This is definitely not my best playing, but I am so thankful I was able to play at my Grandmas graveside service. I hope I am not oversharing, but I played while they were lowering her into the ground. I was having a hard time not crying while I played so that made it hard to get a good sound and stay in tune, but it was a blessing to be able to play her favorite song. I am thankful for Vic’s teaching which allowed me to play without music. After the video, the first photo is my mom, me and my 80s hair, my grandma and grandpa. The last photo is me with my siblings and grandma, a few days before she passed. She lived a wonderful 96 years and I am so grateful for her.

I learned this song earlier today with Online Jam, a new Skool group! After sharing another recording with yall, I realized I needed a backing track video I could share with you so I went and found this one. Here's my improvising with it. See how I spend half of my time playing the melody recognizably and half of the time improvising more and more with it? Reading jazz melodies can be a real challenge rhythmically. Often the way they "feel" is not expressed in the chart. Often notes written as 8th notes are played with the first one longer than the second, "swung." I had the benefit of hearing a singer give a live interpretation of this song today. But I was otherwise not familiar with it. It was fun to explore how my unique voice might take the notes on the page and make them come alive with a new personality for this song. I'd like to hear your interpretation. Will you share it in the 🌊Improv Waterfall too?

Many of the backing tracks you can find in the backing tracks folder are from the app BackTrackIt. I purchased a license so you could use them to improvise from your computer, but the app is really cool! Highly recommend it for visualizing chord changes. It lets you transpose the key and change the speed of any track and even can show you the chords on the piano. Have you tried it yet? Let's start a list of apps for practicing improvisation. Which ones do you like?

I have been working on improving with Thank You Jesus in different keys and did this one in B.