J_tour

I'm sure there's some YouTube or whatever, but it's off his first solo piano album. It's in C, and it's got that inverted chords in minor tenths walking down, and the bridge is in Am, so you just set it up with the V7 of the VIm. The chords and the melody aren't hard to pick up off the record. Just listen to the bass line and think tenths, and that's the only "trick" there is. Granted, it's a really good trick, but it's a nice tool to have for other tunes when you want a big piano sound, and a solid descending bassline. I think it probably is from the real early days of stride piano, just get the motion in the LH and not worry about anything. What I liked about the Doctor was that he really made it sink in to me as a young teenager that you got to play in all the keys. And he had some moves and voicings in minor keys that I still keep in my ear today. Well, I'm probably not the only one to do so recently, but you bet your ass I took the two minutes and did a little minor-key Saints and then took about a few seconds to do it back in the major. Can't remember what key I did it in, because it was just me at home, but you're right it would have been in a key the Doctor would have liked. D or Ab. One of those. All the same.

I agree with this aesthetic. Granted, I've pretty much given up putting in the effort to hustle jobs and play out these days, but I think the simple, trim, flat keyboard (for me, one on top, one on bottom is all I've ever needed, you know, ignoring all the other gear needed for the moment) is just perfect. Looks neat, professional: I assume the audience doesn't actually want to be distracted by a bunch of flash-looking gear. I know it sure distracts me to see a bunch of tiny keyboards MIDI'ed up, and with all the flashy designs and the wedge-shaped workstation-type boards. But, as other people have said above, that doesn't preclude actually putting effort in other parts of your stage appearance. Maybe you don't need to put on a Billy Preston wig and wear a cape, especially if you don't sing lead, but, still, there's a little bit of an art to dressing for the job, whatever style that might be. You know, just show up looking the part, like you mean business. Which it is, even if one's a weekend warrior or a last-minute sub, or even maybe just showing up to an open jam playing on someone else's gear (you never know how many tunes they'll give you, you know, or how it can effect your reputation). In a way it's like buying clothes: classic pieces are never going to go out of fashion, and, for me, my brain isn't tuned to want to think beyond the simplest and most classic or traditional. Too much other stuff to think about. For stands? I love the Quiklok WS-550. It's heavy and not very compact to carry, but it's basic black, and I don't think you could break it even if you tried.

Yeah, I'm with those who wouldn't really do anything differently. Sure, there are lots of things I wish I was better at now, but between having both learn-by-ear American music as a young kid as well as very good training when I was old enough to appreciate it as a pre-teen or tween, I can't complain. There's some nit-picking, like I wish I did more technical, methodical things at a younger age, but my enthusiasm wouldn't have been there, and perhaps I would have come to resent it. Naw, I think, looking back, it's all just part of some kind of gumbo, and I wouldn't want to be missing any part of it.

Well, sure. But, to me that will just end up with the same problem. I agree, everyone should play Joplin, and spend time working out some Jelly Roll Morton tunes off the record, but it's really ending up at the same problem for the OP, isn't it? I have been playing Joplin/stride for 40+ years and I had little trouble picking up L&L. Apparently you're of the opinion that this is not a solution, but from someone who succeeded at this approach for 40+ years I would not be so quick to dismiss that. No, that's not really where I'm coming from. I also had no trouble with Joplin and other ragtime composers for the LH. That was some of the first stuff I played, primarily looking over my uncle's shoulder when I was kid. And I still play Joplin sometimes I have to use the music to remember all the strains to some of my favorites like "Solace," "Bethena," or "Magnetic," but Joplin's never left me, even if I sometimes am unfaithful to the score and decide to improvise/have a bit of fun with it. I think at worst I didn't read between the lines in your post: it seems like you're suggesting that a simpler LH (sometimes) is a good way to get the feet wet and work on independence of the hands in the abstract. And, I agree with you. More than that, I think everyone should play at least some Joplin, Bill Bolcom, Jelly Roll, Eubie Blake. Just on sheer principle: it's some of the backbone of jazz+piano. Not everyone will end up being a specialist, of course, but there's no question at least having some awareness of the basics could be as helpful to later jazz as Bach or other staples. Sounds good to me. I mean, it's really almost like an experiment: some things will work better than others, so, really, it's just a matter of trying a lot of approaches and seeing what sticks. The more approaches, the better, it seems to me. Of course, time is limited for everyone, but it seems worthwhile to at least spend a few minutes as a learner to see what seems promising, or fits with his or her style of learning.

