Music related info, teaching resources, learning resources and Asheville specific music information
Audio gear time…. I’ve run across this condenser microphone at Musician’s Friend. AKG Perception 200 (~$160) very highly recommended. Judging by the reviews it’s a very good buy. (Microphones only go UP from the $160 price level. I remember getting some Shure beta green series which was a lower quality than Shure’s mainline and those were in the $60 range. Judging from the specs this microphone is on my wish list.
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I guess most music that we hear is in 4/4 time. It’s not something most people think about, but it seems that it’s very easy for us to all take a piece of music in 3/4 time and stretch the last beat of the measure and force things into 4/4. One thing that helps me when I’m starting to read a song in 3/4 is to hear a strongly emphasized 1, as in 1 2 3 1 2 3. (Think waltz - or OOOM pah pah OOOM pah pah.
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I’ve delayed posting this for a bit. We found out not too long ago that the lease for the Asheville Music School at 250 Charlotte St. is not going to be renewed. We have a bit of grace time to find a new location. Our first estimate was that we would be moving this fall, it may be later than that. I will keep you all posted when a new location is found and what our progress on the matter is. (Many thanks to all those that have been suggesting possible locations for us.) I expect there will be a community meeting on our future goals in the near term.
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I had some of my students taking part in the Asheville Music School’s recital this past Sunday and wanted to congratulate them as well as ALL those who participated in the event. For quite some time now we’ve been having our recitals at the UNCA campus in Lipinsky Hall Room 018. It gives the students a great chance to play in front of an audience (on a real grand piano.) I think every recital has some really special and memorable moments that stick with the performers and the audience. This time around there were 4 recital blocks through the afternoon (spaced about one hour and 15 minutes or so apart.) I’m not sure what the final tally was as to how many students total performed, but the recital I was there for was great.
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I’ve collated here a large number of scales on one page starting on C. I start off with c major and the other modes derived from the diatonic major scale, then I have moved onto some of the melodic/harmonic minor variations as well as blues scales, whole tone scales, diminished scales, pentatonic, etc.. The one thing they have in common is that they’re all “c scales.” Link below the fold.
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I’ve made a number of note naming exercise sheets for students to practice identifying the notes on the staff. This is the first of those on the treble clef. You can take a number of approaches to using this. The first is just to write in note names, the second would be to play the notes on the piano (i.e. do a note search) without actually writing them in. Either way, you may need to mix it up for variety (pick out a few rows/start from the end of lines/etc.) to keep it interesting. Link below the fold.
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I think I hear the eyes glazing already. Don’t worry this isn’t going to get too deep, this will just be an introduction to the idea of looking at chords by roman numerals. I thought it would be a good follow up to the article on scales as we use the scales to work out the number of the chords. Let’s start with the C Major scale again : c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c - essentially that’s all the white keys on the piano from one C to the next. All right, let’s review the roman numerals. (at least the ones we’ll use here.) I II III IV V VI VII (that’s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7) The only difference is that we’ll use lower case for chords that are minor so you could see i ii iii iv v vi vii instead. With me so far?
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Scales are a staple of music practice and some people feel as though they are useless, so why do we practice scales? For starters scales are the “alphabet” that we use to make songs. A song in the key of C Major usually uses notes mostly from the C Major scale (c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c) and in traditional western music since we’re thinking of the key as C Major - we treat that note as more important than the rest - (it is emphasized more - played at the end of the song, the beginning… etc.) There are MANY examples of songs that use scale or scale like passages in classical music and that’s another good argument for the practice of scales. But…
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Most people think practicing the piano is about training the fingers. (Or practicing any other instrument for that matter.) To a certain degree you do build up motor skills and muscle strength as you continue to practice any instrument. Wind instruments you build lung capacity and embouchure…. but with any music lessons the main thing that your working on building is the brain. There are several qualities that you improve when you practice and the more you can find other ways to develop these qualities the better, I think, your practice time can be.
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I remember early on when I was taking lessons and in band I hated counting out loud. It seemed so monotonous and silly. I “knew” when I was supposed to play the notes anyway. Well, of course, now that I’ve got a few years and some experience between now and then, I know how essential counting can be. I remember in college the definition of music that we made use of was “sound organized in time”. Well, without some sort of counting it’s hard to consider it organized… When you’re playing through a piece and “counting in your head” how consistent are you at keeping that count steady? Do you give yourself a bit of a break when you’re searching for notes? Counting out loud seems to help many people hold themselves a bit more accountable and keep to a steady pace. If that doesn’t help…
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