Music Lessons

[Joseph K]

That reminds me of what a jazz pianist once told me - that being able to play and improvise on the blues sequence in all the keys was the key to playing on anything chords-wise. My "breakthrough" belatedly came about a year ago after deciding I was bloody well determined to "master" "Giant Steps" as a tune to improvise on - all of a sudden that jostling sequence of alternating flats and sharps to be negotiated released some sort of blockage.

Yes - for a long while I'd play the blues in a different key over a two week period (with two days' off at the end). I stopped because I'd decided I really wanted to hone in on blues in F, but I think I should start again.

I would be interested in hearing a recording of you improvising on Giant Steps!

[Ein Heldenleben]

D flat major indeed looks OK: thumbs on the F and C (white notes) for both hands.
I might give it a go later!


AARGH!
How on earth is your left hand supposed to go (upwards) smoothly from a thumb on the C flat to a 3 on the D natural?

Mikrokosmos Volume 1 beckons for me, I think.

There's a huge debate in piano pedagogy about the smooth passage of the thumb . I was taught to tuck the thumb under and prepare (Czerny method I think ) but then read in Charles Rosen's Piano notes that neither he nor Dinu Lipatti (one of the greatest techniques ever) did this - relying on a swift lateral hand movement instead. If I remember aright from a very long book I read years ago - Various Pianists and their technique - there's also the lateral swing method which exagerates the tucking movement by pushing out the elbow to enhance the wrist movement. I came to the conclusion that it helps to have long thumbs..

[Ein Heldenleben]

The easiest piano scales are probably the ones using all 5 black notes. The thumbs are used together twice in each octave and the other fingers are grouped 23/32 and 234/432. So all you have to really think about is which white keys to press.

The most difficult? I would suggest E flat minor.

I agree . Chopin would start his pupils off with E MAJOR which he thought much easier than C major. B major is a very satisfying scale to play also. D flat and F sharp ditto. I think beginner students are steered away from them because if they are learning to read music at the same time introducing sharps and flats before the white notes and f sharp have been learnt is a bit baffling. On the scales - one of Liszt's practice techniques was to play all the major scales with C maj Czerny fingering 123 1234 123 etc
Its a wierdly liberating experience when you try it..

[Dave2002]

This discussion of piano fingering is going to entice me back to try these things.

I read an article not very long ago about patterns and practice. It started off by considering chess players. It seems that many very good chess players can spot "standard" patterns, and that makes their games much easier. Presumably similar things happen in sports, such as tennis. Then someone or some group did some research on "experts" and found that as long as things fitted into the patterns they had learnt, they were much better than other people. However, confronted with a totally new pattern, they weren't any better - or at least that's the gist of what I read.

The implication of this for music performers is that since a lot of "standard" music is written with similar patterns - jazz chords, some classical music with scales, ascending thirds etc., any performer who practiced those scales and patterns would breeze through those, even while sight reading ** and get a good result - significantly better than someone who didn't practice such exercises. I do wonder though whether some composers deliberately set "difficult" challenges by wriing piece deliberately to be difficult. I know that some players like a challenge, and they may "like" and play pieces, but those pieces may not be liked so well by an audience. It is possible that players liking of some pieces is not only (or at all) because of the sound of the piece, but because of a challenge to be overcome - mastered - but that may not help listeners.

** Sometimes it's a pain - you read something at sight, and you think it's a scale or arpeggio, and then as you're doing it you think "oh <expletive deleted> it's got a 'wrong'note in there", so of course you correct the "wrong" note, which may actually be what the composer intended. Sometimes errors like that can go unnoticed for quite a long while.

[Pulcinella]

I've just started (re)reading Ned Rorem's autobiography, Knowing when to stop, and I have come across this comment (about his piano teacher):
I may have been learning piano but I was not learning music.

I know just what he means.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes - for a long while I'd play the blues in a different key over a two week period (with two days' off at the end). I stopped because I'd decided I really wanted to hone in on blues in F, but I think I should start again.

I would be interested in hearing a recording of you improvising on Giant Steps!

You would change your mind, Joseph - my version is probably worse than F in blues!!!

[Joseph K]

Undoubtedly it has something to do with people - musicians - being in quarantine, but this year has seen a marked increase in musical pedagogy - more specifically, musical pedagogy via the internet. And for me, this is not necessarily something offered specially because of lockdown.

