Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Back in January, I wrote about my modest plan for the first half of 2026. In a nutshell, I wanted to spend six months becoming less of a piece-collector and more of a musician: building fluency in stride, harmony, and lead sheets; developing a smaller number of creative projects; and maintaining just enough repertoire to keep sharing music with other people. And guess what. I did it. I did all these things. Excuse me while I pat my goal-oriented self on the back. I'm actually not very goal-oriented, but years of life experience have taught me that I'll never make progress if I don't set manageable goals. And I set manageable goals back in January. I started the year with no "list of pieces to learn." None at all. I did end up learning two pieces, both of them "core" courses in the Piano With Jonny ragtime/stride track: After You've Gone and Ode to Joy. I'm planning to play After You've Gone at the PWJ recital in June, and I expect to have Ode...

What does it feel like to learn music under deadline pressure, the way a working musician has to? Apparently, I have given myself the chance to find out. On Monday I did a dumb thing and signed up for the Piano With Jonny Student Recital on June 18. The problem: neither of my two potential recital pieces is quite ready. If the recital were July 18, I’d be able to take my pick. But it’s June 18, which means I have about four weeks. So here’s what I’m working with. After You’ve Gone I learned Jonny May’s stride arrangement of After You’ve Gone earlier this year, but the improv solo section was giving me headaches, so I set it aside. I picked it up again a few weeks ago and found I have renewed interest and something of a vision for what it can become. I could sit down and play the version I learned earlier for the recital right now — muddle through the improv section, play the simple stock outro I added a few days ago, and call it done. And that may indeed be what I play on June 18. But...

So maybe this weekend wasn't the best weekend of my life. There was the weekend I gave birth to my daughter. The weekend I got married. And the six-month “weekend” I spent thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Still, this past weekend was pretty darn good. My daughter was working or going to friends' graduation parties, and my husband was away on a business trip, so I had the whole house to myself. And it was glorious. I practiced piano for over two hours Friday night. Nearly three hours on Sunday. And Saturday? Three hundred and thirty-seven minutes. More than five and a half hours. At least twice what I would normally practice on a Saturday. I finished the day feeling almost euphoric. Intensely alive. When I walked, I felt like I was floating. My heart felt so light, it was like a helium balloon lifting the rest of me along with it. I don't even know how to explain this weekend. So much of it I don't want to explain because it was my private weekend. I don't want to ...

I had kind of an awakening during my “After You’ve Gone” improv practice session yesterday. I didn’t realize it at the time, but as I watched the video (below), I realized I’ve hit a milestone. I’m no longer wondering “am I doing this right” but am instead thinking things like “how do I want this to sound?” I’ve stopped thinking like a student and started thinking like an arranger. But whew, it has felt like a long road to get here. The Piece and the Problem I started Jonny May’s advanced arrangement of “After You’ve Gone” in January. It’s a wonderful and challenging arrangement with stride tenths in the left hand and a swinging melody full of slides, rolls, and crunchy harmonies. And of course, Jonny encourages you to come up with an improvised solo. I struggled through the arrangement itself for a couple of months, and it sounded passably good (not great) by the end of February. But the improv section? Couldn’t do it. Even using the “easy” four-on-the-floor left hand, I just kept hit...

It’s hard to believe I’m already a week into Phase 2 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . I did have to take a couple of days of forced right-hand rest due to a mild case of stride-pianitis, but the break turned into an unexpected opportunity for left-hand work and mental practice. This morning I resumed practicing with both hands, starting with one of the strangest passages in the piece: the pedal point section. ( Here is my video from when I was first learning it.) Harmonic Mismatches Pedal point can feel like a harmonic mismatch. The bass stays the same while the upper voices change. It creates a sense of unrest, a prolonged need to resolve. It’s a wonderful little device, but hoo boy, it takes time to master. One must apply a “willing suspension of disbelief” and just learn the dang notes, trusting that yes, everything will finally, satisfyingly resolve. I go into detail on this section in my previous blog post (linked above) and also in today’s video. Essentially you...

Phase Two is that stage of learning a piano piece where you've learned the fingering, the notes, the rhythms, and the harmonic structure, but you haven’t yet started making music. It’s the stage of slow practice, dynamics work, chunking, rhythmic variations, and slowly, ever so slowly, bringing up the tempo. Phase Two is where the metronome comes into its own. And Phase Two is a grind. It’s hard. It’s nitty-gritty detail work. It feels like one step forward and two steps back, every day, every measure. It comes after the excitement of Phase One, when everything is new and progress feels obvious. Phase Two isn’t exciting the way Phase One is. But it is exciting. It’s a grind, and a grind, and a grind, until suddenly: You play through that difficult passage at 80 bpm five times in a row. You stop consciously thinking about what you’re doing, but your hands still know where to go. The tricky cadence at the end of the section becomes automatic. The runs you drilled an...

I’m now in the “Major 2-5-1” course at Piano With Jonny . I’m still in Level 4 (Early Intermediate) when it comes to theory, though this isn’t my first time learning these progressions in all keys. But it's been a while since I’ve practiced them like this. Lesson 1 focuses on root-position chords . It also includes the I6 alongside the IMaj7, which I think is a good addition. Here I am playing through the exercise once with the backing track: I haven’t worked much with backing tracks in the past. They make me nervous to keep up with, particularly because of my deafness. It can be hard to distinguish my piano from the backing track, and once I get nervous, I can lose the beat. But when I use the Altec Lansing Mini LifeJacket speaker, I can crank up the backing track volume. Then I can’t hear my own piano all that well, but that’s OK because I already know the keys. Other Variations The next lessons will cover the progression in various inversions, which is how I originally learned t...