Full-time dreamer. All right, so that's a Spinal Tap, but my big interests are what was supposed to have been my dissertation to become a full-time dreamer (all right, I'll stop!). Short answer: I like books with words in them, and I like chatting up girls (well, let's say "women" in this day and age) TBH, those are the most important. Other? I like to play pool, I like to drink, but I could do without the pool-playing, so long as I get the other three (or four, if you count music). Or, you know, however many. ETA seeing a few of the above posts, yeah, actually religion is kind of a hobby or a passion or, probably more accurately, a practice of mine. I practice at my local parish's Sunday or Saturday evening vigil mass, and I put a lot of myself into learning more about the practice of christianity, especially in the Latin rite of the RCC. I wouldn't say the practice has got me very far to being a better person, but I do try every week for years now. No, nobody else among my closer friends or family joins me in this. It's just something I do for myself.

Well, so how's it work out so far? It certainly is one technique, although I haven't found it to work out so well for me. Don't remember what I was trying to do specifically when I was exploring some of the on-board sequencers, but TBH, I found it really frustrating and much harder than just doing whatever tune, which is what I ended up doing anyway. I imagine it's sort of like a drummer playing to a click, or for us mere mortals, using a metronome ad lib. Seems like it should be easy, but for me it's pretty tricky. If this exercise isn't going places with you, here's an alternate route I've used and still do on Bach: you can rewrite the material. I don't mean some new-age sort of "make your own thing, man," but actually use a pencil and paper or MuseScore or another digital typesetting program and just isolate where you feel the important notes are in each bar. And rewrite it. There's, for example, practice material for, let's say a week. Or more! I know some people have whole theories about learning and whatever, which I don't know much about, but at least if you lose any time sketching out these diagrams, some part of your brain is still working at the music. I guess my only retort is: well, if you find playing to a click track or finding the groove in a pre-recorded difficult, it's probably because it is difficult. At least it's hard for me and word around the campfire is that it's hard to do that for most people, except maybe some real veterans of the studio life who do it all day, most days. So, I'd think it's a skill that can be acquired, and it'd probably be what Bach could have done when he was improvising, among many others, but I don't think the average competent professional musician necessarily has that "drop-in, drop-out, take it from bar 57 here's the click" ability.

