Picking Up the Pieces

When I went to Facebook this morning, I saw that a pianist and singer named Gordon Mote will be performing at a local church tomorrow night. I'd never heard of him, so I went to YouTube to see if I might be interested in seeing his performance. Wow. I'm going. Not only is he a great pianist, but he's hilarious. And he's blind. How can I miss this? I may drag my teenage daughter with me because I don't want to go by myself. Here is just one of his videos. There are many more. I've watched about three so far, and will be listening to him as I work for the rest of the day.

I don't have many words to type today. This morning I decided to return to Bare Necessities, which I haven't really worked on for a couple of months. I've worked on my stride piano technique a lot with Jingle Bells, but I've purposely kept BN in the background, thinking it would be good to take a break from it. I had it to a good tempo, but not the goal tempo. So what better than to let it marinate, or maybe simmer, for a while on low while I worked on other things? So, I returned to it this morning, and it was one big practice session of frustration. Did the practice do any good? Maybe. Maybe not. Am I on the verge of a breakthrough, in the deep darkness that comes before dawn? Maybe. Probably not. I don't know where I am, or what to think, or what to do. There is very little piano-playing in this 5:39 video. It's mostly me whining and being frustrated. I'd planned to make a series of videos this morning of my progress in getting BN back up to speed ... but...

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 ...

 Ah, those ambitious weekend goals ... I had some good goals for the weekend and, as expected, I did all right on some of them. I practiced for about 3.5 hours total, which is not a lot for a weekend ... but, considering I was in North Carolina most of Saturday and Sunday, I'll take what I can get. Solace My Solace goal was to be able to play it smoothly with increasing tempos. I'm getting there--which is good, considering that Solace got the most attention this weekend. It's still quite slow (about 48), and it needs to be about 65. I get kind of frustrated because I'll feel like I have it, but then I have a memory lapse in some spot where I never have memory lapses. It's like walking through a field full of gopher holes. I'm happily walking along, and then suddenly I'm on the ground with a twisted ankle. The twisted-ankle moments come mostly in Sections A, C, and D, which are the three sections I know best. Section B sounds good, but I'm struggling a li...

It's a little difficult to think about piano goals for the weekend, as I'm leaving for North Carolina tomorrow and probably won't be back until mid-afternoon Sunday. So, I won't get a lot of piano time in. At best, I'll get an hour, maybe 1.5 hours tonight, and an hour or two Sunday afternoon. I could also consider squeezing in a half-hour or so tomorrow morning before I leave. So, maybe I'll get more practice time than I thought. If I do, here are my goals for the weekend: Solace I have the entire piece memorized and am now working on just a few spots where I tend to pause when playing through slowly. I'll continue working on that and then begin increasing the speed. The suggested tempo is something like 65, and  I'm currently playing it at about 35. My weekend goal will be to (1) eliminate the habitual pauses and (2) increase the tempo to ... maybe 45 or 50. Jingle Bells Rag Lately I've been working a lot on (1) "hot-potato" practice in ...

Yes, this is possibly the cheesiest graphic I've ever used on this blog ... and that's saying something. I wish I had a video to share, but I had to practice on the headphones last night. So you get the cheesy graphic instead. Hitting the Speed Wall At my piano lesson Monday afternoon, I lamented my inability to play "Bare Necessities" and "Jingle Bells" at a lightning-fast tempo. I've been particularly frustrated about "Bare Necessities." I mean, I can play it pretty well at 100, but if I get any faster than that, the whole thing (meaning the "B" section, which is the ragtime section, as well as the final section/outro) falls apart. I had made some slight progress last week when I tried touching the keys more lightly; it is, of course, easier to play fast when you're not going all the way down on the keys. But I was still making sloppy errors -- missing notes, accidentally grabbing an inner note when playing an octave , etc. I wa...

According to my practice log, I've spent about 10 hours on "Jingle Bells Rag." Most have that time has focused on the outro. Still, I learned it pretty quickly (for me), and memorizing it wasn't too hard (mainly because there are just a few chords, and a lot of repetition). The Challenges The biggest challenge will be with the tempo--it needs to be a lot faster than what I'm currently playing! Some sections, such as the crossed-hands section, will be easy to get up to speed (mostly). Other sections will take more work. The hardest section, by far, is the outro. It comes right after the high-register "jingle bell" section and begins with climbing arpeggios. The arpeggios aren't too bad, but there's the one little spot where the left hand is playing C7 to F (at 2:47 in the video) that has dogged me ever since I first started learning this piece! I've come a long way with it, but it's going to be a while before I can play that section as fas...