Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

I am absurdly excited today. The kind of excited where I sit down at the piano “just to try something” and suddenly it’s 45 minutes later and I’m pacing around the room narrating my own ideas out loud. I have two videos to share, which means two musical updates! Update #1: Silent Night Rhumba Has Become a Thing This Jonny May arrangement is ridiculously fun. I daresay it's even more fun than Bare Necessities , probably because Bare Necessities, no matter how fun it is, is still hard to play. Silent Night Rhumba isn't easy, but once the groove locks in everything else kind of happens naturally. Like the music knows where to go and I just need to get out of the way. My plan for the full piece is: Simple version first ( video here ) More interesting version next (video below) Solo section that I'm still working on Either a repeat of the more interesting version or go straight into the outro Here's the more interesting version, which I shared on social media last week: My...

Y'all! Picture this: It's 90+ degrees, and the Georgia sun has been blazing down on me since noon, and now Chuck Leavell, the legendary Rolling Stones pianist, is hammering out a soul-stirring "Honky Tonk Women" solo right at the piano just feet away. And, readers, I GOT TO MEET HIM! This weekend at the Blind Willie McTell Music Festival in Thomson, GA, was unreal. Lots of great performances, and then there was Chuck—his show was phenomenal, and he was so kind when Dan and I randomly wandered to the artists' area to say hi! Goodness, I am a sight with that sunburn. I couldn't stop smiling all day after this pic! Chuck has been around for much longer than I've been even listening to rock & roll, so I guess I'm a bit of a latecomer. But I got to make up for some lost time this weekend! Here he is playing a bit of "Honky Tonk Women." The solo starts at about 1:04. [Ugh, ugh, ugh. The video won't upload. Copyright issues, probably. Will t...

I’ve already logged seven practice hours this month, and I didn’t even practice this morning! St. Louis Blues Challenge This weekend, I kicked off Jonny May’s "St. Louis Blues" challenge. Learning his arrangement in G should be straightforward, but the real test will be improvising in G. I’m excited to apply techniques from the 10-Lesson Blues Challenge and Bible of Blues Riffs to make this piece pop. My goal? Master Jonny’s written section this week and spend the rest of August exploring G blues improv. There’s a second part to the song Jonny skips, and I’ll likely skip it too unless I get bored with improv (unlikely!). I’m aiming to wrap this project by month’s end, so I’m keeping my ambitions in check. (I briefly considered taking on  this tougher and more impressive version , but after pushing hard on Pineapple Rag, Liszt, and my America the Beautiful Extravaganza over the past few months, I’m ready for something more manageable!) Here’s my first St. Louis Blues video: Le...

I am taking a Piano With Jonny course in G Blues Improvisation. I learned the C blues scale when I was 11 or 12 years old, and, while I never actually learned to play the blues then, I've always known and played that scale. My long history with the scale may be part of why I have struggled so mightily to master G blues improvisation. The C and G blues scales are very similar — start with a white key, go up a minor third to a black key, then up a whole step to a white key, a half-step to black key, a half-step to white key — and then it changes. In C, we go up a minor third to B-flat, whereas in G, the minor third is to F natural. This shouldn't be that hard, but I have had so much trouble making the switch to G! I keep throwing in the F# from the C scale, and then the E-flat. It's a mess. To show you what I mean, here's a video I talk about (and unintentionally demonstrate) some of the problems. As you can see, I'm slowly getting better at blues in G, but I still h...

Last night I practiced Misty , the Bible of Blues Riffs , and Liszt ! (My beloved Franzi!) Misty was a little rough, which was surprising, considering I performed it by memory less than a month ago. Alas, I am not a computer. After 15 minutes, however, it was mostly back in my working memory. I'll be working on it 2-3 times a week throughout the month. Bible of Blues Riffs was VERY rough! I started over from the beginning, reviewing only the one-note-at-a-time riffs for about 20 minutes. I also practiced using the stride style, which was very difficult, as I'm used to playing the blues shuffle. I didn't feel great about my progress by the end of the session, but I imagine it will come more quickly after a few more sessions. This is one of my top priorities for May. And Liszt ! I spent 32 minutes working on the cadenzas. The first cadenza is harder for me. I can play the notes and have practiced them in all kinds of ways--blocking, rhythms, hands separately--but I'm hit...

February practices are going pretty well, particularly considering I haven't had as much time for piano this month. I've done a pretty good job of balancing things, and my percentage goals have guaranteed that I would spend more time on You Are My Sunshine and Amazing Grace -- two songs that I fiddle around with now and then, each time thinking, "One of these days I need to really work on this." This morning I focused on Amazing Grace. Here is a video where I explore some of my improv ideas. I'm having so much fun.

