Skip to main content

Ode to Joy, Day 26: Albert and The Mule

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 fast.

Batch 1

The Batch 1 revisit went well ... until I got to the transition ending the first run of the A theme. I’m playing Am7 in the left hand and what looks like a Cmaj7 arpeggio in the right ... but I think it’s really just an Am9.

Regardless, while I’m playing the Am7 boom-chick, my brain is watching the right hand and thinking:

Hmm. B to G to E ... that’s E minor.
Oh, now there’s a C, so that’s Cmaj7.
And now we’re playing a C-major triad, so clearly we’re in C major.

Meanwhile, the whole thing is just Am9: A, C, E, G, and B.

I have named my brain Albert, by the way, because sometimes I’m amazed at the things it can do. But sometimes I call him The Mule.

Did I just make my brain a boy?

Anyway, now I need to train Albert the Mule to think “Am9,” not “Em, Cmaj7, C.” Once Albert accepts that yes, this is in fact what we are doing, that section will get much smoother.

So this morning I literally closed my eyes and pictured myself playing Am9 arpeggios up and down the keyboard, willing The Mule to accept that there really can be a B natural in an A arpeggio.

Albert is a very stubborn mule of a brain, but I think we made progress.

Batch 2

I also started Batch 2 today. I only had about 15 minutes with it, and honestly, I think much of that time was wasted.

The plan was simply to refamiliarize myself with it after a few days away, so I played through it and made a few mistakes. Then I played through it again and made the same mistakes. Then again. Same mistakes.

I kept thinking, "This time I won’t make those mistakes." And then I would immediately make those mistakes.

At some point I thought, "Nina, you are wasting your time. You’re playing while Albert sits bored, smoking his pipe and gazing out the window at the silly mule prancing thoughtlessly across the keys. You need to stop playing and start mentally practicing."

And then my timer went off, and it was time to go to work.

So I’m planning to do some mental practice at the office today. Surely I can find a productive but mindless task for half an hour while Albert picks his way through the ledger lines, visiting the notes and laying down the patterns.

After that, he can go hang out with The Mule until evening practice.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...
1 comment
Read more

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tyranny of the Dots

In the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes , Billy talks about "reading the dots." He didn't want—or need—to "read the dots," meaning the music notes on the page. He had developed his own rock 'n' roll piano style and, after a few years of classical training, he left the dots behind. I didn't want to read the dots, either, once upon a time. As a little kid, I had a good ear and could quickly figure out just about any tune on the piano. But in first grade, I finally started piano lessons, thus beginning my life with the dots. The Wall of Dots Between Me and Music I hated the dots! I wanted to learn them, sure, but it was so hard. If my teacher played what was written, I could play it right back for him. But if he asked me to play it from the dots, I felt like I would pop a blood vessel in my brain. It was so frustrating for my six-year-old self to have the code to a simple tune sitting silently before my eyes and not be able to crack it and bring th...
Post a Comment
Read more