Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

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...

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been in Lesson 5 (Minor Turnaround Progression) of PWJ’s Play Lead Sheets with 7th Chords course. It has some weird (to me) chords—half-diminished, iv7s, etc.—and at first I wasn’t sure I would like it. It just sounded so lugubrious . But I'm a good little Piano With Jonny student, so I bit the bullet and started the lesson. There are four suggested lead sheets for learning and practicing this progression: In This Quiet Hour (Jonny’s 8-bar educational tune for the lesson) Lullaby of Birdland You Don’t Know What Love Is Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise I started with “In This Quiet Hour” and then began listening seriously to the other three. I made a playlist with multiple recordings of each song and listened while driving, working, walking. I didn’t know any of them when I started, but now I know and love them (except maybe “You Don’t Know What Love Is”… just too depressing!). Then I printed out The Great Gig Book as a birthday gift to myself, an...

 The sample tune for PWJ's Play Lead Sheets with 7th Chords course, Lesson 4 (Chromatic Walkup Progression), is titled "My Heart Is Jumpin'". The lesson focuses on that delightful chromatic walk-up progression, which is used in Ain't Misbehavin', Makin' Whoopee, and It's Only a Paper Moon. It practically begs to be played in a stride style! This progression has easily been my favorite so far. I spent about four weeks on this lesson. It was definitely more involved than Lesson 3 (Extended Turnaround Progression), which took about two weeks. Part of that was difficulty; part of it was me. I worked it in multiple keys, tried different left-hand approaches, and of course experimented with stride in tenths. So that took time. I made this "graduation" video earlier this week and have since moved on to Lesson 5 (Minor Turnaround Progression). I shared it on the PWJ page without expecting much of reaction (since it's just a Foundations course, no...

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 ...

Back in the 1990s, I bought Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of The New Real Book . These books are full of anything you could ever want to play in jazz, including all of the standards. I'd also bought Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book , and I was ready to learn jazz. Alas, a stack of books didn't cut it. I needed a teacher. Someone to show me the ropes. But I didn't know where to look, and besides, I was too shy to ask anyone. I mean, me? Middle-class, shy, cerebral little me, wanting to become a jazzer? Laughable. I didn't even smoke, and I looked silly in sunglasses. Still, I Could Play Pretty Broken Chords Every few years, I would dig out the Levine book and try to make progress, and I would dig out the New Real Book volumes and attempt to play songs. Whenever I saw the chord change, I would go to the root of the chord and proceed to arpeggiate, usually with the 1 and the 5. Thanks to my Mark Levine book, I did learn how to play the 3 and the 7 in the right hand with the melody,...

Now that I have graduated from the four courses on seventh chords, I'm in the "Play Piano Lead Sheets with 7th Chords" course. The first lesson is on the Cycle of Fifths chord progression. I'm very familiar with the Cycle of Fifths, so I guess I'm a little ahead there. And thanks to the seventh-chord courses , I'm pretty good at moving from one chord to another, even when using different inversions. So I'm thankful for that. As I work my way through these lessons, I'm going to spend a lot of time transposing to other keys, using only the roman numerals as a guide. I also want to practice using the many skills I'm learning in the blues course: slides, turns, harmony notes, rolls, etc. Another goal: Avoid falling into my stale old habit of arpeggiating the left-hand chords . Use block chords, or stride/ballad-style chords, or bass lines, or ... well, anything but those broken chords! Broken chords are pretty and nice and I don't have anything aga...