Into the Depths of YouTube: Music and Art

Salvador Dali

 YouTube is not just for pet tricks, Palin-bashing and self-promotion.  Of course it's an incredible resource for the self-directed musicologist and music historian, but creative people are coming out of the woodwork and pushing it to a new level.  For example...
 
     There is an amazing  inner-world of YouTube videos that exist solely to combine great Music with great Art.   It has become a bit of an artform in itself, a sort of fine-art-world "remixing".  The music can open your mind to really seeing the artwork more clearly, and the visual art can shed great insights into the music, when it's done well.     I don't know where people find the time to do this, but one Italian "YouTube artist", shivabel, has nearly 600 of these music/art-pairings uploaded to the site, and they are generally brilliantly combined  - and there are many others doing similar projects.   But, as in wine and food, the pairings are a matter of personal taste. 
  It is an illuminating experience and a serious education to peruse these videos.  I post a few examples below as an easy introduction.  To find your own within YouTube, you can search for an artist's name or start out and search for "shivabel" (all samples below are his doing) and you will be tapped into an amazing world...

Salvador Dali  /  Brian Eno

Holbein  /  Tomaso da Celano

Roberto Kusterle  / Robert Fripp

Hieronymous Bosch  / Keith Jarrett

Studying Jazz Part II: Pour a Foundation Now - Build the House Later

  The harmonic roots of Jazz are firmly planted in the POPULAR Song.  For a hundred years or more, musicians have borrowed the popular songs of the day and embellished, altered, twisted and morphed the harmonies and melodies in whatever bizarre and creative directions their imaginations took them.  They still do.  Even contemporary Jazz that is NOT based on a popular songs, is almost always based on the kinds of chord progressions and forms that came FROM popular songs.
  To apply "jazz interpretation"  effectively requires, at a bare minimum, the ability to hear and actually play JUST the basic structure of the songs.   I am often surprised at  students that study advanced jazz theory and composition, that would have a very difficult time simply hearing and playing a song, by ear.  Just melody and chords.  By ear.   It seems such a fundamental and absolutely essential skill, to hear the Key-Chords, the Secondary Dominant Chords and the underlying Chord Progressions with basic chord extensions, before even considering  "jazz interpretation".  I promise that if you get this together, your musical life in jazz and improvisation will be seriously empowered.  And you will enjoy the process as an added bonus as a musicological journey.

  As a basic Jazz Piano Lesson I suggest going back in time, as far back as the 1890's and listening to the Popular Songs of the day  ( Rhapsody.com is a terrific resource ) and learn to play songs by ear - just the song, without concern for interpretation, style, jazz-soloing, altered chords, etc.  .   I'm not advocating the wholesale LEARNING of pop songs ( though that can be immensely helpful and will happen in the process ) but to LEARN the general skill required to play songs by ear.  To recognize the progressions
( there aren't really all that many variations) and be able to play melodies and chords in all keys is a necessary skill if one wishes to be an improviser.  This FOUNDATION will support any efforts to interpret and improvise in any style but without it, all efforts are labored and cumbersome.   Improvisation will be unnatural and forced if this foundation skill is not in place.

  How to actually do that?  
     1. Find songs that are simple enough for you to play by ear that still challenge your abilities a bit --- everybody's at a different level on this.  Listen to early popular music, early folk music and find a few songs to play - pay attention to the sound of the chords, sing the melody. If something confuses you, look it up to check the chord.  Play in other keys.  Do simple songs at first that match your level.  It might be Mary Had a Little Lamb or it might be Do That To Me One More Time or Take Me Out To The Ballgame.  If you have trouble hearing a certain chord progression - practice it.    Learn the art of designing your own exercises - there will not always be a teacher there telling you what to practice.  You know where your weaknesses are.  Learn the words to songs, be inspired by the songs and engage in the process and the sound.  

   2.  Learn all the Key-Chords in each key and experiment with all of the Secondary Dominants ( see below if you don't know what those are )

Play SONGS a lot,  and make it a top PRIORITY because if you can't do this, the other stuff just never really makes any sense. 
        ________________________________________________________

Crash course in Secondary Dominants
  These are harmonic landmarks or signposts in popular songs -  they are very common in these chord progressions and are important to recognize every time you hear one.  A red flag should go up in your head - on it should read "Wow - THAT was a secondary dominant!".  They stand out from the crowd and are distinctive moments in chord progressions because they are NOT in the key of the song or of the surrounding phrase.   A secondary dominant chord is usually a V7 OF a key chord other than the V7 chord that occurs naturally in the key.   It is a 7th chord that is a Fifth UP from the key chord.
  For example   A7 is a 5th up from Dm, which is a Key-Chord in the key of C ( it is the ii chord ).

