In the woodshed

[David Haynes]

Jazz musicians use the term “woodshed” to represent spending focused time in isolation honing their craft and working out difficult parts of their music.

I’ll have the house to myself for two weeks at the beginning of March and have decided to “woodshed”. There are three things on my list for those 2 weeks:

1. Learn my left hand closed voicings – the goal being to have a least one song I can play exclusively with left hand voicings.

2. Work through Tim Richards’ book on blues piano as far as I can.

3. Spend time every day picking out notes by ear, either from melodies or from recorded solos.

I’ll post here about my experiences as I go and hopefully some recordings at the end of the two weeks.

[David Haynes]

Day 1 –
Today I soaked my hands in some warm water (it’s COLD here!) and headed to the piano. Warming up my hands seems to make me play better. Or make me feel better anyway.

Task 1: As I imagined, the hardest part was just getting started. I decided to practice my major scales over two octaves. For some time I’ve felt that the scale paths and the hand movements are significantly different if you’re playing two or more octaves. Now I’m sure of it. The paths look different, more complete somehow, and the fingering isn’t always obvious. Someone has probably defined those fingerings but I was mainly trial and error. I’m thinking that if you’re playing fast some of these fingerings wouldn’t be so effective.

At any rate, playing two octaves gives you a better picture of the path. I spent 25 minutes on these today.

Task 2: Picking out melodies
I printed out the material on the web site about picking out melodies and started on a couple of the songs listed. I quickly discovered that I didn’t really know these melodies well enough to “sing” them. Thus I had little to “pick out”. Eventually I ended up playing songs I knew and sort of scatting along as I played, sometimes anticipating notes and eventually adding melody notes that weren’t written.

I seemed to gain some ear/finger connection. I’m going to spend more time with this approach.I spent 35 minutes on this work today.

Task 3: Left hand voicings
After little break I started working on left hand voicings with “Satin Doll”. I struggled some with figuring out voicings and chord types. The voicings didn’t come quickly – I remembered what it was like when I first started the Method. After getting stuck on a couple measures I found a some voicings that I liked. When I took the time to analyze them I realized they were actually the “B” forms of the chords on the lead sheet.

I didn’t get very far into the song but I’m sure now that I’ll figure it out. I spent 40 minutes on this task.

Task 4: Working with Tim Richards’ “Improvising Blues” book
I was a little brain tired. Next session I’ll work on this task first. Mostly I just worked on the beginning left hand fingering for a simple walking bass. Got a fair number of reps in.

I’m of two minds on this. The reps are probably fine if I’m a little tired. We’ll see as I get further into it. I spent 30 minutes on this.

So about a two-hour session. Smaller topics seem to help me stay engaged. We’ll see.

[David Haynes]

Day 2

“Picking out melodies” (about 20 minutes) – Decided to start here because it’s more fun than the tediousness of the beginning blues work I’m doing. Reread some of David’s stuff on this topic and decided to just start on trying to generate a decent tone. So stuck mainly to melodies. Played the notes, “sang” the tones. It’ll be interesting to see how this skill progresses – I’m not very good at it. As an aside, I flipped open a fake book and stumbled on “When Sunny Gets Blue”. I used to play this song but had completely forgotten about it. I don’t know much about the tune but Sarah Vaughan did a beautiful rendition.

“Beginning blues” (about 30 minutes) – pretty repetitious. Just practiced the basic left hand walking bass and added in major triads on top. Trying to get the bass fingering automatic and the coordination between hands. Having a Sudnow background on scales and chords helps but right now it’s just reps. I can tell I have a long way to go with this.

“Closed voicings” (about 30 minutes) – Made some good progress. This is just a lot like working out voicings within David’s Method – it’s just like starting over for me. But once I’ve written down the voicings and played the shapes a few times, my hands learn the shapes pretty quickly. Having already gone through this process is a big plus. (Except for feeling like you’re starting over again.)

“2 octave scales” (about 10 minutes) – I was a little mentally fatigued by the time I got to this so I only did a few passes. I continue to be surprised by the challenge of seeing scale paths as continuous rather than as one octave-long chunk. I think this will be good for me.

[David Haynes]

Day 3

Well, this is going to get repetitive. So I may just skip the day to day recitation.

One thing dawned on me today. If you have an acoustic piano you should learn how to do a couple simple tuning chores. Buy an inexpensive tuning hammer and learn how to tune unisons. It’ll help you clean up some issues between professional tunings. It’s not hard to learn, message me or do a little on line research.

