🩺 The diagnosis ⏱️ The metronome 🛠️ The five tools ✅ Before Sep 9
Lesson 7 · August 30, 2026 · Zoom, Taipei to LA

One hour on the pulse.

You played "Golden" through and the chords held. The time didn't. You rush the quarter-note sections, and until this lesson you couldn't hear yourself doing it. Now you can, and you have a system that trains it out. "Blinding Lights" waited on purpose.

🎓 Poseidon Ho 📍 Taipei, over Zoom · upright piano 🎵 Song: "Golden" ⏱️ ~76 min 📅 Show: Sep 11
🩺 What the run-through showed

The chords are in your hands. The beat isn't yet.

The full play-through at the top of the lesson settled it: harmony is not the problem anymore. The problem is a specific one. When the track's groove kicks in — each beat splitting into threes, da-ka-da, da-ka-da — you speed up.

📈The pull is forward. Your mind hears the next beat early, especially into beat three. That is a trainable habit, not a talent gap.
👂You can't hear it live, but you can on playback. When you recorded yourself and listened back, you named the rushed takes correctly every time. That gap between playing and hearing is the whole lesson.
🩹Why it matters for the 11th: a small rush, repeated, compounds. On stage with a singer and a drummer it will pull you apart from them.
🎯Most people practice wrong: they play it again and hope. Practice is finding the broken bar and repeating that — from the chord before the trouble spot into the trouble spot — over and over.
⏱️ The setting we built

Pro Metronome, triplet feel, accent on one

You downloaded Pro Metronome in the lesson. The setup: 4/4, subdivision set to triplets (the fourth option), beat one on the top accent rung, beats two through four on the middle rung. That gives you the song's da-ka-da feel instead of a bare click.

The same feel, right here Beat 1 accented · beats 2–4 lighter · triplets underneath
1
2
3
4
100 BPM
🔊 Clap on the one. Then vocalize the triplets. Then move — head, shoulders, leg. The feel has to get into your body, not your eyes.
⚠️ Put the phone where you can't see it
  • You caught yourself watching the app instead of listening to it. Watching a metronome teaches your eyes. Put it to the side, out of view, and let your ears do the work.
🛠️ The method

Five tools, in the order we used them

  1. Clap before you play. Run the track and clap the pulse through the first half of the song — no piano. Whatever concentration you found for the clapping, bring that same concentration to the keys.
  2. Record, then listen back. A voice memo of you plus the metronome. Live, rushing is invisible to you; on playback you heard it immediately — "the G was rushing it" — and heard, with Greg, that the third take rushed more than the second. Playback is your teacher when Greg isn't there.
  3. Rush on purpose, then land on purpose. Play a pass deliberately rushed, then a pass dead on the beat. Your brain needs both examples side by side to learn the difference. This is the fastest fix we found all hour.
  4. Lay back. When you feel yourself pushing, slow a hair and loosen up. Bob your head, move your leg. The moment you started moving, the time got better — you said it yourself: "the trick is the head."
  5. Build the layers: whole notes with the metronome, then quarter notes, then the actual chord changes, then the real track. You climbed that whole ladder in one lesson. By the final run on the track, the rushing was small and you were correcting it yourself, live.
✅ Between now and Sep 9

Surprise yourself. Record everything.

On stage you'll be at your worst — people, pressure, dinner, a racing mind. So practice under ambush conditions. Runners train with a weighted backpack; a stuffy room and a strange upright are your backpack.

🌟 The daily work — "Golden" only

  • Ambush runs: walk to the piano at a random moment, press play on the track, and perform it cold. Full take, no warm-up.
  • Record video of every attempt. Watching back is how you find what broke.
  • When something breaks, drill it in isolation — that bar, on repeat. If it's the timing that broke, drill it with the metronome.
  • Keep sessions with the triplet metronome going: whole notes, quarter notes, changes.

🌙 What's parked, on purpose

  • "Blinding Lights" didn't happen this lesson and that was the right call. Rhythm is the foundation under every song you'll ever learn — fixing it beats starting song two.
  • The G-vs-E-minor spot in the "Golden" bridge is still open. It gets settled in person on Sep 9. Until then, keep playing it the way you've been playing it.
  • Greg is sending breathing and meditation resources — the morning routine kind, for days when the air and the nerves aren't cooperating.
Sep 5
Back in LA
Sep 9
Lesson 8 · 10:00–11:00 AM · in person at The Recording Club
Sep 11
The show, Long Beach