Well, sure. But, to me that will just end up with the same problem. I agree, everyone should play Joplin, and spend time working out some Jelly Roll Morton tunes off the record, but it's really ending up at the same problem for the OP, isn't it? This has turned out to be a good thread: this is maybe the one area where there are two different strategies. All leading to the same place, after all. My own preference is to practice a tune with ostinato LH at full tempo, and break it down by simplifying the bass by making sure you hit the first downbeat, and get the groove that way. Once the groove is established, add in more fancy stuff. Granted, I don't know this particular tune, except from having heard it quite a number of times. But, I'm just abstracting from a number of other tunes where it seems to me similar challenges are encountered. But that's not to discount other options. Slow, methodical work, and breaking the piece into discrete sections: this seems to be a common element between the approaches. Likely the best solution is going to involve both, and I'd bet most people approaching the same problem do use both styles of practicing. I've probably given a little bit short-shrift to hands-separate (followed by a strategy of finding where the hands cooperate, sort of as one single unit, if I'm understanding correctly) that wasn't meant to be the case. I would call that a bottom-up approach, which can't be faulted for the emphasis on accuracy and solid fundamentals. The other might be more of a "top-down" attitude, which is probably equally used in combination with the other: take it at tempo, and make sure the right rhythmic and melodic highlights are stressed, and gradually introduce more complicated elements once the tune or the score has been "masked" in such a way. I'm sure there's people who are hard-line one-or-the-other, but even within a single practice session, people can use both strategies. Teaching piano is probably for this reason difficult: there are at least four different approaches in this thread alone (technique: isolate, or context? coordination: isolate-and-combine or jump right into the groove?) I don't think there's a way to know what the right approach is for any given person. Even though I'm coming off as a bit of a hard-line "just play the effing tune, and leave out the fancy stuff until you're ready," every single day I do slow, brutally slow work. On a Bach fugue. On Debussy. Sometimes it's especially painful to slow down to a crawl on "easy" stuff, like playing all your NOLA stuff in B or E. I'm talking slow, like an eighth note in 4/4 is at forty bpm. Slower than that, even. Like it doesn't even sound like anything, or sounds like a little kid playing: I don't even want my neighbors hearing me do that, not even if they were my worst enemies. Still, I think it has to be done sometimes, so screw them. At least Bach or Debussy still sounds like something improvising jazz or jazz-blues, or blues-jazz, really (gratuitous Spinal Tap reference) just sounds like ess when you do it that slow. Oh well: this is the life we chose. So slow you're still playing the first bar by the time your ear has finished two or three choruses.

Well, for this particular one, I have to defer to people who actually play the tune. I suppose I could fake a version from memory, which might fool some people for maybe a minute or two, but that's about it. But the idea of playing an ostinato in the LH I am familiar with, especially while improvising a solo of some sort in the RH. Or even, what to me is far easier, improvising a walking bass or some other sorts of harmonic and regular rhythmic patterns. I'd say there are a few tricks you can do with the LH to really cement the pattern and make it part of your bag of tricks. Playing a repeating LH part in octaves instead of single notes has sometimes worked for me (maybe not in this case, at least at any kind of tempo, but I would try it). Probably a better strategy for at-home practicing could be to trim the bass down so that you're at least hitting some of the key beats and, as you get that down, you can add in more of the line as you get more adept. It could be making sure the "one" of each bar, the downbeat, or whatever's appropriate, is locked down I'd have to think about what would be appropriate for this particular tune, but that would be how I would approach it. And still do, for similar challenges in different types of music. About the finger stretching yeah, it's strange, but all I can say is my LH just plain has a farther reach then my RH. I think both hands are about the same size, but how long have I been playing tenths in LH versus occasionally stretching out in RH beyond on octave or a ninth? More like for a specific chord, particularly on organ (like a raised nine with the dominant degree of the scale on top), or hitting some gnarly RH chord structure in some of Debussy. At any rate, that hasn't killed my LH. Other things have for sure, but not that particular stretch to reach tenths. I won't be walking tenths in a stride style in Db or A, but that's sort of half the fun in those situations, figuring out how to invert the chords to get about 80% of that full sound. Kind of a different part of the brain, which is fun. I think you should absolutely stick with the tune. And make Bud Powell's "Un Poco Loco" the next tune to add to your bag! Same thing, just with a latin tinge. Probably be easy once you crack this technical problem.

Well, that sounds like a realistic goal to me. As for playing the Vince Guaraldi piece, it may not be the best strategy, but it could work. FWIW it takes me about twice as long at least to learn new things as ten years ago even. About three years ago I had this big plan that I was going to ear-transpose the Sinfonie of Bach and run Czerny up and down and have complete opuses of Beethoven firmly locked down in memory, in addition to perfect recall of all the old repertoire. No. I'm still doing the same scales in LH and working on the same repertoire. I don't know if that's a cautionary tale or just an example of some realistic goals. FWIW, I think it's very much in your view to play the Guaraldi tune. I mean, it's certainly not impossible. But, maybe just ease up on yourself: it's just a jazz tune. It doesn't have to be right, it just has to sound right.

