Going home: A story of sharing

About a week ago, I listened to some music that I had composed for a memorial service. I had to let it “sit silent” for a while - because it was a piece I wrote for my own father shortly after he passed away a few days before Thanksgiving, 2014.

 During my re-listening session, I was surprised by how I was hearing this piece in such a different way. I was expecting the music to paint a “mostly melancholy picture.” Instead, I found myself experiencing it as more hopeful and inspiring. Why did things seem so different this time? After reflecting a bit, I realized that the circumstances and timing for creating this music had a lot to do with how I remembered it. Crafting an original work under heavy stress, no doubt, affected my perception of the music’s mood.

 My re-hearing of “Going Home,” the piece’s title, got me curious enough to ask some friends about their impressions of the music. Overall they seemed to be hearing what I was hearing the second time around. My listening friends most often used words like “uplifting,” “romantic,” “moving” and “homecoming” to describe the music.

 It was that last word – homecoming – that really grabbed my attention. Not so much because it’s so close in sound and meaning to “Going Home” – but because both make me think about the same thing. Sharing. In those familiar and comfortable spaces we call home, we share so many things. We share meals. We share stories. We share our hopes and dreams. Mostly, we share ourselves with the people who matter most to us.

Four years ago I shared myself, by way of music, with family and friends. My gift was meant to honor my father’s memory and to comfort others – even though I knew that some painful feelings would come out during the creative process. The music sounded sad to me back then. Not anymore. Today, I’m interested in sharing this music with you. Let me know what you think.

Benjamin's Double Collaboration

There were so many reasons to celebrate musical accomplishments during our end-of-year playing party this past June (see our June 17th post: "Student Showcase Success").  All of our participating students soloed with professional musicians and some of them composed musical ideas too.

Benjamin (pictured above) happened to be one of those young composers. In fact, he wrote most of the music for our piece: "BC's Swing Thing" (the first collaboration).  If you haven't already, take a listen now by clicking the audio button above!

The second collaboration came about when Benjamin had the opportunity to share our piece with the showcase musicians and then later again in our project studio with tenor saxophonist Rowan Wolf.

Benjamin and Rowan

Benjamin's curiosity has a way of being contagious. During our work together on this composition, he expressed an interest in learning more about music arranging so that he could apply his knowledge to future projects. Well, that happened to make me curious! As a way of demonstrating how another chordal instrument could add more depth to the piece while helping to keep the momentum of the melodic ideas moving forward, I wrote and recorded an additional vibraphone part. Here's a sample of the modified version: 

I happen to know that Benjamin already has some new ideas cooking. Be sure to stop back to sample more of our creative music-making!

Giada's Latin-Flavored Idea

 rehearsing "Twisted Tango" for our June Student Showcase.

I love it when my students tell me that they've created some music. Of course most of the time they do the "telling" by playing their ideas for me. And I'm always happy to listen. Anyway, I remember that being the case a few months ago when Giada was doodling around at the piano and played a musical pattern that caught my attention. I stopped my pen from scribbling in her notebook and asked her to "play that again." After the second hearing, I knew that she had crafted a memorable piece of melody. A new collaborative project was born! Over the next couple months, we planned and developed the musical work that eventually became "Twisted Tango." If you haven't already, take a listen now by clicking the player above!

Josh records "Don't Stop."

Josh in studio after recording Don't Stop

      Josh, one of the newer students at Piano Plus, was at the studio earlier today to record the piece he performed a week and a half ago for our June Student Showcase (see my previous post). This end-of-year event featured 12 young artists who had the opportunity to play alongside professional musicians from the Rochester area. In addition to his ensemble playing,  Josh did a great job performing a featured solo. He's made great progress in a short amount of time and we're all proud of the extra effort he demonstrated in preparing this piece. Way to go, Josh!

Here's a sample of the work we did earlier today - a piece titled: "Don't Stop."

Student Showcase Success!

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It’s hard to believe but . . . it’s already been one week since the students at Piano Plus Teaching Studio performed at the Rochester Academy of Medicine. Our end-of-year showcase featured 12 young musicians who had the opportunity to play alongside professional musicians from the Rochester area. All the students were featured as soloists and some even collaborated with me in composing some of the music. This coming together of creativity and collaboration had the effect of producing lots of smiling faces – not only for the musicians but for the proud parents and invited guests too.

And although I’ve already said it “out loud,” I’d like to express my gratitude to some special people for the record. Thank you to all my students who worked so hard in preparing for the showcase: Bailey, Sean, Josh, Giada, Arav, Lucas, Max, Benjamin, Stirling, Shamitri, Pat and Javiana. All of you are my greatest source of continued learning.

Thanks to all the parents for choosing Piano Plus Teaching Studio and to Lily, Belinda and Ishitri for helping with reception planning, program design and photography.