This is my brain on piano. In my journey through the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge at Piano with Rebecca B , I’ve reached Day 26 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . Today I began my Batch 4 revisit and introduced Batch 2 into my Phase 2 work. No video today, as I also focused on my ii-V-I progression exercise and videoed that instead (stay tuned for a blog post!). Batch 4 Revisit, Day 1 Today I revisited the Very Red Batch 4 for the first time in a week ... and I can play it! It’s slow and still needs a lot of work, but I can play it . My fingers know where to go! This morning I drilled the left hand separately, then the right. Both need to become automatic, and the hands-separate work will help me eventually play this passage at tempo without having to stop and think. I did some hands-together work near the end, but the real value today was in isolating the hands. Phase 2 Work For Phase 2, Batch 1 is on Day 2 and Batch 2 is on Day 1. Say that three times fas...

I had a great practice on Batch 3 yesterday and a good one on Batch 1 today. To remind you where I am: it’s now Day 25 of the 28-day Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge  at Piano with Rebecca B , where I’m learning Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . The challenge schedule currently has me on my third day revisiting Batch 3 after a seven-day break. At the same time, I’ve started my Phase 2 schedule, which overlaps with the challenge schedule for a few days. That’s OK. For Phase 2, today was Day 1 of Batch 1 , which includes the intro and A section . Whew. That sounds more complicated than it really is. I’m just glad I have spreadsheets to keep me organized. Day 24, Batch 3 Yesterday I focused on Batch 3 . One of the day’s suggestions was to play the passages with emotion : anger, sadness, joy, whatever. So naturally I picked anger, which seemed like an appropriately strange fit for a piece called Ode to Joy. What surprised me was that channeling anger made me forget th...

I just scrolled through the blog and realized that it's been so focused on Ode to Joy and the 28-Day Challenge that I've failed to give updates on the other things I've been up to. Foundations: Major 2-5-1 Progression: This is going well. Right now I'm just in Lesson 1 (root-position chords), and I can play them, but not at the recommended tempo. I'm spending about 10 minutes a day on this, and I expect I'll be ready for Lesson 2 before the weekend. Jazz Soloing I: I just started this learning track on the Piano With Jonny site. So far, the first couple of courses have been review for me (diatonic chords, guide tones, etc.). I'm excited to be on a new learning track after completing Analysis, which I loved. I hope to love this one just as much! A lot of this course focuses on soloing over the 2-5-1 progression, so I'm hoping to work some of that into my Foundations practice. After You've Gone: As I mentioned a few days ago, I brought this one back ...

I am now on the cusp of Phase 2 of learning Jonny May's Ode to Joy. Phase 1 was all about learning the notes, locking down the rhythms, and refining the fingering. In Phase 2, I will focus on: Dynamics Articulation Phrasing Voicing Tempo (starting at a very comfortable 60 bpm) Memorization Dynamics This is a relatively short piece when played at tempo (about two minutes; less if you're Jonny May), and it would be easy to just play everything loud. But I want the left hand to be a steady presence—not too loud, not too soft—while the right hand does its thing. And the four-on-the-floor sections should, I think, naturally be a little softer than the boom-chick sections. The fun, crunchy transitions between sections should also be just a hair louder than what came before. So I have work to do there, though the dynamics do make sense and mostly come naturally. I just want to make sure they come naturally in performance, and that will take deliberate practice. Articulation and Phrasi...

In my journey through the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge at Piano with Rebecca B , I’ve reached Day 22 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . Sorry I missed a couple of days of updates. I was in North Carolina for the weekend and did quite a bit of mental practice, but it wasn't the most exciting thing to write about (or video) Day 22 Today’s focus is variable practice, where you intentionally change something each time you repeat a passage instead of playing it the exact same way over and over. You might vary the tempo, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, phrasing, and so on. The idea is to keep your brain actively engaged rather than letting it slip into autopilot. Apparently, besides being kind of fun, this kind of practice improves learning, memory, flexibility, and consistency in ways that regular repetition doesn’t. Today’s passages were Batch 2 (revisiting after 7 days away) and Batch 6 (revisiting after 2 days away). I experimented a bit with tempo and dynam...

In my journey through the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge at Piano with Rebecca B , I’ve reached Day 19 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy . Sadly, I have no video from this morning's practice because I was short on time. Day 19 At this point in the challenge, I am spinning three plates: Continue learning Batch 6 Continue reviewing Batch 1 after its seven-day break Begin reviewing Batch 5 after its two-day break It's a lot, and it feels like a lot. But I'm getting it done, little by little. Batch 6 Learning/Batch 1 Overlap This morning I worked on Batch 6, Passage 2, which I'm calling the A section tag: a short restatement of the A theme before the outro. It's another one of those "not technically hard but mentally demanding" passages that are all over this piece. First there's the left hand, which follows a new descending pattern, and any departure from "1-5 boom-chick" takes adjustment. Then there's the right hand,...