 I feel like I could write so many blues songs about this past week! "First-World Blues" would probably be the most appropriate title, but I have so many more in mind. Six-head Blues Alopecia Blues Itchy Back Blues Outta Zoloft Blues Home Alone Blues Working Mom Blues Leave Me Alone Blues Leaky Coffee Pot Blues Car-In-The-Shop Blues Bloaty Prednisone Blues Silent Desperation Blues No-Time-For-Piano Blues Dirt-On-The-Carpet Blues Lost-My-Hearing-Aid Blues God's-Given-Up-On-Me Blues There is just so much to choose from! This video doesn't have a title. It's not a song. I'm just noodling at the piano, feeling these melancholy blues that have set in. Sad as I'm feeling these days, I'm grateful to be able to play this way.

 Now that the doctor has cleared me to play piano as much as I want, I sat down last night to work some more on the bluesy Silent Night from a few days ago . I just turned on the camera and started to play. I ended up cutting out about half of the video (the first half, where I was still working things out), so here is the second half. I want to give it more of a boogie-woogie bass (broken octaves, walking up and down), but for now I'm just using the familiar old blues shuffle. You can tell as the video progresses that I'm loosening up more and more. By the end I'm practically dancing in my seat. It is so good to be able to play like this! And I didn't even delve into the many runs and riffs I've learned! There will be time for that later!

Once upon a time, almost a year ago, I wrote about feeling like I was locked in a "gray little room," worlds away from feeling freedom at the piano. I'd had many years of lessons and could play, but I was tied to the sheet music. Or if I was improvising, I would fall into the same old pattern in the left hand and could hardly advance beyond the actual tune in the right hand. I felt trapped, and I'd felt trapped for nearly all of my piano life. I wanted to play jazz. I wanted to play blues. I wanted to be able to "ragtimify" any song. I could hear the arrangements in my head, but I didn't know how to play them. Last night, I started picking through "Silent Night" with a blues shuffle in the bass. And ... I improvised. I riffed. I rocked. I had so much fun. I hated having to go to work today because all I wanted to do was stay home and play this bluesy, boogie-style Silent Night. I feel like I am walking on air. That rusty lock has broken, and ...

December is going to look a bit different from my previous piano months. Instead of five or six main pieces/skills to focus on, I'm only going to have two: Technique (15%) and Liszt (30%). The rest of my work will be to review almost everything I've done this year and be ready for a (not actual) performance by January 1, 2025. Also different for December is that I'll be dividing my maintenance pieces into the categories of ragtime, blues/gospel, and classical. Here are the details. Technique (15%) I have been pleasantly surprised at how much I love Czerny's Thirty New Studies in Technics, Op. 849 . I'm still on Exercise 1, but I've been working diligently to build up speed while remaining accurate and clear. Dynamics are also a consideration, so I've been working on that, too. The goal tempo is half note=100, and I'm at half note=80. so I've made progress. I expect to start Exercise 2 in early December and will spend a few weeks working on it. I'...

I had hoped to put three hours a day into piano this weekend, and I came close! I put in FOUR hours on Saturday, but then I only practiced an hour and a half on Sunday. I had dropped my daughter off at volleyball practice at 1:00, but then she got sick, so I had to go pick her up and take her home. And then I had to be back at the gym (about 20 minutes away) for a 2:30 parent meeting, and then I had to do the week's grocery shopping on my way home. So I pretty much drove back and forth yesterday from 12:30 to almost 4:00. Because I had a sick child, I made a big pot of homemade creamy chicken noodle soup for dinner, which took up a good part of the late afternoon. And then after dinner, we put up the Christmas tree and further decorated for Christmas. By the time all that was done, I only had energy to sit on the couch, pet the cats, and look at the pretty tree while we listened to Christmas music. I did practice early yesterday morning, though, and I got some good work done. I...

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was considered a Creative Person by both myself and others. I could sit down and spin out a story or an essay, with or without any kind of a writing prompt. I was always scribbling down poems or ideas for novels. I've written several novels, and I've half-written a few dozen, from first chapters to entire first drafts. I haven't published anything because I am a scared little mouse and always have been. I was musically creative, too. I've written a number of songs, though it's been a long time. I always felt a great desire to write music, but I would get stuck in the same old chord progressions and the same old arpeggiated left-hand groove . One of the greatest gifts of Piano With Jonny is that I have broken out of those stale old habits. Yet, I still struggle to reclaim my old creative self. I get angry at myself for missing notes when, really, all I'm doing is making things up. The "missed" note is a note other t...

