Day 114

Working on voicing "Over the Rainbow," and that should be completed today. Made a decision: I'm going to start the Repertoire over again, with "Over the Rainbow" as the first song. Why am I getting rid of the other songs? I'm doing so because I want to do things correctly this time around. In my stuff with the other songs, I take a bunch of shortcuts with their voicings, and I don't want to practice the songs using the shortcuts. I don't want to reinforce incorrect voicings, and practicing those songs might do just that. Rather, I think I'l take it slowly and correctly, because I figure the more I practice correct voicings, the better the chance that they will be ingrained.

I'm learning a lot with "Over the Rainbow":
1) Correct Voicings
2) Some stride, or closed voicings to some chords
3) Even a little improv (!) using the 5th note of a chord as the scale from which to improvise

I'm going to have to adjust my practice schedule to include the fact that some days I have more time than others. Here we go:

1) I'm still going to use Sudnow and the Method Book. When its time to voice a new song, though, I'll put the Method Book on hold until a new song is voiced completely and correctly.

2) After a new song is voiced, I'll practice playing that until it sounds acceptable to me, and then move on to another. When voicing, I'll try to add some closed voicings.

3) Practice the major scales.

There's a lot of flexibility there, depending on what I fell like doing on a particular day.

Addendum:

After voicing "Over the Rainbow," I started practicing it. Its going slow, but those Sudnow sounds got me hooked. It seems difficult for me to practice only for short periods of time when I am doing the Sudnow method! Its wayyyyy too easy for me to spend a lot of time at the piano when I am playing acoording to his method.

What I'm doing that is also helpful is sometimes recording my playing as I learn the song. The recordings help me to hear exactly what I need to do more of, or what I need to do differently .

Examples: Recording today helped me to realize that the 4th in a Gm actually does sound good in the left hand, though while I was playing it I wasn't sure.

Also, recording today helped me to realize that in playing a certain closed voicing (or stride) chord, it sounded better when I used it as an appegio rather than playing the notes simultaneously.

A cool piano day.