Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

I had kind of an awakening during my “After You’ve Gone” improv practice session yesterday. I didn’t realize it at the time, but as I watched the video (below), I realized I’ve hit a milestone. I’m no longer wondering “am I doing this right” but am instead thinking things like “how do I want this to sound?” I’ve stopped thinking like a student and started thinking like an arranger. But whew, it has felt like a long road to get here. The Piece and the Problem I started Jonny May’s advanced arrangement of “After You’ve Gone” in January. It’s a wonderful and challenging arrangement with stride tenths in the left hand and a swinging melody full of slides, rolls, and crunchy harmonies. And of course, Jonny encourages you to come up with an improvised solo. I struggled through the arrangement itself for a couple of months, and it sounded passably good (not great) by the end of February. But the improv section? Couldn’t do it. Even using the “easy” four-on-the-floor left hand, I just kept hit...

In my journey through the Learn New Repertoire Faster Challenge at Piano with Rebecca B , I’ve reached Day 16 of Jonny May’s stride arrangement of Ode to Joy .   Today’s assignment was to continue learning Batch 5 (measures 72–95) and begin my revisit of Batch 4 (measures 64–71). Day 16 Morning Practice: Pure Joy This morning’s practice focused mostly on Passages 1 and 2 of Batch 5, a.k.a. The Easy Section . The left hand switches from boom-chick to four-on-the-floor, and the busy right hand gives way to a single-note melody. The whole section is delightful, sweet, and charming. I love it. Scroll down to the video at the bottom of this post to hear it. There are still a few tricky spots, and I gave those some focused work this morning. In the video, I say “motifs” when I really mean “phrases,” so I’ll use the right word here. The tricky spots: The lead-in to Phrase 2: The four-on-the-floor pattern shifts, including a bass note on beat one while the right hand plays a broken E mi...

A few days ago, I set a hard deadline for After You’ve Gone . My plan is to make the graduation video this weekend and be done with it. After a few months of working on it, that feels like the right call. I’ve learned so much—stride tenths, coordination, some improvisation vocabulary—and I even used some of the ideas in YAMS . By any reasonable standard, the Piano With Jonny "After You've Gone" course has done its job. There's still a part of me that really wants to be able to perform  it, and that's where my struggle has been for the past few weeks. And I feel like I'm not even close. I Think This Is What Happens When a Piece Is Too Hard This piece has never quite settled for me. The arrangement section still feels slippery. I can play the rolling tenths, but it feels like my fingers are wearing roller skates—nothing is fully grounded. (Maybe it's my smaller-than-average hands.) And even though I switch to the easier four-on-the-floor for the solo/improv...

As I work through Rebecca Bogart's Learn New Repertoire Faster challenge , I'll be posting more extended updates here on my blog. Days 1–3 Day 1 was analysis, listening, and generally scoping out the territory of the music . The road trip to Florida last week turned out to be Day 1, even if I didn't label it that way at the time. Day 2 was fingering and the start of my first "batch": measures 0-7 (intro), 8-15 (Section A), and 16-23 (Section A'). Day 3 (today) was about recognizing patterns and continuing work on Batch 1. Batch 1: Intro, A, A' The intro isn't difficult, and it will likely be one of the two easiest sections in this piece. Still, the syncopation is a little tricky, so I took some extra time with it. I've already memorized it, as the chord progression is pretty straightforward and the melody is just a single line (no harmony notes). There is one big augmented chord at the end that required some focused work. Sections A and A' ar...

This is not really a performance. It’s a sight-read—my second pass through Jonny May’s Ode to Joy . I first sight-read it yesterday while trying to figure out which sections would be the most challenging. Today I played it once more for the "before" video. I’m posting it as a reminder: every piece I eventually play well starts like this. Slow, uneven, and occasionally unrecognizable as music. What I’m Actually Working Toward My main goal with this piece is to collect arranging “tools.” But I also want to learn the piece itself, because it’s too good not to. Right now, it sounds great when Jonny plays it .  I assume it will also sound good when I play it, and hopefully it will feel great once it's under my hands. That said, this won’t be quick. The left-hand jumps are manageable, but the right hand stays busy, and the tempo seriously moves. A Rough Time Estimate Difficulty-wise, Ode to Joy feels comparable to pieces like Jingle Bells Rag , America the Beautiful , or maybe ...

I think I'll be ready to make a graduation video for After You've Gone by mid-month ... and that's despite being nearly derailed after weeks of progress. The culprit? The pedal. Or the lack of one. I explain more in the video: I've made a lot of progress on this project over the last couple of weeks. The left hand jumps feel genuinely automatic now, and I honestly had started to wonder if it would ever get there. The right hand is doing what it needs to do, and I have to admit that my rolls and punches are sounding really nice. Even the improvisation is starting to click, though that's the part that still needs the most work. But then I cut the pedal, and it was like learning a different piece. I almost never play completely pedal-free, unless maybe it's Bach ... and even then I'll sneak a little in. So removing it in stride piano—where I primarily used it to connect my rolled tenths—was kind of a shock to my system. It threw off my timing, my tone expecta...

