Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

 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...

This week at the piano has been… unexpected. I didn’t set clear goals for September—life was too busy (I wrote about that here ). I vaguely planned to prepare for my assisted-living performance during the first week of September, but I wasn’t feeling great physically or emotionally, so I canceled it. That left my September piano goals in limbo, but here’s what I’ve been working on anyway. Playing Liszt (with emphasis on "playing") I’ve now put over 100 hours into Liszt’s “Liebesträume No. 3,” and it’s finally feeling like a comfortable old pair of jeans. I keep meaning to revisit recordings to check my interpretation, but I just love sitting down to play it my way. I’ve listened to hours of “Liebesträume” over the years, especially this past year, so I think my version is just fine. So there. Back to Bare Necessities! This was not planned. I guess I thought I'd try to get “ Bare Necessities ” back to performance level for the recital, but there was no way. Still, I've...

The school year has kicked off, and life has turned into a whirlwind! I'm making the most of my piano time when I can get it, but it's been touch-and-go for the past week. To make up for the missed practices, I've begun exploring musical work away from the keyboard. Two activities have been key: mental practice (studying the written score away from the piano) and ear training. Both are great brain workouts, but I have to admit, ear training has been a lot more fun! Ear Training Adventures Over the past few weeks, I've tackled PWJ's beginner ear-training courses on intervals (ascending and descending) and triads. Even though I can play most tunes by ear, it's a challenge for me to identify intervals out of context away from the piano. I did better with triads, but there's still work to do. To practice, I've made recordings where I play triads in different inversions and try to identify the chord quality (major or minor) and inversion. It's wild to rea...

This weekend, my daughter was in the living room watching a movie, and I heard a few bars of whatever the theme song was. Something in me recognized it--not the song, but the pattern. "Cycle of Fifths!" I said aloud. So, after a week of listening to Cycle of Fifths songs and working on such songs as Fly Me To the Moon, All the Things You Are, and Autumn Leaves, I'm getting a sense of what this progression sounds like. I've also had some fun just improvising and making things up using the chord patterns. I'd make a video of that, but it's early and my family is still asleep and probably wouldn't appreciate my waking them up. Losers. More Foundations: Ear Training Anyway, I was scrolling through the future "Level 4 Foundations" courses the other day and noticed one on ear training. For me, that would literally be ear (singular, not plural) training since my right ear is deaf. Ha ha. I decided to start watching/listening to it, partly so I could ...