Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of piano players like the mention of stride piano. This seemingly impossible old style is like ragtime on steroids, and pushes jazz pianists to the limit.

Whether you’re on the road, running from one gig to the next, or dealing with distractions at home, finding time to practice is difficult for all of us, here are some exercises, each of which focuses on a different element of playing, depending on what kind of gig it is. Try the ones I’ve outlined here, then make up your own to incorporate your favorite licks and runs in your daily warm-up routine.

The loudness of the note depends on how hard you strike the key. But even in the piano, quite a lot of technology (in the form of carefully balanced levers) goes into producing that effect.

A good way for you to incorporate this unusual chord into your own playing is to first substitute it for a maj7 chord. Next, you can start to use this color as a substitute forother types of chords. A good exercise is totake a standard, and change all the chordsto maj7#5 chords, using the original roots.

The chord chart for what I play could be the same for accompanying a number of different artists, but how I voice those chords may be radically different depending on the music. To illustrate that, Examples 1-5 present the same eight-bar chord progression in a variety of contexts — proof positive that the same chord can sound completely different depending on how you voice it.