So much for my weekend of unlimited practice time . Thanks to a case of wrist pain, I only practiced for about an hour on Saturday. I felt better yesterday and practiced for a little over two hours. So, I got three hours in total. Not bad, but nothing close to the five or six hours I'd anticipated. Weekend Practice I spent a lot of time on Liszt , but I am very frustrated about this piece. I could learn it, but I can't figure out what fingering to use. I am missing Deborah, my piano teacher from Asheville. She would have me work out a fingering, but then she would adjust it as needed, actually writing it onto the music, and when I would try her fingering, it was like a miracle had happened. She helped me to become better at working out fingerings, but Liebstraume is a special case becuase there are so many tenths (which I can't reach), and so many options for which hand will play certain notes of the melody. I messaged her through Facebook to see if she might be up to an on...

  It's rare that I have a weekend that offers potentially unlimited practice time ... but I just may have that this weekend. And if I do? I want to take deep dives into a few different areas. First Cadenza of Liebestraume I've already broken down the cadenza theoretically, and it makes total sense--it's just a back and forth between D-flat minor and E-flat major in various inversions. But playing it is not so simple, and I feel like I need a good, long practice session to get it comfortable and automatic under my fingers. Blues Improvisation I diligently do some blues improvisation every single day, usually for 10-15 minutes in the mornings while waiting for my daughter to get ready to go to school. But I want to take some time to (1) improvise alongside actual recordings and (2) improvise alongside the backing track provided by PWJ. All of my improvisation so far has been just me and the piano, and I'm feeling a need to add something. I don't need a long practice s...

I started the major blues scale course at PWJ a few weeks ago, and I (sadly) haven't given it as much time as I should. It's also been challenging. In this video, I'm playing a few different versions of the scale, all using the same I∆-vi7-ii7-V7 progression in the left hand: swung 8th notes with chord shells/Charleston rhythm in the left hand 16th notes with chord shells (I was thinking in triplets with Charleston, but the result sounded like 16ths Weird.) 16th notes with whole notes in the LH accompaniment (Note: I recorded this at 5 a.m., so I had the piano volume on low ... which is why you can hear my fingers thumping on the keys.) Why This Was Hard I: The Scale This was not easy to learn! First, there was the matter of the scale. The C major and minor scales are very automatic for me because I've been playing them for years. The C minor blues scale has also become very automatic, as I've been improvising on it every day for the better part of a year. But the ...

I'm doing a new kind of scale practice. While I haven't abandoned my usual scales altogether, I've begun working on the major and minor blues scales as part of my warmup. I'm getting better at playing them in C, and I'm also working on practicing them in G. The C minor blues scale is very familiar to me, and the C major blues scale is ... getting there. It's a challenge to play both (major up, minor down) while doing the 12-bar blues in a Charleston rhythm. Another way to practice this would be with different bass lines. But for now, I'm jus trying to get the notes!

When I first started my piano journey of 2024, I thought I wanted to learn jazz theory and, by extension, jazz. I thought my big goal was to learn to develop jazz arrangements from lead sheets. I wanted to play blues as well, but, in my mind, “jazz” and “blues” were kind of the same thing. All I knew was that primarily wanted to play jazz standards in the style of Bill Evans. Or Thelonious Monk. Since then, I’ve discovered a few things about myself that I didn’t know. Jazz Isn't Really for Me One is that I don’t love jazz. It’s not that I hate jazz, because I don’t. There are certain varieties of jazz that I love with a passion, but it’s the older versions (ragtime, stride, big band). But I’ve never liked the Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin style of “crooner jazz.” I don’t really care for bebop. Famous jazz pianists like Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk were geniuses, but I had to admit to myself that I always found their music "interesting" and "intriguing" rather than...

I just completed the PWJ course on blues endings. These ending are mostly memorized, though they haven’t started to feel natural yet. I'm also thinking that I'll want to learn some of these in a few other keys. Sigh. The work never ends! Anyway, the Movies app on my phone hid my left hand and also cut off one of the endings too soon … sorry. I think it's clear in this video that some of these endings are more solid than others. I do have a few favorites. I wish I could figure out how to get text to appear at various times in the video so I could label each ending!

 Last spring, I was at my parents' house for a few days, and I'd brought my little keyboard. The keyboard isn't great for actual piano practice, but it's wonderful for learning theory and styles. So, when I wasn't playing for my dad, I spent much of that weekend going through the Beginner/Intermediate course of "Amazing Grace" on Piano With Jonny,  Here is a video of me playing for my dad after a day of going through the course lessons. Later (as in recently), I checked out the Intermediate/Advanced version. It's much more difficult, but I seem to be getting it. I still have some work to do. I made this video yesterday morning, and I'm happy to say that I've improved since then, but I'm still not there yet. So enjoy this progress video. Warning: I ramble for a couple of minutes before I ever start playing anything.

 I finished the 10-Lesson Blues Challenge this weekend! Yay! I am so happy. I was feeling so hopeless toward the end there, and then I was done! Yesterday, I started the next course of the Blues Track: Endings. Here are the first four endings I've learned. They'll take some practice, particularly that last one. But I think they sounded pretty good after just a half-hour or so of learning them!