. I’m starting to hear the melody and think, “that’s the 5,” or “that’s a sharp 4.” It’s taken a lot of focused work. A lot of “deep practice,” as they call it. In this video, I’m playing the melody to "Makin’ Whoopee" in several different keys. My brain isn’t thinking of note names (Eb, F, etc.); it’s thinking in numbers. In Eb, G is 3, B natural is #5, and so on. I’m able to play through the melody relatively smoothly, even as the key changes. I’ve been at my mom’s house in North Carolina for most of the past week. With a h...

It has been a busy week for piano, which is kind of wild, since I have an injured left wrist and haven’t had access to my piano since last Friday. But some exciting things have happened nonetheless, so I’ll share them here. One Thousand Hours! I hit the 1,000-hour mark in my PWJ practice journal this weekend! I started keeping the journal the day I joined PWJ, January 31, 2024. Funny enough, that day feels like it should be an observed holiday in my mind. Almost like a birthday. Definitely a rebirth day. Of course, I have a chart showing which pieces and projects received what degree of attention over the past two years. In this chart, I left out anything that got less than six hours, mainly to keep it somewhat clean. It’s interesting that so much of my time went toward learning written pieces: Liszt, Pineapple Rag , Bare Necessities , and others. I expect very little of my time to go toward written pieces this year, as I’m morphing from an interpreter/performer identity into an arran...

I made this video to share with a small group of musician friends for feedback on my YAMS arrangement, which I’m still developing. It collected dust inside my phone for a couple of weeks before I finally decided to let it out into the world. This is not a performance , and it isn’t meant to be evaluated as one. At the time of recording, I was still very much in the arranging phase (still am, to be honest). I hadn’t been practicing this as a complete, polished piece, and any continuity you hear is simply the byproduct of experimenting with ideas until certain sections started to take shape. What I was hoping for, and what I received, was feedback on the music itself: the structure, the flow, the character, and where things might be expanded or made more interesting. That feedback has already given me several new directions to explore. I’ll be away from my main piano for a few days, but I’ll have a keyboard with me and plan to keep working on the intro and a stronger outro. When those id...

Guess what! It's another YAMS video! In this video, I work through a couple of small issues that I've needed to address for a while. Today was the day, and both issues turned out to have simple fixes. One involved switching the rag roll early to avoid weird stretches and jumps, and the other involved playing a minor sixth (A to F) rather than an octave for a cleaner ending. I won't go into detail here because it's all in the video!

Lately I’ve been rereading some of my old piano posts, and what strikes me isn’t how much I’ve changed, but how consistent the questions are. The repertoire changes. The teachers change. The piano itself has changed. But the things I circle around—attention, authority, trust, the urge to control vs the urge to listen—are still there. I’m not trying to do anything with that yet. I’m just noticing it. And for the next year or so, I think noticing might be the work. Because I'm a writer as well as a musician, my mind keeps gravitating to the idea of essays—a series of essays about art, life, creativity, fear, perfectionism, uncertainty, learning, and growth. Between blog, my other (now-defunct) blog, my YouTube channel, and more than 40 years of longhand journaling, I certainly have a treasure trove (or maybe just a trove) of material. I'm going to keep noticing. I'm going to make notes. I'm going to read, write, and intentionally take it all in. And I might, just might, f...

Is there anything more boring than pedaling? It's one of those things you don't think about—until you need it to swoop in like a superhero to save your unintentionally choppy notes. This morning I found myself thinking about pedaling in my "You Are My Sunshine" arrangement. So far, the only real pedaling I've used has been for the "stride pedaling effect" in the second playthrough, toward the beginning of the arrangement. But when I listened to my videos from yesterday , I realized I'm having to "cut short" some notes in the section where I'm crossing hands back and forth. It makes sense. If I'm pressing a key in the bass and have to rush to get to the high treble, I'm going to have to pick up a little sooner than I might otherwise. The result is a short, rushed sound at the end of each phrase. Hence the need for pedal—specifically the sustain pedal to do some connective work while my right hand is in midair. So in my brief pian...