The key chords in C are:
C  Dm  Em  F  G  Am  Bdim     ( they are all white keys, all derived from the C major scale )

The secondary dominant chords LEAD to the key chords but are NOT in the key of C.  Learn to recognize these.  Each key, of course, has its own set of secondary dominants.

      D7  ( resolves to G)
        E7   ( resolves to Am)
            A7  ( resolves to Dm)
                B7  ( resolves to Em)
                    C7  ( resolves to F)

1895 Prediction that failed.

 

Polska OR Polka.... what a difference an "s" makes

Putting music styles in discrete categories is always a challenge - styles all interact and comingle, combine and morph.  Imagine describing, to a Martian, a seemingly simple concept like.."pizza". You might say it's round (except when it's square or rectangle), it is smeared with tomato sauce (except when it's not), it's covered with mozzarella ( unless it's not) and baked on a thin crispy crust ( or a thick soft crust ) and may or may not be baked at all.   Categories and verbal descriptions are really not very clear or descriptive most of the time.   YouTube is a great way to get a more holistic sense of what these styles actually are, so this post is loaded with them.

The only thing Polka and Polska have in common are 5 of the letters in their spelling. Well... they are both traditional DANCE styles, but after that, they are 2 different creatures altogether. 

Polka - from the Czech word "pulka"  meaning "little-half" - a reference to the small half'steps in the dance. While there IS a Polish-style polka, the style does not actual have a Polish origin, as many people presume it does.   The style was actually common in central Europe ( Bohemia now Czech Republic) BEFORE it became known as Polka. Almost always it is a 2/4 beat, fast duple groove that is very familiar in the U.S. and around the world.  There a so many styles of polka it'll make your head spin. Notice that several of the styles come by way of Mexico, attributable to the German and European immigration to South America and Mexico. Here are just a few of the different styles:

Chicago Honky
Chicago Push
Slovenian
Cleveland Style
Polish Style
Dutchman Style
Oberkreiner
Conjunto
Norteno
Tejano
Alternative
Peruvian Curucaon
Irish
Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish
German and European

 Maria Kalaniemi (Fin.) is well known in Scandinavia, here playing a Finnish polka on solo chromatic button accordion ( see previous post Chromatic Button Accordion for a description of this amazing system ).

Grammy Award winner Flaco Jimenez is the king of Tejano polka accordion. He plays a diatonic ( major scale ) accordion with push-pull system - push for one note, pull for another. (video and audio not particularly synched up very well on this one!)

Irish Polka set played in a pub in Ennis, Ireland.  There's that strong 2 beat feel again....( turn your volume down a bit on this one- it's recorded a little hot)

Polska - literally means " Poland" in Swedish, this form likely has its roots in music and dances of the Polish courts and evolved after it filtered into popular middle class culture.  The Polska is mostly associated with Norway, Sweden and Finland, is almost always in 3/4, tend to be slower than "waltzes" but tend to have more notes and don't seem so slow on the surface,  and can contain quite asymmetrical phrases that are sometimes pleasantly confusing.  Some of the more interesting Polskas have long phrases and are almost better described as 6/4.  The style has evolved musically and geographically over hundreds of years and the current state of the art is pretty complex.  Wikipedia has a great entry on Polska for more in-depth information.

A quintessential polska would be in 3, mixed 1/8th-note and 16th-note melodies, with the player pulsing on 1 and 3 - notice his foot tapping on those beats in this video of Magnus Holmstrum on the Nyckelharpa. ( See my previous post about the Nyckelharpa to learn more about the instrument ):

A brilliantly played Swedish polska for Guitar and Percussion by Ottelid and Jarl with a bit of contemporary flair:

 
Below is Marku Lepisto performing a Polska with more asymmetrical phrases and long 6 beat phrases of 16th notes. ( Count the beats at a slow waltz time with the quarter note about 108 bpm if you have trouble hearing the 6 beat phrase ).

