Music: Brain Exercise

Do you or your child need motivation to stick with lessons, or to take your practice time seriously?

There are some astounding benefits that science have discovered that exist in the brains of musicians, benefits that not only help you play music, but lead to bigger success in other career areas outside of music.

Check out this 5 minute video:
How Playing an Instrument Benefits Your Brain

The Art of Practice - a Video

A few years ago, the University of North Texas College of Music produced this video on the art of practice.  It is targeted toward vocalists, but it's very applicable to pianists and other musicians as well.  It's worth the 9 minutes to watch.  Don't be put off by the level of intensity that is described in the practice sessions of these aspiring professionals.  However, please notice the passion and the description of what makes for good, true practice.  Any small amount of good practice is better than a whole lot of bad practice.

Classical Music for Halloween

Halloween is near, and a number of composers have written some music that fits the mood.  Here are 10 of my favorites in no particular order (click on each title for a YouTube performance).

Music For Stringed Instruments, Percussion and Celesta (III: Adagio) by Bela Bartok  - creepy enough that Stanley Kubrick used parts of it throughout The Shining.  The composer wrote this in the early 1940s and was inspired by the very real horrors of World War II.

Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens - This is a usually a great orchestra piece, but this is a blog for studying the piano, so here is a very nice arrangement for 2 pianos.

Symphony Fantastique (V: known as "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath") by Heitor Berlioz.  One of the oldest Halloween classics, this was the first of many pieces to feature the Gregorian Chant Dies Irae and use it for suspenseful music.  This a superb orchestra piece conducted by the legendary Leonard Bernstein.

Sonata for Piano (III: Adagio mesto) by Samuel Barber.  I'm actually working on this piece in my own practice.  It just has a dark, foreboding tone to it.

Toccata and Fugue in D minor by J.S. Bach (arranged for piano by Alfred Cortot) - great piano arrangement of perhaps the most famous organ composition of all time.

Scythian Suite (II. The Evil God and the Dance of the Pagan Monsters) by Sergei Prokofiev - probably wins the award for most descriptive title.  It's a very energetic and sinister orchestra piece.

Symphonic Dances V (2nd section of movement III: Allegro Vivace) by Sergei Rachmaninoff.  One of the last pieces this composer wrote, this exciting piece also uses the Dies Irae chant.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas.  See the original Fantasia film from 1940 to hear the orchestral version.  This version is arranged for 2 pianos.

Mephisto Waltz No. 1 by Franz Liszt.  Inspired by the Faust story, this is also popular as an orchestra piece, but this is the Liszt's own piano version featured in an amazing performance.  Seriously, this may be the most incredible piano performance you ever watch!

Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky - This is a piano arrangement of another piano arrangement of an orchestral work (which you can also hear in the original Fantasia).  Another great performance of a classic work!

Kissin Plays Beethoven, Changes to Musictheory.net

To be a great pianist, watch great pianists.  Obviously there's a LOT more to it than that, but you can no more skip this step than you can be an NBA basketball star without watching the players already there. This is the great Evgeny Kissen performing Beethoven's Rondo e Capriccio (also known as the very strangely nicknamed "Rage Over a Lost Penny")  Please note: if you are reading this blog page as an email subscriber, you will need to follow the link to the actual blog post to see it.

Changes to Musictheory.net

In an earlier blog post, I gave an introduction and tutorial to using musictheory.net, focusing on the note identification exercise.  The video shows how to set up the exercise so that it suits you.  The website has since changed their format.  If you go to www.musictheory.net, click on the Exercises tab, you no longer want to just click on the exercise.  Instead of going to the setting page first, it will now begin the exercise WITHOUT YOUR CUSTOMIZATION.   Before you play the game, you need to scroll down the page until you see FOR TEACHERS, and click on Exercise Customizer.

From this point, you can set up the exercise(s) exactly as I demonstrated earlier on this blog.

Practice Tip, Igudesman and Joo

Please note to all email subscribers, videos are not sent in emailed transcriptions of these blog posts.  I will try to always make it clear in the body of an article when a video is included, but you will need to follow the link within your emails to the actual blog article to view everything.  That includes this blog post.

Practice Tip - One Problem at a Time

If you've had a dozen lessons with me, then you almost certainly have heard me give you this very important principle to good practice.  Inevitably, you will attempt to learn something that seems overwhelming.  You have to address every obstacle in a piece of music in order to learn it completely, but you don't have to and shouldn't try to do it all at once.  That's probably obvious enough, but let's take it one step further:  don't even try to solve TWO things at once.  Limit it to one.

Sometimes the problem is as simple as getting from note # 1 to note # 2.  You may need to practice that slowly, then speed up.  Sometimes the rhythm is a problem.  Get off the keyboard and practice on a table.  No pitches to hear, so you need to focus on the rhythm.  Sometimes it's pedaling.  So pedal as you watch the music imagining you are playing without actually moving your hands.  We'll go over more ways than this, but the point is:  take care of just one problem at a time.  In a really tough passage, it may mean ignoring one problem while you work on another.  You'll do nothing but frustrate yourself trying to multi-task.

Meet Igudesman and Joo - Video and Concert Info

If you've ever been misled into thinking that classical music is boring, allow me to introduce you to the funniest classical comedy duo I've ever seen.  They are from England, and are Alexis Igudesman and Hyung-Ki Joo.  They are coming to Greensboro on Friday, April 12 at 8:00pm to perform with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra to play their Big Nightmare Music show (as opposed to their two-person Little Nightmare Music show).  Here is a link for more info: http://www.greensborosymphony.org/season/2012-13/masterworks5.asp

Finally, I leave you with this video by Igudesman and Joo from their Little Nightmare Music show.  The next time you think you're having a tough piano lesson, compare it to this one and its pure madness!

Tutorial for musictheory.net part 1 - Note Trainer

A wonderful website for piano students of every level is www.musictheory.net.  One of the things that makes it great is that it works for all levels, depending on how you use the settings.  I just started using this app (you'll see the watermark at the bottom of the video) to record videos while using the website.  Please pardon some of the excess mic noise.  I'll try to fix that in the future.  For now, here is an introduction to using the Note Trainer, an exercise you need to use unless you have total mastery of treble and bass clef notes.  Enjoy.

The Basic Stroke

I know of no better video to demonstrate correct basic arm technique than this section from Barbara Lister-Sink's award-winning video.  Study this until you can imitate it completely.