It is so good to be back in "After You’ve Gone." I was a little afraid the three-week break would undo everything, but the first section is still there. I think that’s a testament to the effectiveness of the practice techniques I’ve picked up from Piano With Rebecca B and Molly Gebrian . This week I’m back in the solo section. The idea here is pretty straightforward: build the right-hand melody mostly from the notes already sitting in the left-hand chords. I really like this approach: fewer decisions, more actual playing. I made this short practice video yesterday, walking through where I am in the process. This phase of the AYG journey makes me really appreciate how Piano With Jonny structures things. It’s not that the steps are easy—they’re not—but they’re broken down in a way that makes them doable. First, block the right-hand chords while keeping a steady, blocked four-on-the-floor pattern in the left hand. Then start breaking up the right hand—one or two notes at a ti...

I have completed Lesson 4 ("Hands Together") of the PWJ "After You've Gone" course! Well, not exactly. I completed the first phase, which was being able to get it hands together, no matter how slow. I'm still at a relatively slow tempo, though it's picked up quite a bit in the past week. I was finally able to post this progress video on Feb. 28 (my goal was to have something to share by the end of the month, so goal achieved!). The next goals for this piece: Slowly increase the tempo to the 100-120 range. Practice playing a solo Possibly work out an intro and outro Lesson 5 is on soloing. I've already watched it, and it's pretty basic: just use the four notes in whatever chord your left hand happens to be playing. So, if the left hand is on F6, then just play something that only uses F, A, C, and D. Pretty easy. I think the hardest part will be coordinating--switching to the next chord solo in the right hand, and remembering the order of the p...

Folks, I have finished writing my You Are My Sunshine (YAMS) arrangement! Is it ready for performance? No. Will it be ready for the PWJ Student Recital on March 19? Probably not. But are the uncertainties of “I’m not sure what I’ll do in this section” and “I eventually need to figure out an outro” finally behind me? Yes. Do I have every note picked out? Not exactly. But the structure is there—and if the structure is there, the notes will follow. It’s like when I was in college and graduate school, writing papers. The hard part was always the outline. I would spend hours shaping it, developing my thesis, moving pieces around, deciding what belonged where. Once the outline held, the fun began, and I could write a brilliant paper. I don't know how brilliant YAMS will be, but I have to admit that I'm pretty darn proud of it. These two videos are very rough, as I was still working out the structural details, along with a few stylistic ones. In the “Solo” video, I’m experimenting wit...

This morning I worked on the “stride” section of “You Are My Sunshine.” I started writing it as kind of a joke, thinking, “How dissonant can I make this and have it still sound like ‘You Are My Sunshine’?” But then it started to grow on me, and I made some changes, applying what I’ve been learning in my “After You’ve Gone” stride course. So now this section is deliciously rife with 6ths, 9ths, and diminished chords. Not the epitome of sophistication, but I’m excited to move beyond triads and dominant sevenths. For some reason, I’ve struggled with the final measure or so of this section. With the left hand striding on F major, I descend chromatically from an F6 (3rd inversion) to a diminished chord—which diminished chord, I have no idea. Maybe an F diminished? On the keyboard, I’m playing B, D, F, and A♭. From there, the left hand switches to C7 and my right hand descends chromatically to a C9 (B♭ on the bottom), then plays what I think is a C with a flat 9, but which also look...

A few days ago, I mentioned that I’d shared a rough version of my "You Are My Sunshine" arrangement with the PWJ community. I got some feedback, which I appreciated, but I’ll admit I was hoping for more pointed critique. I wanted someone to really poke at it and tell me what wasn’t working. Then Jonny May himself commented. He said many generous things about the arrangement, which meant a lot. But what mattered more were the specific suggestions he offered for how I might push it further. That kind of feedback is even more valuable because it gives me something to work on instead of something to simply feel good about. At Tuesday’s “Ask Jonny” Q&A, I worked up the nerve to ask him about possible introductions. He paused, played around, thought out loud, and gradually assembled a handful of ideas on the spot. None of them felt rehearsed. All of them were clever, musical, and full of personality. Watching that process was at least as valuable as the ideas themselves. He eve...

About a week ago, I recorded this video showing my progress with Lesson 2 of After You’ve Gone (AYG). It features the “intermediate” stride left hand. I was planning to move on to the advanced version (with tenths), but then two things happened: (1) pain in my left wrist, and (2) an unexpected five-day trip to North Carolina (where all I have is a little Yamaha keyboard). I initially thought about shifting my focus to Lesson 3 (right-hand stylizations), and I did that for a couple of days. But it was really hard to practice those on my toy-adjacent Yamaha, so I decided to set AYG aside until I could get back to a real piano. Friends, I will be back at my real piano tonight! My wrist is feeling fine, so I have the option of returning to Lesson 2 and starting the advanced stride section, or staying with Lesson 3. I may try to do both, but I’m not sure that’s the wisest approach. I’ll probably work primarily on the left hand, while regularly reviewing the right-hand stylizations as I mas...