In this video, I walk through my "You Are My Sunshine" arrangement, demonstrating bits and pieces of the different sections and sharing a few thoughts along the way. I'm planning to submit my arrangement for feedback through Piano With Jonny , either at the live "Ask Jonny" Q&A or in the monthly Q&A with Daine Jordan. I'll probably do the monthly one; I tend to get a little flustered playing for a group. Another option is to make a video of the whole thing (with no talking) and post it the group with a specific request for feedback and suggestions. I actually tried to make that video this morning, but quickly realized my hands want to do something other than what I've written, and I ended up with a standoff between my brain and my hands. Brain vs Hands: The Standoff The brain wants the section to land low, setting up a dramatic leap into what comes next. The hands, on the other hand, keep drifting upward, as if they’d rather linger where the note...

At Piano With Jonny , there are three learning tracks: Foundations, Styles, and Skills. This year, I’m dividing most of my practice time between the three, and I'll be posting updates on each both here and in the PWJ Community. Within Styles, I'll be spending the first quarter (and possibly the first half) of the year in Ragtime/Stride, after which I'll switch back to Blues. Which brings me to my current course: "After You've Gone," stride-style. Week 1: Melody and Chords (with one stubborn problem) The first lesson strips everything down to just the melody and chords. My goal this week was to memorize both completely. Done. Since it was such a nice tune, and I actually enjoyed playing it using a "four on the floor" style with the root chords, I decided to work just a little harder and to be able to play this bare-bones version at performance level. Not so easy. There was one line that absolutely refused to cooperate—the one where the lyrics go: “Som...

I was able to record and share Jonny May's Silent Night Rhumba on Christmas Day. I’d hoped to have it finished by Christmas Eve, but Christmas Eve itself turned out to be unexpectedly full, and I didn’t get much time at the piano. That familiar feeling followed. I'd had a goal, missed it, and was disappointed. So I tried again the next morning. I woke up early on Christmas Day (before the kid!) and practiced SNR quietly with headphones. Things felt solid enough. Not perfect, but playable. Good enough to record, I thought. After presents were opened and the house settled, I went back to the piano and pressed “record.” I played. I messed up. I stopped. I pressed “record” again. I messed up again. Stopped again. Pressed “record” again. Banged on the keys. Pressed “record” again. Made it half a measure. Messed up. Stopped. Considered crying. (I may have actually cried.) Such is the part of the process that never makes it into the final video. I know the piece well. My hands know w...

The first few days of January have been some of my best piano days ever. I started a new practice setup, and so far it’s working surprisingly well. I feel focused, energized, and more intentional than I have in a long time. Foundations Level 4 Course: Playing Lead Sheets with Seventh Chords I’m back in the lead sheets course, but this time I’m actually committing instead of endlessly restarting it like a broken record. I already know the first two lessons (circle-of-fifths and turnaround progressions), so I jumped ahead to Lesson 3, which focuses on extended turnarounds. I’m practicing it in C, G, and the most common flat keys (F, Bb, Eb, and Ab), depending on the day. I’m also working on the course’s sample tune, "Gone Away," which has a bossa nova feel. Can’t say I'm much of a bossa nova fan, but I’d like to make a video of this one eventually. It’s not flashy or technically brutal, but at the recommended tempo of 120 bpm it demands focus and consistency. So it's ex...

Every January, I sense the familiar siren song of reinvent yourself ! New year, new me: new systems, new promises, and a new list of challenging piano pieces I want to master. Now that I'm well into middle age, I'm finally learning that the grand declarations and the twelve-month master plans don't lead to my best work. I think I need to focus on smaller, well-chosen containers. So instead of plotting all of 2026, I’ve decided to focus only on the first six months. The Guiding Question My guiding question over the past few months, and for this year, is simple: What kind of musician am I becoming? The answer is not “a virtuoso” or “a concert pianist.” It's not even "a performer." No, I am first a songwriter, an arranger, and maybe even a composer--someone whose greatest joy is creating, shaping, and finally sharing music. I want to play engaging, expressive, rhythmic, engaging piano music for myself and others. I'd like to be someone who can sit down at a p...