Attention Accordion-Watchers and Music-Lovers: Oktoberfest is almost here ..... in August

Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany

    It's just too cold in October for an outdoor festival - especially here in the Utah Wasatch Mountains where the world-renowned Snowbird Ski Resort opens their Oktoberfest on August 20th, 2011.   Most Oktoberfests around the U.S. tend to take place in September, and a few as late as October, in warmer climates, while indoor festivals circumvent the weather issues altogether.
   Today's worldwide Oktoberfest tradition originated in 1810 (200 hundred years ago!) with a gala outdoor party intended to celebrate the marriage of Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen - the event too place just outside Munich and was open to the general public ( a very unusual gesture ) -  forty thousand people showed up and a yearly tradition had begun.  The early years centered around horse-racing and an agricultural show until beer and food stands were introduced in 1818.  Remarkably, it is still held in the same location!
  The festivals are world-wide now and center around music, dancing, food and beer.  To people who have never attended one, Oktoberfests are sometimes thought of as  "public-intoxication-parties" but, in my experiences with a number of festivals, that is not the case.  Sure, in some isolated  venues with the heavier pop-rock-polka bands and lots of college-aged attendees testing their newly discovered alcohol-consumption skills, things can get a little rowdy but, for the most part, the festivals are family oriented and civilized events and disorderly conduct is not tolerated.

Oktoberfest in Munich attracts over 6 million visitors, dispenses over 7 million liters of beer, requiring 1800 restrooms, serving 505,000 chicken servings, 69,000 pork knuckles.  In a highly debated move, they will be instituting a festival-wide smoking ban this year as a trial-run for a permanent ban starting next year. .  These festivals in general employ thousands of musicians and entertainers donning traditional festival garb as well as vendors and artists selling their wares. If you request the Chicken Dance, any of the bands will know it, but be sure to tip well because they have likely already played it 50 times that day.
  Be sure to read my previous post about the perennial favorite instrument of the Oktoberfest, the Alphorn.

Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria

Princess Therese of Saxony-Hilburghausen

Munich Oktoberfest - one venue of many!

Munich Oktoberfest at Night

How Fast is that Car or Airplane Traveling? Use musical skills to figure it out

As musicians we are skilled at hearing intervals - if we hear 2 notes, separately,  we can tell you how far apart they are and we can name the interval ( 5th, minor 3rd, half step etc. )  At least we should be able to do that!  With that skill comes great power ( not so much responsibility)  - it will enable us to semi-accurately  judge the speed of a passing car or airplane!    At the very least, it will impress your friends.

To review the Doppler effect from Junior High days, recall that the pitch of an oncoming object will suddenly decrease as it begins to go away from us. As the object is heading towards us, the sound is effectively "pushed" along by an amount equal to the speed of the object.  The sound does not actually travel any faster, but the individual sound waves are created to be closer together.  As the object retreats, the opposite happen and the pitch goes down as the object passes and the sound waves that are created are farther apart.  

This is all pretty straightforward, but the part they never teach you is that the amount that the pitch drops can tell you the actual speed of, in this case, the car.  This can work for airplanes as well but the math is a little more complicated because of the fact that we are pretty far removed from the flight path of the airplane  - there's a way to deal with this,  but LATER.   For now,  cars...

Recall, from a previous post on "temperament" that I listed the frequency ratios of all the common musical intervals. Knowing the speed of sound (1126 feet/sec) and the musical interval that we hear as the car goes by, we have enough to calculate the speed of the car.  We assume, in this example, that we are very near the path of the car but not so close as to create a medical problem.
  To review the musical-interval frequency-ratios:
     octave  2:1     =   2
        fifth    3:2        =  1.5
          aug 4th               =     1.41
            4th   4:3             =           1.33
                 major 3rd    5:4          =    1.25
                        minor  3rd    6:5             =  1.2
                           whole tone    1.12/1            = 1.12
                               half step           1.059/1           =    1.059

Let's ASSUME for an example,  that we hear the pitch drop by a WHOLE-STEP as the car passes.
 Let S = the speed of the Car (mph)       Speed of sound = 768mph  or 1126 fps
The Ratio:
Speed of Sound + Speed of Car      equals   1.12     ( the whole-step ratio, R)
Speed of Sound - Speed of Car                      

or

768mph + S      =      1.12  
768mph -S                  1

Solve for S , recalling some of that basic algebra,   S= 43.5 mph
   HAPPILY, the calculation can be condensed down to this simple formula if you wish do it yourself:
                            S = 768(R-1)/(R+1) 
 where S = SPEED OF CAR
            R = RATIO OF THE PERCEIVED MUSICAL INTERVAL CREATED BY THE DOPPLER EFFECT (listed in chart above)

Here are the computed results for the various intervals.
      pitch-drop interval                 speed of car mph
     HALF STEP                                 22.0
     WHOLE STEP                             43.5
     MINOR THIRD                           69.8
     MAJOR THIRD                           85.33
     FOURTH                                     108.8
     AUGMENTED 4TH                   130.7
     FIFTH                                         153.6
     OCTAVE                                      256

Clearly this will work better on a race track than on a neighborhood street.  Measuring the speed of cars is inherently difficult -
  1.  Usually there are more cars than just one and the sounds are confusing
  2.  Cars have an annoying tendency to speed up and slow down.  Go figure.
  3.  Cars don't produce a clear single pitch - the sound of the tire friction on the road overwhelms engine pitches.
  4.  People don't like you standing in their front yard waiting for cars to go by.
  5.  Motorcycles have a clear pitch but they're prone to wild accelerations.

