Friday, July 31, 2015

Resuming with Blues

You know you've been neglecting your (digital) piano for too long when it takes a couple of minutes to locate the power switch. At least I didn't need to dig out the manual, though I was considering it. And speaking of digging out, it took a couple days of desultory sorting and putting away to get my piano space back in order. Dare I confess it had been repurposed as a laundry folding station?'

Reopening the blog, it's interesting to see that I'm re-starting exactly where I left off, wanting to focus on material simple enough for me to practice relaxed focus and staying in the zone, as per Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery. Before looking at the blog, I had only just transferred Kenny's meditations onto my phone, then listening to the first one was the perfect preparation for resuming my piano studies.

My motivator this time around is that my roommate recently took up playing bass, and is learning his blues progressions, so I thought it would be a great time to get back to the piano and practice up on some blues. I'm starting with Beginning Blues Keyboard by Tricia Woods, which starts out very easy. Years ago I tried working from Tim Richards' Improvising Blues Piano, but that one is aimed an intermediate level student, while I still linger on the late elementary plateau (being an intermittent player like me can do that to you).