Last night's lesson

Which was actually two nights ago, as I'm posting this a day late.

Last night's piano lesson was one of the better ones I've had in recent memory. Part of that was because, even though I didn't show much progress in the songs I've been working on, I really did practice during the week, so, my playing was (vaguely) improved. (At least, my instructor said so, and hopefully, he would know and wouldn't say so just to make me feel good. Although, maybe he did. Anyway...) Part of that also was we went over time a bit because he had to take care of some business during my regular lesson time, so we spent some time looking at a fascinating piece by Gottschalk called "Le Banjo". It is not for the meek and we ended up looking at it because I was asking about some methodologies for playing more of a stride accompaniment, especially to go with You Took Advantage of Me, which I was unable to play any bit of stride on, although I rendered the chords adequately enough. Stride has really been confounding me, so last night's lesson was very productive in giving me some perspective and some ideas. Finally, the main thing I got out of last night's lesson was that: a tangible method for playing stride, which I can practice at home on my own at my leisure and which will hopefully make me sound better. It isn't pure stride but instead uses extended fingerings in a pattern, making it easier to play by keeping the left hand on the keyboard while allowing enough room for the right to have space to fill in some notes of the chords. I was anxious to try it, but not anxious enough to attempt it right after getting home, because as I said, last night's lesson was pretty long and I was pretty tired when I got home. But, that gives me something to work on tonight.