That sounds pretty normal to me: I know you said your age and so forth, but I'm not far behind in years and I still kind of suck at a lot of things. It sounds about right, as for example, someone about my age retraining for different certifications. Grab a bunch of Schaum's Outlines of such-and-such. Even graph theory or basic abstract algebra. Practice. Lots of times. It kind of sucks to feel like a beginner at things as you get older, but I don't know any better way than just keep trying.

Probably amateur naturalist: I really like looking at trees and vegetation and stuff. And to the extent it's possible, observing natural fauna. Other than that? Yeah, I'd say I like watching women play beach volleyball, but I'm just growing old. Hey Nineteen.

What exactly did you play for your teacher all those years? Well, I'll reply, since it's sort of my "Sunday" before the week. I think this is one of the rare occasions that an internet forum has changed my views. Namely, the repertoire vs. technique strategies. So, like, let's say the B minor rhapsody of Brahms. Impressive. You have all these full octaves and wonderful fancy-sounding melodic embellishments. So, repertoire, case (i) Technique? Same piece. What happens when you run the scales HT near the middle of the piece? Point for technique, case (ii). IOW, you're going to fall down if you don't have the raw chops. And, for brain? Same piece, but what happens when the main motive recurs in odd, distantly-related keys? I don't know. Yeah, it's probably too bad that modern teaching of music doesn't include improvising harmonies and playing by ear in both hands, but what are you going to do? Bach Invention in C major, tranposed to the twelve major keys, and with voices inverted at will would probably do it, but that would take me like a week to do, if I could even do it from memory. It would be good, but who knows? ETA most things I do nowadays are related to raw technique or raw power. That's why I cited the couple of passages from the first two of Bach's English Suites. Those are two examples of why I come back to those they hit weak spots in my LH, and at the end of the day I come away playing closer to some music. Not really any different than just improvising some patterns and drilling them, it just gives me some focus and relieves me of any supposed pressure to play it good, like an exercise. After all, it's still music and the result's going to be about same just that now 3-4-5 in the LH is better, so how I measure it is testing against ... I don't know, just repeating and seeing if I can really play what I want in LH without it being a whole big thingg.

Word. It's been like that for a while, and it drives me out of my fucking mind. Yeah, I know Keepass and all that, but I just write down every damned login credentials on a piece of paper which has magically grown to who-knows-how-many pieces of paper stapled together and thumbtack it to my wall at home. If my wall disappears, then I've got bigger problems to deal with. But that's one single user if I were made to keep track of hundreds of users and their fidelity, it would come down to relying on browser and web designers' communicating with one's chosen password service. "Going forward" I think two-factor schemes are a good compromise, and I'm pretty happy that most designers are on board. If you forget the password or login to such-and-such a forum, it's nice, as a consumer, to be able to have the option to have a reminder sent to a secondary device. And not vice versa. I don't know how much the "always-on" will strain such a system, but it seems pretty much good enough for now.

Actually, I think that's not too far off. I just now had a quick break and somehow wandered into the key of G and ... I don't remember how it started, but definitely a little "Stormy Monday" and a little "Black Coffee" and just a blues jam between cups of coffee. Yeah, even twenty minutes of literal key-banging still has both my forearms sore. I don't know if the best answer is "strengthen forearms" or "adjust approach to relieve tension," but I've done both in my life and all I can conclude is that the approach to the keyboard is somehow connected to the physical strain. I do feel still the physical soreness in my forearms twenty minutes later, so I suppose I get where the idea of "strength" in fingers is coming from. I think Jerry Lee said it best: "do [the] little boogie-woogie, every day." Otherwise it's down to sports medicine and a lot of things that aren't necessarily more than opinions.

