Closed Voicings

Update: I've been working recently on keeping "Just the Way You Are" in my hands. I haven't really been working on "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." But yesterday at the piano warrants reporting:

I listened to David Sudnow's teaching of closed voicings recently, and I tried to put some of it in action yesterday. I kind of surprised myself with how many I was able to get in hand relatively quickly: C, Bb, D, Gm, Dm, Am, and G. I tried playing "Wichata Lineman" using the closed voicing. interesting. One thing What ffrustrating was using the right hand to play the melody; I was fumbling with not only playing the correct right hand melody notes, but also with using a fingering that was not clumsy. The other frustrating thing was trying to get timing down correctly using these closed voicing. Sudnow calls these voicings "Stride," and for good reason; to get it sounding really good, I guess you need at least two beats per chord. It's frustrating for me trying to get my timing right.

But on the other hand, these closed voicings add a great addition to how to make sounds at the piano! Of course I've been tempted to buy another piano method, but Suds' emphasis on self-learning makes sense to me. I'm still not convinced there are any "easy" methods of learning to play the piano sophisticated out there. David Sudnow's approach (to me) offers the student ways of making sophisticated sounds at the piano, but it forces the student to put all of his pieces of knowledge together in a self-learning kind of way. Sometimes blending various pieces together in one tune (open voicings, closed voicings).

So......because these closed voicings can add to a tune, I'll keep learning them. My piano buddy has told me how they are key, and I agree.