I've had two lessons from one guy who I contacted, one lesson from one guy whose mailing list I was on who contacted me, I've participated in clinics via zoom with Mike Stern, Julian Lage and Adam Rogers. I've also purchased a few lessons from My Music Lessons website, in addition to one online course which I'm nearing the end of, and I've just bought a ticket for a three-hour clinic with Kurt Rosenwinkel - which will be on next Friday (the 13th) though it seems that, all being well, I should have an evening cleaning job by then, so I emailed them to see if I could change it to the Saturday or Sunday clinics - hopefully, they'll allow me that! Because of course I don't want to have wasted quite a bit of money... Excitingly, the advert for this clinic with Rosenwinkel states that it contains material from his yet unreleased method book - I can't wait to see what's in that!

Anyway, I am not sure that these things would be happening were it not because of these circumstances. I did tell myself that I'd had enough of buying pedadgogic material, I have enough books as it is, but here I am... I'll give it a rest next year probably, allow all of this stuff to digest.

I also see musicians like Chick Corea who has started online teaching, and on facebook, Tuck Andress and Eric Johnson provide small tips and lessons for free (I'm notified on them).

[Serial_Apologist]

Undoubtedly it has something to do with people - musicians - being in quarantine, but this year has seen a marked increase in musical pedagogy - more specifically, musical pedagogy via the internet. And for me, this is not necessarily something offered specially because of lockdown.

I've had two lessons from one guy who I contacted, one lesson from one guy whose mailing list I was on who contacted me, I've participated in clinics via zoom with Mike Stern, Julian Lage and Adam Rogers. I've also purchased a few lessons from My Music Lessons website, in addition to one online course which I'm nearing the end of, and I've just bought a ticket for a three-hour clinic with Kurt Rosenwinkel - which will be on next Friday (the 13th) though it seems that, all being well, I should have an evening cleaning job by then, so I emailed them to see if I could change it to the Saturday or Sunday clinics - hopefully, they'll allow me that! Because of course I don't want to have wasted quite a bit of money... Excitingly, the advert for this clinic with Rosenwinkel states that it contains material from his yet unreleased method book - I can't wait to see what's in that!

Anyway, I am not sure that these things would be happening were it not because of these circumstances. I did tell myself that I'd had enough of buying pedadgogic material, I have enough books as it is, but here I am... I'll give it a rest next year probably, allow all of this stuff to digest.

I also see musicians like Chick Corea who has started online teaching, and on facebook, Tuck Andress and Eric Johnson provide small tips and lessons for free (I'm notified on them).

That all sounds just fantastic, and I know you'll make the most of the experience, Joseph K!

[cloughie]

It is coming up to 8 months since my last piano lesson - and now I cannot see a resumption anytime soon. I have kept playing and hopefully improved, or maybe just got more wayward without the guidance - but at least, should I decide to take another exam, ABRSM have extended the overlap dates for the 2019/2020 books to the end of 2021. Playing the piano however well or badly (varies from day to day) through the Covid period I have found a great thing to be able to do!

[Dave2002]

That reminds me of what a jazz pianist once told me - that being able to play and improvise on the blues sequence in all the keys was the key to playing on anything chords-wise.

Indeed I was surprised to read a similar thing recently in Mark Levine's book on Jazz piano, in which he suggests that players should be able to play almost anything in all the keys, with near instant transposition. My suspicion is that many good classical pianists wouldn't be able to do this - though the very best could - of course. I wait to be shot down over this.

I think it might work within a limited genre, but the idea of trying to play any classical piece in any key without hestitation and perhaps at sight ... I doubt that many could do that. Some pieces might be physically almost impossible to play in all the keys on some instruments, too.

[silvestrione]

Indeed I was surprised to read a similar thing recently in Mark Levine's book on Jazz piano, in which he suggests that players should be able to play almost anything in all the keys, with near instant transposition. My suspicion is that many good classical pianists wouldn't be able to do this - though the very best could - of course. I wait to be shot down over this.

I think it might work within a limited genre, but the idea of trying to play any classical piece in any key without hestitation and perhaps at sight ... I doubt that many could do that. Some pieces might be physically almost impossible to play in all the keys on some instruments, too.

I was at a Jonty Solomon masterclass on Scarlatti where he encouraged the pianist to play the piece in question in several keys, first giving a casual demonstration. She just laughed.

Then of course there's the famous story of Brahms and a violinist arriving somewhere to play one of his sonatas, and finding the piano a semi-tone flat. He just transposed it up, from memory, but this is always presented as an unusual feat. Which it is?

[Joseph K]

I just had a good guitar lesson, where it was explained the reason for not being able to play a Giuliani arpeggio study very fast was because I was using planting (where you place the finger on the string before plucking it). So now my fingers just hover above the strings and within the past half hour I've managed to practice the study with a kind of speed and accuracy that has eluded me for quite some time.

I won't reveal the source (a book) which preached using planting for this. But who knows, maybe it worked for them? but I feel like an important problem has been solved.