Well, strong posture is definitely important, so I favor something more like this kind of exercise, as demonstrated by a lesser-known, but accomplished, pianist:

I was thinking about this today during my day-job on break -- sitting in my car, smoking and reading through Bach's A minor English Suite. I don't think the reading should be a problem, if you stick to the patterns in the music and can identify what you want to work on. If it were me, I'd look at the LH pattern in the A minor Bourée I, and the A major Bourée II, both from the English Suites, any day of the week. Same idea, but they're conveniently-packaged little exercises, and everything else about the pieces can be ignored or reserved for later. I suspect many people, including me, have a "thing" about Hanon because, yeah, sure, if you don't want to do scales or patterns without the benefit of a syllabus of little cribs, his exercises are only valuable if you rip out every bit of text, or at least take a Sharpie and cross it all out. There is no "finger strength," there is no true "finger independence," and there is no "lifting fingers high" and striking the keyboard like some kind of cobra or jungle cat. I mean, about the last, probably Dr. Lonnie could, but I guarantee that's not the way he plays his fastest. Anyway, I agree with whoever said above (in addition to me), that, probably in addition to as much rest (and relaxation) as possible, just modify the chords so they fit your hand. I don't think any jazz police are going to care what you play in the RH so long as the harmony and the melody is there, plus that ostinato thing in the LH. Quick anecdote, a friend of mine wanted me to show her how to play Billy Preston's solo from "Get Back," which I never copied before off the record. Her RH couldn't reach an octave comfortably, if at all, so, we just broke it up into a two-handed solo. And, no, I can't even remember what key they played that in originally. Just a somewhat-related anecdote. But you can make a lot of things work if you can get off the page and just...I don't know, make it work.

Scales in tenths, sixths, and thirds. Including the diminished scale. Bach's Sinfonie (Three-Part Inventions) and any other of his music you can read, even if not perfectly. Every day. Obviously, it won't strengthen your fingers, what with the whole lack of muscles in the hand, but I find it a satisfying regimen for keeping fluency and looking for problems in technique. For stretching to reach large chords? I don't know. I suppose you could make up some exercises based on octaves in the RH, perhaps extracted from various pieces of Brahms, or just scales in octaves. It may not be possible if you have a smaller reach, so maybe just divide the larger chords between the two hands or omit some notes. As a recent tendonitis between fingers 2 and 3 in LH sufferer (now mostly cured after weeks of taping the two fingers together for most non-keyboard tasks), I wouldn't think you'd want to stretch too adamantly or vigorously. But the "web" between 1 and 2 in both hands does IME stand up to some stretching pretty well to reach LH and RH tenths, with or without whatever other notes you can safely include.

Good observation. I only use MuseScore for my rudimentary occasional use (puzzling out some old-school polyphonic music, really), but even when I had access to boxes running Sibelius or Finale, I found it enormously frustrating to have the default engraving style try to cluster notes (or voices, if you prefer) together which I wanted complete control over (the whole point of my use), while still using the grand staff. And, no, I know about LilyPond engraving using text mark-up based on LaTex, but absolutely not. Not worth spending a million hours painstakingly entering notes which could be scrawled on some staff paper in a few minutes. SLIGHTLY OT but I find, as usual, in such cases to use pencil and paper. To that end I've been exploring technical pencils (called "lead holders" or sometimes "clutch pencils") in the 2mm size. I'm curious for people who write music, rather than type it, if they have preferences for lead softness. I like B, but as high as 4B or even 6B works somewhat OK. Nice dark lines, much less messy-looking than a pen IMHO, and more importantly, less pressure is needed for me to apply to the page.

