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Alene, the St Louis Blues is really nice. I have not started on this one yet, but now you got me excited to try this one. Also, I enjoyed listening to your House improv. It is really good to listen to how other students tackle these different improv pieces and how own style comes out. Since these are improv pieces, I try to go back to them and see if I can mix and match the techniques into different songs and see what effects they give.

GregF, your Hola is smooth and beautiful. Yes, play Bad day for me so that I can follow along.

Pete, thanks for sending the pdf file to me. It works fine from the email attachment. I have no idea what the problem is.

Rosa

Pete, no wonder you think it's Christmas - you are like Santa Claus to us all!

Alene, I loved St Louis Blues - just found the lesson - its amazing what you can miss if you drop out of this thread for a few days!!

Pete, will most certainly post recording!

Oh Dale, how did I miss yours? I just listened to it. Thanks for posting it for us to listen. Now I really need to try St Louis Blues and join you guys. Never knew how to improv on the blues before. You sound good and solid.

Rosa

Santa Pete.....hee hee......Yes! Aren't we lucky?

RC, the pdf file is on this page. It's 3 pages long in Pete's short post.

I'll cut and paste for you:

Here is the first of 3 lessons arranging a lead sheet. http://www.sendspace.com/file/pzenhn

Rosa

Rosa, many thanks I actually just found it and edited my post. Thanks for the thought anyway. I missed out on some wonderful tuition for a few days and I'm so glad I'm back!

Guess what?

While fooling around with Hola improv with the progression Am G F G Am G F G Am G F G An G F...

it reminded me of the following song, so I played that song with what Pete's been showing us in this thread.

Can you recognize this song?

http://www.box.net/shared/cvcxpa896i

This is my 2nd take and I didn't want to polish it but just wanted to show how some things are coming together without yourself realizing it.

Who can guess what this song is?

Rosa

Gee, what a fun thread this is and I agree with RC that Pete must be Santa Claus to us...grownups really needed a musical Santa!

Gregf: Really liked your Hola, and you even got a lot of expression in yours which sounded wonderful. That contrast of soft and loud really sounded good. Now I need to keep practicing and get that into mine too.

Rosa: That song sounds familiar in spots but I can't identify it....the playing sounds super tho and it's so much fun to listen to all these ideas and try them out.

Pete: Thank you very much for the compliments and suggestions....that is so good of you to take the time to help us and I really appreciate it. I thought I had played the D7 as an intro to St. Louis Blues as I know the V7 is the one I should use but when I turn on that recording button, I just seem to go blank so I probably did play the C7 instead as I was recording both these songs at the same time. Thanks for catching that. I printed out the pdf file and will try putting that line in from now on and it sounds great. I'm going to stick with just these 3 songs for a while to become comfortable with them before I move on as they need a lot of work. This is so much fun!

Thanks everyone for your encouragement!

Alene

Well, I'm pretty much a lurker, as my low posts number might indicate. I've been around PW for 2 years and only 50-something posts.

Thanks for the comments everyone. I had been working on Hola before this thread started, so it may be a little while before Bad Day is ready for recording.

My 2009 goal is to lengthen my repertoire to at least 30 minutes. And since Hola is one of the better sounding pieces I play currently, I'd like to stretch the piece.

Pete, even with repeating Section B in Hola, my recording was only about 1 minute 22 seconds. To lengthen the song, I was thinking about going on an AABA pattern, tweaking the end of A a bit to make a repeat work. To me, A flows nicely into B, but repeating A back to back as is doesn't sound right to me. Any tips on that?

Thanks,
GregF

Very Nice Rosa;
My Heart Will Go On - Titanic Theme Song

Alene and GregF
Your songs sounded great too.

Pete
The rest of that blues song is pretty hard for me. Just learning the chords, and that melody fingering is all over the place. You probably know by now, fingering drives me crazy on music. I know where the notes are, but getting fast enough with the fingering is the hard part.

Dale

Greg: Here is what I would do after a hard day teaching and 2 glasses of wine: http://www.sendspace.com/file/0getbc
2:46 is the time on that.
That is ABAB with a bit of time on either end running the Am G F G as an intro. If I was playing in a restaurant I might spend a bit more time on the Intro and probably come back around maybe once more on just a last B section. A 4 hours solo gig is a long time to kill and you gotta fill it somehow.
What is rather peculiar is that it very much depends where I play on how I would treat a song. That version would likely feel a little too aggressive in some places and in others just fall flat on its face.

Do you think I put too many hammer ons in that version?(hic) That was very good wine.

Rosa; That was fun. I heard a whole lot more in there than just a pretty melody. Thanks for the post.
While we are discussing what tune has the same chord changes you might try Greensleeves on the last 2 bars of A section-AM G F E and I think I mentioned in an earlier post the B section almost exactly fits Autumn Leaves.

