Well...
This was an ill fated decision. The week we started classes and decided on our learning projects was the same week my upright piano broke and my keyboard arrived broken. It was a rough week.
With the addition of 3 new piano students to add to the 2 from last year I was glad to have my lessons piano in good shape, but this left me with very little personal practice time. As luck would have it my keyboard was fixed in time for me to decide if this was actually a good idea or not.
This learning project means taking my focus off of the classical and pop piano that I have enjoyed playing for the last many years, and trying something new and challenging. Thankfully, I was able to do some research into styles this week. Spotify was an excellent tool to begin gaining some ideas about where I would like to go with this project.
I started with Bill Evans Peace Piece, a song I had attempted to tackle a few years ago. This honestly felt too safe. In sitting down to play it I found myself unchallenged, as I leaned on classical technics and the features of my keyboard to add the jazz sound. As fun as this was it wasn't quite where I wanted to be.
Once I was able to sit down and play for a couple hours I realized that I had no idea what I was doing, and sat down to start doing research. First, I took a little Tiktok break however. On my for you page a video from Postmodern Jukebox popped up and sparked my interest.
Unfortunately, I do not have a band to do this with... but it was the original source for my inspiration. I would love to become familiar with jazz techniques and apply them to songs I love and know. I have started to work through a few of their songs through chords and just playing by ear. Hopefully this will be the start to understanding and playing more songs like this.
So what now? I've found what I want to do... how do I do it?
Generally, my plan is to practice and find the areas that need attention as they come up. Essentially, when I don't know how to do something, I'll find a source to learn it from. This learning can be broken down into three areas:
Understanding Jazz tone & history
Piano Jazz technics
Jazz technics related to my set up
I believe that the technics will take the majority of my time, as well as a fair amount of practice, but I am not looking forward to the last part of this learning. Unfortunately, the information surrounding specifics of my keyboard and set up may involve actually reading the user manual- hopefully I am able to find another way to learn about it.
So, wish me luck as I dive into jazz tone and history this week. And make sure to stay tuned for some videos of my progress.
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