Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Well, I’ve been having some fun with ChatGPT. I regularly use ChatGPT to help me define my piano goals for each month (and for the year), and to determine how much time to devote to each. I’ve also asked some philosophical questions about my move from classical student to ragtime/stride/blues pianist. And I ask lots of theory-related questions, and ragtime-related questions, and… well, that’s my primary use of ChatGPT. I’ve also asked questions relating to my work—not so much about how certain things work, but things like “Can you proofread this email?” and “Does this revision make sense from an engineering standpoint?” It’s been helpful, though at times I’ve had to say, “No, that’s not how that works.” And then ChatGPT responds with, “You’re exactly right to call out my mistake.” Conversations like that make me wary of trusting its “knowledge” too much. Anyway, people have been posting ChatGPT caricatures of themselves lately, so I thought I’d have some fun. I asked it to make a caric...

 Working from the Lead Sheets course, I was planning to video an impromptu improvisation last night ... but I was rudely interrupted. Here's the video.

In my goals last Friday, I mentioned, half-jokingly, that I dream of the day when I happen to be in the vicinity of a grand piano with a ready-made audience . Well, readers, that very thing happened last night. And the others wanted to play "Heart and Soul" ... so we played "Heart and Soul." It was fun, as I don't think of any of us had participated in a "Heart and Soul" duet (or trio) since we were kids. But the ready-made-piano-dream-in-my-head-with-an-audience didn't happen. I did get to rush through "Maple Leaf Rag" at the very end. It was almost time to leave, and I was tired and made all kinds of mistakes, so that was a little disappointing. But it did feel good to play a real, acoustic grand. This party was an end-of-season party for my daughter's volleyball team and families. In the video, I'm playing the melody in the treble. Our middle blocker's dad is in the middle, and our outside hitter's mom is in the bass. (...

I had so much fun last night. I learned that I tend to be less stressed if I can talk to the camera and just have fun with the fact that I'm making a video. Here is my most recent progress on "Bare Necessities. I'm planning to start page 2 tomorrow (Sunday)!