This is a book that I hope will be a great primer to
the more advanced simply elegant piano
and stylings of the great standards
I plan on getting through this book in two months
I will be supplementing with a piece a week from simply elegant piano

I wanted to invite some of you who are early intermediate to join me as I play through this book
perhaps we can help each other through the rough patches

I am on my second song now
the first song I was able to sight read through in about one day
but I am now revisiting it for the second day and have yet to get it completely smooth ( side note it sounds great with strings )
once it gets into the altered chord section I find reading all the harmonic spellings a little confusing but I am sure I will get passed that

the second song is quite interesting it has a right hand line I think even bach would be envious of.

I am not able to put hands completely together on this at performanec tempo but hope to be able to do this by the end of today this is my second day on this second piece

What is the name of the book?

the name of the book is "Jazz piano, pieces to grow on"

put out by steinway and sons library
library it has original compositions usually two pages long from people like

andy LAverne Bill dobbins stuart Isacoff
Dick Hyman Don Friedman
noreen Grey lienhard

and others

piece two completed finally after two days
piece number two is beautiful and I really want to change the left hand rhythm eventually and bring it back to a more prelude feel which to me it already posesses.
currently the chords fall on the one and three I woud like to have them fall on each beat like a chopin prelude in e minor

I reviewed piece one circles and it is becoming much smoother
I now have little problem with the second section

I play it with a string setting to see if I cant adapt it to an organ prelude eventually
also I think I will omit the subdominant harmony departure I think it is an unnecessary section
it almost sounds like someone trying to show how far out he can take the piece
I think the first and third sections are beautiful the second section just is dissonant to be dissonant IMHO

the next piece is called joni's alibi
written by sara jane cion

at first glance it is using shell voicings in the left hand something like a bud powel style
I hope to finish tomorrow on this piece



I am posting this in the advdult beginners forum because I feel that is where I am
but would this be better in the non classical section?

Well, I enjoy reading your posts and plan on following your progress. But if you decide to do it in the non-classical I'll follow there, too.

I suppose knotty, jazzwee, and ten left thumbs would have a better idea of which place you might get the most responses in.

Cathy

piece number three
Joni's alibi
is throwing me for a loop

I think it is the triplet that follows a rest and an eight note

so beat one is a eight note rest
followed by an eight note and then an eightnote triplet
followed by a dotted half note then an eight note that acts as a pick up into the next bar.

that wouldnt be so bad but the phrase doesent sound good to my ears which makes it a pain to play HS
but when you play HT it sounds great

I think this may be one of those pieces that work better when played HT due to all the syncopations

we will see I will be giving it a thorough working over today

Maduro,

Are you still working on this?
Would you record some of these pieces. I find the first one really beautiful.