Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label piano. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Chords for the Piano in Eb Major
Here are the basic triads in Eb Major. Learning these along with the video will help you play songs in the key of Eb.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
How to Play Chords for Popular Songs in F Major on the Piano
Playing through chords in every key is really helpful when practicing. Here is the latest video on playing chords on the piano or keyboard. Practice along with this to get your bearings in the key of F Major.
You can apply the concepts to popular and rock songs immediately. It's also helpful to do this for beginning jazz students and classical players.
Michael Stegner
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Popular and Rock Piano Tips Part 2
This is the second video in this series of playing popular and rock piano styles. It will expand on the previous concepts in the last video and add some more intricate rhythms between the hands. You can try this with many popular songs that are played at this tempo.
Have fun.
Michael Stegner
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Popular and Rock Music Piano Tips - Part 1
Here is the latest video on playing pop piano. These are tricks that can be applied to many popular songs where there is a singer or a band. It primarily focuses on the role of the piano in modern popular and rock music. Have fun with this.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Creating Positive Musical Experiences Through Practice Routines
Several students have recently come out of musical ruts because we were able to get organized with their practice and they were willing to embrace a simple practice routine. It is always frustrating when we as students or teachers think that something sounds better the previous lesson than it does at the beginning of the current lesson. In group lessons, students get frustrated when they start to lag behind the others even when they are more than capable of keeping up.
When we go through these down phases it is often due to falling out of a practice routine. It seems easy enough to just get back on the horse. But it really isn’t. We start to feel all the times we didn’t get our work done stacking up and creating an insurmountable “to do” list. We make it bigger than it may be and therefore we put it off longer.
This is when you may hear your child or yourself say that it’s time to quit and move on from this whole music thing. This age-old statement starts to pop up, “I just don’t like piano any more.” In group lessons students going through these dips in practice can act out in classes with behavior issues because they feel they are slowing their peers down.
Lately I have found a simple and practical way to gently pull students out of these times and make them less traumatic. I think there will still be these times but often practice routines are the root of the dissatisfaction in learning music.
Putting emphasis on one day of practice is most beneficial in regaining momentum for playing music. A weighted practice chart of the days in the week is really helpful to students. For example; if their lesson is on a Monday, Tuesday is the most important day of the practice week. Then after Tuesday, Wednesday is the most important day of the practice week. Then Thursday is the most important day of the week. By emphasizing the days right after the lesson the students will retain the information and build momentum.
Most of us get caught in a our ruts innocently enough when we decide we just had our lesson and can take a couple of days off before ramping things back up. The problem with this is that the day you planned to practice coincides with soccer practice, birthday parties, weekend trips, etc. Before you know it, it’s the day before the lesson and it’s panic time. We don’t remember all the nuances of what was covered in the lesson, we cram our practice(s) in, show up to the lesson stressed and then the process repeats itself because the mountain seems more insurmountable the next time around.
This is an ideal practice routine for someone struggling to get in the groove (or any of us for that matter):
Tuesday - Lesson
Tuesday post lesson - very short review practice
Wednesday - Master one new concept on each assigned piece
Thursday - Master another new concept on each assigned piece and review Wednesday’s work
Friday - Master another new concept on each assigned piece - review Wednesday’s and Thursday’s concepts.
Saturday - Repeat the same thing. Review previous concepts.
Sunday - Ideally repeat the same thing - but if you’re going to take a day off this may be the one.
Monday - Review everything so you feel good about Tuesday’s lesson.
I have found as a teacher, if I list out the days and have the students circle each day they follow the script then lessons go really well. The students can see the cause and effect of doing the routine, having a great lesson and feeling really good about playing music.
High school and college students can make spreadsheets and email it to the teacher the night before. This helps give them something very concrete to attach to their feelings about playing and practicing music.
It doesn’t take long for the youngest to the oldest students to see the correlation between spending productive time and enjoying the activity.