Tonight brought up the challenge of working full time and carving out some uninterrupted practice time. I probably defined too many tasks but I managed to get a little bit of all of them in tonight. A little over an hour total. We’ll see. Part of teaching yourself is learning what works for you.

So tonight got reduced to several 15-20 minute sessions of rote practice and then another 20 minutes of just playing whatever I wanted to – in this case the beautiful Gershwin tune “But Not For Me”.

I find that a little mental fatigue sometimes results in better playing afterwards. Perhaps just less thinking and more listening to what I’m playing.

[David Haynes]

A few thoughts:

– If you’re not still practicing scales, you should be. I thought I “knew” them well. Playing over two octaves demonstrated that the paths weren’t as automatic as I thought. The value of that burned in sort of learning becomes more obvious when you’re trying to pick out melodies or learn improvisation.

– Voicing (I’m working on left hand voicings) is also facilitated by better scale sense.

– The fact is that everything I’ve been working on requires a lot of repetition and what your hands learn as a result of that repetition influences everything you try to play.

– I’m hoping Suds is right about being able to learn to create useful vocal tones. I don’t remember being this bad at it.

– All of these threads I’ve been working on have led me back to “Ways of the Hand.” I couldn’t finish the original version but I bought David’s revised edition and have started reading it. The first part is easier because I know his Method better. Some of what he describes early on I now have first hand experience with. Still, it’s a difficult book. What David wrote about your hands “learning” has deeper insights than I first appreciated. I’m looking forward to struggling through it.

[David Haynes]

One more thing. As I was practicing the same left hand bass line over and over (and over) it occurred to me that if my wife was in the house she’d be gently begging me to stop – or practice something else.

Getting in a lot of reps is one area where I think an electronic keyboard with headphones could be very useful. Probably doesn’t have to be a very good one (although I wonder about differences in feel) but it might be good for you and for your housemates.

[lilypad66]

David, Thank you for starting this thread. I hadn’t heard the term ‘woodshed’ before, but now I’ve started noticing it on various jazz sites. Does it just mean practicing in general?

My ideal practice session goes as follows:

– 5 minutes on rhythm
– 5-10 minutes on scales and arpeggios
– 10 minutes chords & sight reading. I go through a fake book, one page per session, avoiding tunes
I’m familiar with. I start by playing the chords the first time through and then go back and do my
best to sight read the melody. Then I check YouTube and listen to what the song should really sound
like.
– 35 minutes on ‘fun’ stuff – Learning new repertoire, perfecting repertoire, keeping old repertoire in
memory by playing it once a week. I also try to get in some ear training during the session.

This all should only add up to an hour, but I timed it once and even using a timer for each activity, I wound up taking an hour and a half. More often than not I’ll get obsessed on various things, lose track of time and three hours may go by with some things still not done.

[David Haynes]

The “woodshed” description typically refers to a more cloistered and focused practice routine than I’m capable of. Professional musicians, faced with a difficult musical chore or preparation for a significant performance will sometimes “go to the woodshed.” My use of the term was probably a little flippant.

[lilypad66]

David, Thanks for the clarification on the ‘woodshed’ term. I suspected that it might be something like that. Your use of the term seems reasonably appropriate in this case as you were working on some specific projects for the limited time that you had the house to yourself.

Lily

[David Haynes]

Recap

Well, my “house to myself” time is over. Here are a few general thoughts about the experience:

1. Continuing to practice scales is more valuable than I thought. Especially over at least two octaves. You get a better internal picture of the paths and it also warms you up for whatever else you’re working on. I’m also looking at other scales: diminished and whole tone, again just to reinforce the paths.

2. The simple act of humming along (singing, scatting, whatever you like) begins to open the door to small improvisations as you find yourself “singing” something that’s a slight variation on the melody. Copying recorded solos or picking out melodies can also be helpful but there’s a bit of a technical overhead and frankly I just can’t remember melodies very well. Still, start vocalizing.

3. Left hand voicings can be learned but be aware that it’s like starting the whole voicing endeavor all over again. You’ll learn them faster if you already voice songs but it’s tedious. As I’ve often said, patience and persistence are the primary drivers of success (as in most things).

4. Don’t bite off more than you can chew (e.g. the blues is a big topic). You’ll never learn “everything” about any one topic. Pick two or three things to work on and set some reasonable interim goals. Don’t beat yourself up. Adjust goals or change your areas of focus – there’s no price to pay for changing your mind. And seemingly unrelated efforts often come together in unexpected ways.

As an aside, I’m going to start a different thread to talk about David’s “Ways of the Hand” once I finish it and have had a chance to chew on it for a while.

