My cover of Nearness of you and Georgia on my mind

Hello everyone, this is a cover of both the tunes Georgia on my mind and Nearness of you. I’ve been able to play these songs on my first year into my second year on this platform. I trust and hope that you like it.


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Hey @eaglesabroache :wave:

Thanks for sharing these recording and congrats on your progress after 1 year of study with PianoGroove.

I really like your rendition of “Georgia” - your melodic embellishments capture the soulful and bluesy character of the song. Really nicely done!

When playing in this style, we can add a lot of pedal to create interesting overhanging tones and some dissonance which creates a ‘crunchy’ and bluesy character - you do this vey nicely.


For your rendition of Nearness Of You, I have a couple of recommendations for you to experiment with:

  1. Experiment with less sustain pedal. This is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, you are playing very rich harmony in places such as altered dominant chords, and also harmonising the melody with triads, and when using these devices we have to be clean with the sustain pedal. The ‘harmonic ingredients’ that you are using are brilliant, and I think less sustain pedal will allow these ingredients to shine. Also pay attention to lift the sustain pedal when the chord changes.

  2. You could also experiment playing the tune at a slower tempo. When I’m playing the tune I like to think of the Norah Jones version - see below. Try to hear and feel the lyrics passing at that tempo and I think it will give a little more space to really hear and absorb all of the lovely harmonic ingredients that you are adding.

Both of these suggestion are related, playing at a slower tempo should give you a little more time and control with the sustain pedal, and I think it will really make a big difference.

Congrats again on your progress Jefferson!

Thank you for your recommendations. I will work on it. Your feedback contributes to my progress on an extremely high percentage.

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