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Be sure to stay tuned to this blog: www.pianoplus.com/blog  and our Facebook Teaching Studio page (https://business.facebook.com/saw1music/?business_id=188062801724167) over the next couple weeks. I’ll be introducing some of our young performers along with audio samples of the pieces they performed.

Scales and Intervals Backwards and Forwards

Scales and Intervals . . . Backwards & Forwards Tutorial, Part I

As promised in my last blog post, here’s some prep material related to chord construction. This information should help you better understand the upcoming video series about reading and interpreting chord symbols (see my YouTube announcement at: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3ISGCw3c-4&t=14s).

In this post I’ll be defining some important terms and will provide you with supporting diagrams and audio clips. In part II, I’ll offer more detailed information about intervals and demonstrate the actual “chord building” process. 

Okay, lets get started by defining some terms. You might think of them (and the concepts they represent) as the “building blocks” we use to construct chords. Here are a few of the most important:

Pitch – A simple definition describes pitch as: “The location of a tone related to its highness or lowness of sound.” Pitch is a subjective experience. Think of a chirping bird and a roaring lion. Most people would agree that the bird’s chirping is higher pitched than the lion’s roaring.

Tone – A sound that is played or sung at a specific pitch. Tones are either played melodically – when one follows another in time – or harmonically – when tones sound together.

Interval(s) - The distance in pitch between two (or more) tones. Intervals are measured in two ways – generically and specifically. In part II, I’ll offer more detailed information about both ways of labeling intervals. In this tutorial we’ll be focusing on the half step (minor 2nd) and whole step (major 2nd). 

Half Step – The distance between two adjacent notes on a keyboard. Listen to the first five notes of Beethoven’s classic composition Für Elise - you’ll hear half steps moving backwards and forwards.

Whole Step – The distance of two half steps. According to Steven Laitz, author of The Complete Musician, whole steps, on a keyboard, “occur between any two keys separated by one intervening key.” Listen below to the example of whole steps moving forwards and backwards on the opening melody of the popular song: Linus and Lucy, composed by Vince Guaraldi.

Scale – Wikipedia offers a fairly straightforward definition: “A scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch.” Ascending scales are ordered by increasing pitch and descending scales are ordered by decreasing pitch. Here’s an example of a descending scale that most people are quite familiar with:

The opening melody (first eight notes) of Joy to the World is actually a C major scale played backwards!

To examine the half step and whole step pattern of the C major scale (see diagram 1a), let’s first reverse the direction of the melody and then convert its rhythm to a series of whole notes so that our focus is on the major scale’s interval pattern.   Insert diagram 1b  (C major scale with WWHWWWH pattern). 

This major scale is sometimes referred to as diatonic – which simply means: “Notes that are in the underlying key or scale.” What’s really cool about this whole step/half step interval pattern is that you can use it to construct a major scale in any one of the 12 keys – even if you don’t yet understand the concept of key signatures. 

Try this out for yourself if you’re curious. Start on any white or black note of the keyboard and follow the WWHWWWH step sequence as you move from left to right on a keyboard. If you follow the interval sequence correctly, you’ll play a major (diatonic) scale that’s named for the note you started on.

Chord – In my day-to-day instructing of students at Piano Plus Teaching Studio, I’ll often say something like: “It might seem obvious but . . . reading and interpreting chord symbols is based, first of all, on an understanding of what a chord is.” Most references describe a chord as being made up of two (usually three) or more distinct tones. Chords can be heard when the notes are played all at once (block) or when the notes are played in a more sequenced pattern (broken or arpeggiated).

Listen to the audio clip I recorded for the introduction of the song: Let it be, written by the Beatles. You’ll hear block chords (played in the right hand part).

When you listen to Adele’s song, Someone like you, you’ll hear broken chords in the song’s introduction. Here’s a short audio clip I recorded:

Although these last two examples highlighted the use of either a block or broken style of chord playing, it's often the case that both types get used within the same piece of music. Just listen closely and you'll hear.

Well, that’s all for now. As mentioned previously, I’ll be elaborating about intervals and demonstrate how chords are built in part II of this tutorial. In addition, we’ll explore some basic concepts of harmony. Got any questions or comments? Please feel free to leave your feedback below. Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned!

Scales and Intervals . . . Backwards and Forwards

Last week I posted an announcement video on this website and my Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3ISGCw3c-4) about a series of upcoming educational videos that I’ll be offering about chord symbol reading.

While creating the content for the first episode, I realized that something was missing. That something had to do with basic chord construction knowledge. Now . . I understand that some of you guys won’t require this prep material. For those of you, however, with less knowledge about chord building, this information will allow you to better understand the videos that follow.

The title for this prep material is: Scales and Intervals . . Backwards and Forwards. Along with written explanations and diagrams on the blog, I’ll include listening examples to help bring the theoretical concepts to life and reinforce the learning. So . . . stay tuned.

Discover your music-making potential right here with me. I'm Scott Wright - thanks for stopping by at Piano Plus Teaching Studio.