I'm sitting over breakfast (sorry, no red wine)listening to Hola2 and it really is nice.

Can I ask a burning question: Are you playing this version by ear or direct from printed music score?

I find that after I have played Hola over and over a few times I can memorise the notes much easier than trying to read them and play. Once I free up my brain I can improvise much easier and make less mistakes.

I achieve a certain amount of freedom when I memorise but I rely on printed music to kick start the piece.

Am I making sense?

Ragtime Clown:I was looking at the same chart as in the book and messing with it. If you asked me to play it the same way twice, there would be a problem.
You are making sense. Knowing the piece really helps. I have been playing Misty for 30 years. It changes over time. All the little things you learn along the way start to come out and show up when you are free enough to just play. Your playing starts showing who you are and where you have been. Listen to Rosa's guess this song download. You will hear more than a Hola LH. If I remember correctly I even heard Latin stride, which she just picked up a couple of weeks ago.(correct me if I am wrong). She also uses a quartal arpeggio ending (stack of 4ths) Little tricks like that are what I 'm talking about.Pick those up and they really enhance your playing.

There is a lot to learn from Hola and here is a recording before I left for work. Converting midi to mp3 doesn't produce very nice piano sounds but the recording gives some indication of how the piece has developed for me.

I consider Hola to be an on-going improvement and although there are many mistakes and technical faults I hope to get feedback from Pete and other listeners.


http://www.box.net/shared/o4ci8h2uc2

Hi RC;
That sounds very nice to me. You are doing something that I have a hard time with. You keep that left hand moving while you are playing your melody. I need a lot of work in that area and also in fingering the melody when it moves around a lot. Your Hola comes out better everytime you upload it.

Dale

Pete; Everyone will probably love those kinds of tips.

Rosa; Want to share how you did the quartal arpeggio? Fingers used on each hand, and notes played? It sounded Great!

I don't know if this is good info or not, but I seen a guy end his songs by running up 1,2,3, and 5 over and over in the right hand, and playing a 10th chord in the left. In the key of C, his right hand did C,D,E, and G up the keyboard and the left hand did C lil finger, G index finger, and the E in the next octave with the thumb. Made a nice ending to a song.

Dale

Hi RC: Just listened to your Hola and sounded so GOOD! I really liked your ending with the trill. It's fun to get to listen to everyone and the improvements that come along with the practice.

Also really nice to hear another version by Pete to show what can be done differently each time we play it. Very inspiring! (Maybe I should try the wine so the recording button wouldn't scare me to death, LOL)

This thread is very motivating!

Alene

This thread is so much FUN.

Bluesb7, yes, you get 1st prize. It's Titanic's theme - My Heart will go on.

I mainly did LH Latin stride throughout the whole song. You can tell I have fallen in love with the Latin stride.

Oh, the RH arpeggio quartal, I learned that from Mike in Piano magic. I memorized Mike's old house # 362 and I love that ending.

Pete, what you are saying to each student is very helpful to everybody and not just the student himself. Your Hola2 is so nice. It's been playing on my computer all night.

Ragclown, your Hola is getting smoother as you are playing with more ease. Keep it up. Try playing the LH throb too, they sound good too.

And Al, my wine glasses are here. Cheers.....

Rosa

Pete,

Wow! Thanks. That was amazing. Sounds like PPP Vol. 3 material there.

GregF

RC: Hola is much improved. You should be proud of this hard work. 10ths all the way through.( I need Rosa to tell me how to put one of the thumbs up smileys here) Melody going up an octave-nice idea. That is one way to change the song so you can repeat it with out boring your audience to death. That means you get another minute on that tune to fill that 4 hour gig.


Blues Flat 7: Thanks for sharing your Hot Tip for an ending. This is another one of those things everyone should put in their bag of tricks. The name of the chord CDEG is Cadd9. Some books say Cadd2 but you would get into a spat with my Theory mentor calling it that. You will find this chord in later lessons in the book.

I never thought Hola could get this much mileage. There are only 11 more like it it the book. This could turn into a very long thread.

So here is my question to everyone. (there have been 200 downloads of the Hola lesson). The lesson I wanted to acheive in Hola by using 10ths was to force you to learn the notes in each of the chords. Did that work for you ?

Pete each week before my lesson officially begins, my teacher allows me the priviledge of warming up of 5 minutes.

Last night I was playing Hola and when he came into the room he asked 'What was that piece, it sounded really good'. He was also quite surprised how I was able to demonstrate the 10ths in various chord formations.

As you say, Hola has given everyone here so much mileage for both right hand melody and left hand independance. Thanks!