I’ll write a follow-up to this, but one essential component to this is that we work on new material when we practice. Many of our ruts our self-induced because we stick with what we’re able to do. No matter how great something is when we first learn it, it will get stale. The energy of always working on something new will snowball into a sustained positive experience. Constantly playing something we mastered a month, week or day before leads to a dip in the enjoyment and productivity of the creative/practice process.
Hopefully this is helpful.
Michael Stegner
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Slowing Down and Listening
Practicing scales is a great opportunity to consciously shape our personal sound. For many years I would use scales to build dexterity and theory knowledge. On many levels this experience was very helpful. However, the greatest benefit I experienced from practicing scales happened when I changed my habits, focus and priorities.
When I finally slowed down and took the time to listen closely to myself, my playing transformed thanks to scale practice. Practicing scales can be invaluable in developing a personal sound and consistency of tone. The irony is that they can also prevent this from happening - I spent many years in this camp!
When my playing hit a low point and I grew frustrated, I put the metronome at 40 and played each note of a four octave scale for two beats. This took a really long time but it also started to open my playing up.
For the first octave I was filled with anxiety because it was so hard to play and groove at that speed. But once I started to settle in, I could feel a shift. I was actually aware of my sound. I really started to listen to myself. I could hear the beginning, middle and end of each note. I could hear the difference in the sound as I let go of tension in my neck, back, arms, etc. The sound was determining my technique. When the sound was thin or bright it was because I wasn’t paying attention or because there was tension in my body.
This was humbling on one level because I realized how unaware I had been when practicing. It was also very exciting. I felt liberated because I was finally able to allow myself to be captivated by the sound I was creating. This is what I had heard my musical heroes do on a very high level. I just never had experienced it myself for this long - a very slow four octave scale.
After getting into this type of practice, the autopilot started to take a backseat to spontaneous and creative playing - even on something as mundane as a very slow scale.
There are stories of Art Tatum showing up for gigs and playing all the way up and down the piano. He would remember all the out-of-tune notes or sticking keys and never play them the whole performance.
One thing that can be taken away from these stories is that we need to be flexible. We have to be constantly making adjustments as we play. What we hear and feel (within our technique) should be determining these adjustments.
It is my opinion that we should strive to attain a fluid technique rather than a memorized or rigid technique.
I often become fascinated watching my younger students try to play various forms of loud and soft dynamics from memory. You can almost see their body say, “If I push the key down this hard then maybe ‘loud’ will happen.”
“When I played this at home this amount of pressure made a ‘soft’ sound. On this piano no sound came out at all!”
It is tempting to use muscle memory to determine how much ‘pressure’ we need to play a loud sound or soft sound, staccato or legato, etc. It is hard to find joy in this type of playing. When we perform away from home or get to our lessons or sit at a different piano everything changes - yet we can’t. Playing music this way is very stressful because it leaves at the mercy of so many external factors.
Musical playing really starts to happen when we ask ourselves, “What do I sound like?” We should probably ask ourselves this question with each note played. When the sound determines our technical adjustments we become more flexible and in the moment. This means that listening to ourselves becomes the biggest asset to our technique and musicality.
Our practice can help our technique serve our art. However, mindless practice of technique can make our art serve our technique. There is not much joy in playing that way. There is not much joy in listening to someone play that way.
Over the next week I’ll spell out some ways to practice scales in a way to help develop this intent and awareness as you practice.
Here is a more detailed explanation of how to practice the scales slowly as mentioned earlier...
Slow Scales
Intent: Every note should have a consistent attack, decay and release.
Adjust your technique (posture, support, body) to manipulate the sound in the different registers of the instrument. It is important that the notes do not run into each other and overlap. Each note should start when the previous one ends. There should also be no gaps between the notes. There should be a very clear transition from one note to the next.
Play this with the metronome between 35 and 50. Each note of the scale gets two clicks on the metronome. Try to play at exactly the same time as the metronome. Listen. Listen. Listen. Become aware of any tension in your body and work to let it go - listen to the results of your adjustments in the sound of each note. Let the sound guide you.
