Piano Lessons by Porterfield & Rosenau

released January 21, 2025

Cover photography by Jane Porterfield
Cover layout by Chris Porterfield

Additional info (TL/DR):

This project began in the spring of 2024, when I was walking my dog on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 23rd, and saw Chris and his daughter driving down the street. He lives in a totally different part of town, so it was unusual to see him in my neighborhood. He pulled over, we caught up for a minute, determined that they were in the neighborhood because his daughter takes piano lessons from an instructor that lives very close to my house, and went about our afternoons.

Later that evening, I texted Chris to say how nice it was to see him and his daughter, and Chris suggested, since he was in the neighborhood every Tuesday from "5:32pm - 5:57pm", that we hang out and catch up a couple of times over the summer. Perfect.

The following Tuesday didn't work for us to get together during piano lessons time, and by that next week an idea had started to percolate in my head. I texted Chris on Tuesday April 30th:

"My gut reaction is to say that we pick an unfamiliar tuning, and every week we take 20 minutes to write a song, and then at the end of summer we do a simple recording. . . . .also happy to just sit in the sunshine and drink lemonade. . ."

We kept missing each other due to other things going on for most of May, until we both realized we were going to be at Jenn Wasner's show at Lilliput records in Milwaukee on May 21st, 2024. A perfect time to discuss more specifics.

Before the show we chatted about it. Chris suggested instead of only writing for ~20 minutes each Tuesday, that we actually record each "song" as the last part of the process on each day we got together; nothing fancy, just a field recording from my porch of us playing whatever we worked out that week . . .birds and cars and kids and all. Perfect!

. . .and I had been wanting to try one of Jenn Wasner's tunings that I had been chatting with her about for years, but never had the right opportunity to try it. This would be the perfect project for it, as it is a tuning with which neither Chris nor I was familiar, and we agreed to it at Jenn's show!

So that was the plan. The parameters were set: we would each get our guitars in Jenn's tuning before each session, with the specific instruction to only mess around for a couple of minutes maximum. The idea was to get a vague idea started for the "song" we'd be "working on" that day, but purposefully not take enough time to get anything developed beyond a very rudimentary sketch. Chris would drop his daughter off at her weekly piano lessons at 5:30pm on Tuesdays and head straight to my house. He'd arrive around 5:32pm, we'd play around with whatever sketch one of us had started, Chris at his house minutes before he left, and me at my house minutes before he arrived as I was setting up the field recorder, until around 5:57pm when he had to leave to pick his daughter back up. We'd record it, on the porch, at whatever state it was in. One take; clams, noises, weather and all. We'd do that every week we were both available during the summer, and see what we had in fall! We also agreed pretty early on that, besides reviewing each "song" a couple of hours after we recorded it when I texted it to Chris, we would not listen to any of the recordings until the project ended.

. . .and so that's how it worked for the entire summer of 2024. . .and fall; pretty deep into fall actually. Piano lessons time moved from Tuesdays at 5:30pm to Mondays at 4pm, we had neighbors interrupt us, we played as it started to rain on November 4th (and continued to play and record as it rained), and we played between wind gusts when it was 46F outside on November 11th, 2024.

After that chilly session, we agreed that 46F was our temperature floor, and we'd leave it to Mother Nature and the Piano Lessons gods to decide when this project was going to wrap up.

I got my porch set up with a porch heater and mini-fire pit for general friend hangs as it was getting colder in mid-November, so when it was ~42F on November 25th, 2024, we decided to go for it again! You can hear the fire pit crackling as we play with winter jackets on.

That ended up being the last session; it was never dry or warm enough, even with the heater and mini-fire pit, on Mondays past November 25th.

"Really nice one today! Coziest 42 degrees in memory. A lovely way to wrap; it’s like we were taking the dock out at the lake for the season".
- Chris Porterfield November 25th, 2024.

This record is the documentation of this project. No edits were made; nothing was overdubbed. We hope you enjoy.

- Chris Rosenau, 1 January 2025

P.S.
I jotted down some thoughts at the very beginning of this project, and after a couple of sessions from summer to fall 2024. They are captured below, and really get to the heart of this project.

Initial sessions:
On a nice, warm day with some rain on its way, I put the field recorder on its stand to document this project, got it set up on my porch, got the chairs arranged, got some Spindrifts out of the fridge, noodled around with the new tuning for ~7 minutes before Chris arrived, and gave Chris a big hug when he walked up my front steps.

"Well. . .we've got about 20 minutes. No time to catch up. . .whatdaya got?"
- Chris Porterfield

I had the seed of something started, so we started there. We worked that out for ~ 5 minutes, got it down good enough, figured we should add another part, figured that out for another ~7 minutes, played them back and forth for another 5 minutes, chatted on structure and arrangement for 1 more minute, and hit record. That's the version you hear on this record.

It was almost 6pm by this time, so I walked Chris to his car, laughing at what a weird idea this all was, and said goodbye until next week!
I put the field recording into Logic later that night and crossed my fingers. . .hey! Not bad! I sent it to Chris: "Well that sounds wonderful."
Seems like this is a thing!