E-mail definitely sent. Congratulations to Darren there's a lot of hoops to do administratively for the doctorate, so it makes me happy one of the "good guys" made it and, I cross fingers hope, helps make more good research possible. Not only that, this is a fun thread. I only saw JOS once, and he was just about like you'd expect a professional playing his thing but I like hearing all the anecdotes.

https://reverb.com/item/18874564-dominicus-pisaurensis-1543-reissue-custom-clavichord-from-kit-table-top-harpsichord-sounds-great Busch Damn. That's way too beaucoup for me, although I'm sure it's a nice instrument. I think a much more modestly-priced clavichord would be kind of a neat idea -- really, for me, it would be my "Bach only" keyboard, and also double as an equivalent of a keyboard acoustic guitar. Maybe Mozart, Haydn, and of course Scarlatti, plus improvising, as well as Bach. I have done more looking at the Yamaha P-121: it actually seems a bit better in it's true physical dimensions than my first impression was. Not quite as extremely "wedge-shaped" as I thought. And, while I've never had a board with onboard speakers, that certainly saves some little speakers to throw in the case and connect. And, it supports a sostenuto pedal (which is kind of ironic, given that the only times I would use that is for composers who tend to make use of the full 88 keys...on thinking, though, in Debussy IIRC I can't think of where the sostenuto would be used in extreme bass at the same time as the very top octave). I'll still have to look at the actual manual: strangely, none of the specs I've seen online indicate a way to change touch sensitivity "depths." But that would be shocking if there weren't a way to change that somehow. OTOH, it doesn't actually have a MIDI port, so maybe not so shocking. But, thirty bucks for a small, compact USB-->MIDI controller doesn't seem terribly a problem when needed.

Thanks! I never played along with the record to "Hey Nineteen," but I always liked that tune and it was fun to see a little cheat sheet of it. Nice to have another tune to tuck in the membrane if there's ever an excuse to play it.

Yeah. I would say try to be better than the bassist at ... what's that? Ear training. Bass players know how, so you should too, I would add: (i) Beg, borrow, or steal ONE good instrument. Use it. (ii) If not, go get the next best. Use it. (iii) Rinse, repeat. (iv) Write it down. Pencil and paper. Trust me: you'll forget it after a year or two.

Personally, I like to think that many of the classical performers who say they "can't improvise" just a need a little taste of possibility. They perch trembling at the edge of the water like ducklings, unaware of the potential within themselves. One reason I love listening to classical organ, it because at least in this one sphere, the ducklings dive in regularly, sometimes more, sometimes less. ... I fully agree. If I had to guess, it's just a problem of education it's hard to read and remember complicated music in the Western Art music tradition. But it's arguably harder to understand why or how some of the music sounds good. And, no, I'm not claiming to be any better than anyone else. It's a goal to strive for, to become a good musician, rather than just copying fly-shit off a page. Yes, it is funny that organists are expected to improvise, as a matter of course, and that pianists these days...well, they have their hands full just doing concert études and so on. If I were to guess, it's same idea as what you said: just not enough hours in the day, and people get big applause for recreating various things And in "classical" music, it's convenient: there's a lot of fantastic music, and no shortage of people who know how to play it. I don't think it's irrelevant that there are a comparatively few number of interpreters who understand the music, though: I'd be shocked if anyone who understands the structure of a piece weren't able to at least make a little pastiche in the style of so-and-so composer. Well, there's marketing and the big labels putting people out there, but that's another thing. Hell, I can do it and I'm no good at "concert repertoire," beyond like ABRSM 8. It may suck, but a big ego and a willingness to try helps.

If it can be improvised by musicians, or reproduced by apprentices, or, in the very rare cases of some eccentric composers who have no knowledge of tradition, then, yes, one should get the music one deserves. There is not a single good musician or composer in the world who is incapable of improvising. That's one of the best reasons to listen to Western art music to see how it is possible to create and to work within the tradition. If I'm wrong, I will go down on Boys in Sync personally on videotape.

Pretty sure both of them, as well as any other competent musician, could improvise just fine, if they felt like it. How somebody else makes their living is not anything I care deeply about, as long as it doesn't offend me. At the very least, I've never heard of a composer of European art music who wasn't an extremely capable improviser. But, to put it in another way, how serious would anyone take somebody who played some transcriptions of Bud Powell solos at a jam session? Or somebody who, while performing a Beethoven sonata just decided to noodle around for a few bars without a good reason? No reason to get serious about it.