When I finally slowed down and took the time to listen closely to myself, my playing transformed thanks to scale practice. Practicing scales can be invaluable in developing a personal sound and consistency of tone. The irony is that they can also prevent this from happening - I spent many years in this camp!
When my playing hit a low point and I grew frustrated, I put the metronome at 40 and played each note of a four octave scale for two beats. This took a really long time but it also started to open my playing up.
For the first octave I was filled with anxiety because it was so hard to play and groove at that speed. But once I started to settle in, I could feel a shift. I was actually aware of my sound. I really started to listen to myself. I could hear the beginning, middle and end of each note. I could hear the difference in the sound as I let go of tension in my neck, back, arms, etc. The sound was determining my technique. When the sound was thin or bright it was because I wasn’t paying attention or because there was tension in my body.
This was humbling on one level because I realized how unaware I had been when practicing. It was also very exciting. I felt liberated because I was finally able to allow myself to be captivated by the sound I was creating. This is what I had heard my musical heroes do on a very high level. I just never had experienced it myself for this long - a very slow four octave scale.
After getting into this type of practice, the autopilot started to take a backseat to spontaneous and creative playing - even on something as mundane as a very slow scale.
There are stories of Art Tatum showing up for gigs and playing all the way up and down the piano. He would remember all the out-of-tune notes or sticking keys and never play them the whole performance.
One thing that can be taken away from these stories is that we need to be flexible. We have to be constantly making adjustments as we play. What we hear and feel (within our technique) should be determining these adjustments.
It is my opinion that we should strive to attain a fluid technique rather than a memorized or rigid technique.
I often become fascinated watching my younger students try to play various forms of loud and soft dynamics from memory. You can almost see their body say, “If I push the key down this hard then maybe ‘loud’ will happen.”
“When I played this at home this amount of pressure made a ‘soft’ sound. On this piano no sound came out at all!”
It is tempting to use muscle memory to determine how much ‘pressure’ we need to play a loud sound or soft sound, staccato or legato, etc. It is hard to find joy in this type of playing. When we perform away from home or get to our lessons or sit at a different piano everything changes - yet we can’t. Playing music this way is very stressful because it leaves at the mercy of so many external factors.
Musical playing really starts to happen when we ask ourselves, “What do I sound like?” We should probably ask ourselves this question with each note played. When the sound determines our technical adjustments we become more flexible and in the moment. This means that listening to ourselves becomes the biggest asset to our technique and musicality.
Our practice can help our technique serve our art. However, mindless practice of technique can make our art serve our technique. There is not much joy in playing that way. There is not much joy in listening to someone play that way.
Over the next week I’ll spell out some ways to practice scales in a way to help develop this intent and awareness as you practice.
Here is a more detailed explanation of how to practice the scales slowly as mentioned earlier...
Slow Scales
Intent: Every note should have a consistent attack, decay and release.
Adjust your technique (posture, support, body) to manipulate the sound in the different registers of the instrument. It is important that the notes do not run into each other and overlap. Each note should start when the previous one ends. There should also be no gaps between the notes. There should be a very clear transition from one note to the next.
Play this with the metronome between 35 and 50. Each note of the scale gets two clicks on the metronome. Try to play at exactly the same time as the metronome. Listen. Listen. Listen. Become aware of any tension in your body and work to let it go - listen to the results of your adjustments in the sound of each note. Let the sound guide you.
Michael Stegner
Copyright © 2012
Monday, November 15, 2010
Friday Night
I'll put on my face one more night.
For the chance to find a love that's right.
Dust off these clothes that everyone knows
And hope I look good enough in a room with no lights.
These games I play,
are the spoils of a freedom
I fought for long ago.
It's Friday night...
Time carves new lines on my face.
I feel the night outshine the day.
The dreams I let go have left me alone,
with nothing but memories to keep me warm at night.
To hold you again,
would remind me of the comfort
I ran from long ago.
It's Friday night...
by Michael Stegner
Copyright © 2009
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