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Goodbyes and Hellos

 The past week of my piano life has been a bit out of the ordinary.

For one thing, it was spring break, and we spent five days in Pensacola Beach, Florida.

I'd hoped to pack the 61-key Yamaha, but there was no room—which was probably for the best, since I got a surprising amount of practice-adjacent work done.

On the 7-hour drive down, I did a harmonic analysis of Jonny May's Ode To Joy, which I'll begin learning to play in earnest once I've graduated from After You've Gone (soon!). It took a while, but it was such a good use of time, and I never would have done it with a keyboard in front of me. Once I'd written it all out, I grouped the chords into recognizable patterns, labeled the sections, and added notes to make the analysis easier to navigate. (For any music theoreticians looking at this, I can promise you it isn't a perfect analysis!) 

Then I listened to Jonny's arrangement while reading along ... and wow, what a different perspective that gave me!

While in Florida, I did some ear training, but I also did a lot of journaling. I'm still toying with the idea of a memoir, and I used exercises from Suzanne Paola and Brenda Miller's Tell It Slant to get my writing wheels turning. I ended up with several essay drafts I was proud of.

It was a wonderful few days, and I was sad to say goodbye to Florida. But I was also excited about another 7-hour road trip home—more time for theory and ear training! (Good thing I wasn't driving!)

On the way back, I did a harmonic analysis of Bach's C Major Prelude, but I focused mainly on ear training. I got through most of the PWJ Ear Training with 7th Chords course and was happy to find I'm much better at recognizing 7th-chord qualities and progressions than when I first attempted this course a couple of years ago.

When I got home, I attacked the piano! Not really. But I sat down to work on my active pieces and I realized it's time, or almost time, to say goodbye to a few projects:

  • Foundations: Play Lead Sheets With 7th Chords, Lesson 7 (Sentimental Progression)
  • Foundations: Play Lead Sheets With 7th Chords, Lesson 8 (Blues Progression)
  • Stride Style: After You've Gone
  • Analysis: Bach's C Major Prelude

This morning I marked the two lead sheets lessons "Completed." I'm not going to do graduation videos for those; I'm just moving on. I understand the progressions, can play them in multiple keys, and can ad harmony notes pretty automatically. An honestly? I'm tired of that course after starting and quitting it for nearly two years.

And After You've Gone? The improv is beginning to get easier, and I can do a decent job of it at a slow tempo. I will plan a graduation video of this, and I'll also plan to play it at the Piano with Rebecca recital later this month. After that, it will go into the Maintenance bucket.

The C Major Prelude just needs a few more days. Yesterday I used my road-trip analysis as a guide to transpose it into multiple keys, which was a great workout for both ear and brain. I also want to spend some time improvising on it before I let it go.

Once those goodbyes are done, I'll say hello to:

  • Foundations: Diatonic 7ths Exercises
  • Stride Style: Ode to Joy
  • Analysis: Chopin's E-minor Prelude

Most of these will start before May, so I'm not far behind my original goal of wrapping these hellos and goodbyes by end of Q1. A lot of this first quarter in the Piano With Jonny tracks has felt like being in the trenches: theory, analysis, difficult technical work. But I'm starting to see real progress. And that's exciting.

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