Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

  September Highlights September was a good month for piano. Here are a few standouts: Played Jonny May's "Ode to Joy Rag" in the PWJ recital on Sept. 10. Got to have an in-person piano lesson with Ethan (my ragtime teacher) on Sept. 12, then have dinner with his family and see him perform that night. Completed the Piano With Jonny (PWJ) Chord Shells and Guide Tones Exercises course. Completed Lesson 1 (Cycle of Fifths Progression) of the PWJ Play Lead Sheets with Chord Shells and Guide Tones course. Participated in a short-term PWJ challenge last weekend to come up with something interesting from a chord progression. I came up with a fun ragtime bit, made a short video, posted it, and was done—all in about 10 minutes! Made a "graduation video" for "Over the Rainbow." Made a lot of progress learning the LSU Fight Song ("Hey, Fightin' Tigers") from a lead sheet. Played at a local assisted living facility on Sept. 26 and did well on everyth...

I tried the Substack thing. I'm still doing the Substack thing, but I have an audience (albeit a tiny one) with Substack, and there is this expectation that the articles there actually be "written" and not just rambled. I like to ramble. When I'm dead, they'll say, "Didn't she ramble!" So I'm moving back to Blogger, where I have zero audience members and no obligation to write nice, tidy essays that I must edit endlessly before leaving them well enough alone. Occasionally, if I write something good here, I may fix it up for Substack. But mostly I'm going back to my old schedule of posting nearly every day about whatever piano-related topic I happen to be thinking about at the moment. If you, imaginary audience, would like to see what I've written on Substack during my break from Blogger, you can find it all here . I'm not linking to this blog from Substack because I honestly don't want a bunch of readers that I will then have to f...