We agreed, in order to ensure we get something every week, one of us would take ~5 minutes before each session to get something started, alternating each week. Staying true to the original idea, but acknowledging that 20 minutes is really not a long time to start from absolute scratch, write, arrange, perform, and record a song.

Ha!

2 July 2024
This is such a weird set of parameters within which to try to write music.
It’s not about improv; we're not improvising, we’re trying to write a song. But it’s definitely not really about writing songs either, because we have purposely stacked everything against us; the unfamiliar tuning, the time limit, the limitations on preparation, it all works against us.
It’s also, on face value, not even about friendship or hangs! Which is hysterical! Chris gets to my house, I give him a hug as he comes up the stairs with his guitar to a porch with a field recorder set up and ready to record, we catch up for like 46 seconds while we’re tuning up, and then we proceed to hyper focus on the task at hand for the next ~ 23 minutes before Piano Lessons are over. We hit record, document the progress from the past ~25 minutes, hug, and chat on the way to the car as Chris leaves.

It’s also, if we’re honest, also not about the best songs we can write. The parameters within which we have constrained ourselves preclude that; we barely have time to figure out parts we are happy with in the moment much less have time to perfect them or refine them or even consider them for more than a couple of minutes.

We're only a few sessions in. What is this? What are we doing? We clearly love it, but what is it?

23 July 2024
It all started like every other week: I got the field recorder ready, got the chairs set up, got the Spindrifts (that we never have time to drink) out, and got my guitar tuned up. About 5 minutes before Chris arrived, I started sketching out the idea for the day. As I started noodling around with some ideas on my porch, around 5:25pm, a woman and her son in a stroller passed in front of my house. I heard her say: "oh listen to the pretty guitar. . .". I looked over the porch to see one of my daughters' middle school teachers. "Oh, I know you!" she said. "Theo, want to go up and say hi to Mr. Chris and hear him play guitar?". We chatted for a while and my daughters came out to say hi as Chris arrived. Theo was so interested in the guitars and strumming them with his fingers and our picks, they ended up hanging out until around 5:45pm. We said goodbye, and started writing the week's song. . .with ~10 minutes until Chris had to go pick up his daughter.

We got something down, recorded it, and said goodbye for the week, still on the fence if what we did this week actually fell within the project parameters.
"Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I feel like when I listen back to that at the end of the summer, I'm going to notice that we were short-changed on time, and I think it will bother me a little bit, because I think with 10 more minutes, we could've really nailed something pretty good. I feel like not taking another crack at it deviates from our parameters of having just under 30 minutes to write and record." - me in a text to Chris

Chris agreed: "That first 20 minutes with Theo may very well be more impactful than anything we would have tracked this week."

So that's the plan: neither of us will listen to or play this idea until next week ~5 minutes before Chris arrives and we'll pick up where we left off.

4 November 2024
Well, we never anticipated being able to do this so late in the fall, but the weather has been really cooperating! . . .until today, maybe? Definitely looks and feels like rain, but it's not raining yet, so here we go! Got through the initial figuring out of each of our parts, arranging them, and rehearsing them once or twice, when it was time to press record. And sure enough: about 10 seconds into the performance, it started to rain. Not a downpour, but definitely not a drizzle! It distracted me so much that I definitely clammed during the second section of the song for a second, but re-focused and made it through. You can hear the rain (and my clam) on the recording.

11 November 2024
It's cold. LOL. We're down for trying to play today (we have both played in worse weather conditions), but it's cold. 46F, and the sun is pretty much setting at 4:30pm now due to daylight saving time. Good luck to us!

. . .and we made it through, but we got done in like 10 minutes today! Fastest yet! Likely due to the temperature! When I sent it to Chris the next day and he listened to it, he texted

"Cool, thanks! Yeah, bit wiggly but nice by A2."

To which I replied: "Indeed! Maybe we should have set the temp floor at 50F!"

25 November 2024
Well, it's colder than the last session, but we should be ok with the patio heater and mini-fire pit! It feels like, looking at the weather next week and knowing how December in Wisconsin goes, that this might be the last one. There is also a ~30% chance of rain between 2pm and 4pm today. Fingers crossed.

. . .and it is slightly drizzly before Chris arrives, but then it stops. . . .and it is cold for sure, but ok sitting by the fire and under the patio heater. . .pretty cozy actually. So Chris arrives and we dig in as normal, except wearing heavy shirts and winter coats versus the t-shirts from when this all started in June. It's pretty fun playing this one, outside by the fire. It ends up being in both of our wheelhouses; we figure out the parts pretty quickly and then take the rest of the time to run it 2 - 3 times before we press record.

With ~ 3 minutes to go before Chris has to leave, and kind of assuming this is going to be the last session of this iteration of this project, he says "So what have we learned?".

We think about it and chat about it a bit, but, fitting perfectly with this project, it's time for Chris to scoop his daughter from piano lessons, so we don't really get a chance to reflect at all.

Ha!