[elwoods]

RE-seeing scale patterns. This has helped.

Great topic and great ideas. Thanks David.

I’m back in this space after quite a few years of absence. I really dug it at the time, but I was also concentrating on new orleans style piano and got sidetracked. On both really, and dropped the piano once again after a lot of work and not happy with my results. (I could play ok, with a lot of practice, but if there were a few days absent from practice, and if I was somewhere where there was a piano, I couldn’t remember the notes very well—– must have been more muscle memory than knowledge.) I’m mainly a guitar player.

Reading this post, on the importance of scales, I started doing simple stride left hand (Root, 7th&3rd, 5th, 7th&3rd) while doing corresponding scale up two octaves at least and down with right hand. Very very slowly so I make no mistakes –it’s painfully slow in some keys— but the way the site is set up now, I went through a lot of the original seminar and his comment on not making mistakes really hit home (I always hit wrong notes).

Great practice. Still hard to see the scale patterns so I can easily improvise without mistakes BUT I came across something else which really helped this morning, both in playing the scales, seeing the patterns, and improvising notes while striding with my left –which I could never do before.

In Piano Chat 3, “Hanon and technique” near the end he mentions an exercise taught to him by Ritchie Beirach, in key of B, thumb on B, index and middle on #C #D at same time, thumb passes under, E, index, mid, ring hit the next 3 black keys, thumb pass under, etc etc. Pretty cool.

So I tried doing this in some of the other keys, and it really started to help me see the patterns. SO then I started doing the stride left for Misty -which I’ve totally forgotten and can’t play- (Root, 7th, 3rd -corresponding to chord type) and did that exercise for the key of Eb, starting on the root of the chord. Real slow, more just to see the patterns and play with that, while simple left stride, and it seemed to make a big difference for me. Plus you have to change for the minor chords, so that’s good too for the brain. From there to improvising simple lines for the chord is a lot easier.

Next is to try the stride closed chord ressource, while doing the same thing. For now, 7ths and 3rds are enough.

Then, only going up to the first bD (sill Misty), to engrain the voicings in my head, I’ve been going up and down a semi-tone, to really understand what is going on. Again very slow.

I also tried arpeggios of RH voicings, as Sud mentions in that Pianochat, which is a movement similar to the Beirach technique (compared to Hanon) he says. That too is very good for remembering the notes and chord tones.

All in all, very happy and excited to be back, working again on dear ole Misty, look at me.

cheers
Elwood

[David Haynes]

Hi Elwood, welcome back.

I haven’t gotten around to writing my review of Suds’ revised edition of “Ways of the Hand” but I”ll pass along another resource that fills in some gaps for me regarding the old “don’t make mistakes” mantra. That never quite seemed like the whole story of how we learn things and William Westley’s book “The Perfect Wrong Note” provides a crucial counterpoint.

In the past I’ve often recommended that people specifically allocate practice time to just “goofing around”. It seems to me now that what I was encouraging was a suspension of the “don’t make mistakes” mindset.

Westley’s book is a more rigorous defense, even encouragement, of what he calls “honest mistakes”.

It’s well worth a read.

[David Haynes]

Hi Elwood, welcome back.

I haven’t gotten around to writing my review of Suds’ revised edition of “Ways of the Hand” but I”ll pass along another resource that fills in some gaps for me regarding the old “don’t make mistakes” mantra. That never quite seemed like the whole story of how we learn things and William Westley’s book “The Perfect Wrong Note” provides a crucial counterpoint.

In the past I’ve often recommended that people specifically allocate practice time to just “goofing around”. It seems to me now that what I was encouraging was a suspension of the “don’t make mistakes” mindset.

Westley’s book is a more rigorous defense, even encouragement, of what he calls “honest mistakes”.

It’s well worth a read.

[elwoods]

Hey David, you make a great point. One that perhaps I take for granted, for I have found that a physical approach, through lots of repetition and exercises leads to quick departs into rhythmic play and improv, both provoking “mistakes” but also flow, allowing both to exist is the key.

As that is my go to mode, I’m taking strides (pun intended) to really practice clean both stride and RH scales up 3 octaves in all 12 keys. Some still make my head hurt, so slow and goal is to not make mistakes on that. It’s a change for me, slowing down. Very worth it as it makes me very attentive and not muscle memory…. today was harder than yesterday, but still better than 3 days ago, I’ll take that.

The site is great. I spend a lot of time listening to the piano chats, songs, newsletters, etc. A great job and a hell of a lot of value. And some great playing. Thanks for the effort of keeping this available.

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