Picking Up the Pieces

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...