That is why I prefer....
         AIRPLANES
The thing about airplanes is that they are high up in the air, but the plane is traveling TOWARD its destination, not toward me. Well, it is traveling toward me but not as fast, and the rate that it's traveling toward me is constantly CHANGING!   This suggests pulling out that High School Calculus book, but not to worry, we can do it with simple Junior High Trigonometry.  There is one point in the airplane's relationship to me where the airplane is traveling exactly HALF as fast toward me as it is toward its destination.  ( Remember that 1, 2 , sq root of 3  triangle;  30, 60, 90? ) That point, when the plane is seen at a 60 degree angle to the horizon,  is diagrammed below.   We could calculate a speed ratio for any angle using trig, but this angle seems to work well for a specific-case calculation.  It would be pretty hard to hear the plane anyway if the angle were much less than 60 degrees,  because it would be so far away, and this 60 degree angle does make the math pretty simple.

We just do the same calculation as before, solving for S, then multiply S by 2 to get the actual speed of the plane. 

See the chart below for the AIRPLANE version of intervals and speeds.  It would be necessary to have some way to judge when the plane is at the 60 degree point - a piece of cardboard that you level with the horizon, for example
Doppler Pitch Shift                       Speed of Airplane
     HALF STEP                                 44.0
     WHOLE STEP                            87.0
     MINOR THIRD                           139.6
     MAJOR THIRD                          170.7
     FOURTH                                     217.6
     AUGMENTED 4TH                    261.3
     FIFTH                                          307.2
     OCTAVE                                      512

This method should work even if the plane were not passing directly overhead.  Just visualize a tilted geometric plane  that cuts through the observer and the flight path - estimate when the plane hits the 60 degree points ( that's the hard part).

   Airplanes produce a pitch that is easy to hear, there is usually only one plane at a time, there's no risk of being run over, they tend to travel at a consistent speed, and the range of Doppler pitche-changes fits nicely into the musical scale within an octave. So much easier than cars.

Tilted Geometric Plane

Swing Feel is Just a Matter of Time -

.... but not very much, as it turns out. 
    Jazz students often have trouble with swing feel, and while I'm not going to solve that problem here, I was curious how much difference there really is between playing STRAIGHT and playing SWING.  Of course, there are different DEGREES of swing - lines can be heavily swung or lightly swung, but for now let's assume that swing is this -- the 1st and last notes of the underlying triplet  --this would be a fairly heavy swing feel. Notice that in swing feel, the second half of every beat is slightly later than it would be if played straight ( swing feel is "stems down", straight feel is "stems up", X is the difference between the placement of the 2nd notes, the "offbeats" - in this case eighth- notes that fall between the beats)

Swing Feel as the 1st and last notes of a triplet

What is the value of X?  That is my interest here, out of mere curiosity to get a sense of the subtlety that's required to differentiate straight playing from swing playing.  Here is a single beat expanded to make the puzzle clearer:

Let's assume a tempo of quarter-note = 240 beats per minute ( a common swing jazz tempo, though a pretty good clip).   I'll give you the answer here and show the number-crunching below.

It turns out that
                                 X = 1/24 sec   or  .041 seconds
Jazz players are expected to be THAT accurate when placing in time the 2nd half of every beat.  Think about subdividing 1 second into 24 parts - pretty well impossible to do consciously!  For comparison,  lowest string on the piano vibrates at 27.5 vibrations per second!  It's no surprise that people have trouble learning the placement of the off-beats in Swing.  And some technical skill is required just to play THAT accurately.

Here are the numbers if you want to follow the calculations.   

  At 240 beats/minute, each beat spans 1/4 second  240 beats/60 seconds = 4 beats/sec

       or,    1 beat = 1/4 sec

Therefore     a+a = 1/4 sec     and b+b+b = 1/4 sec

  or    a = 1/8 sec   and b = 1/12 sec

x = b + b - a  = 1/12  + 1/12  -  1/8

   or   x = 4/24 - 3/24   =   1/24 sec

To really learn Swing feel - Listen to the Count Basie Orchestra

Con Alma - Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

Great compositions contain lots of subtleties - these intricacies are what make the compositions great. It is easy to gloss over the subtleties because they're,....well....subtle.  I have a couple previous posts on this topic setting the record straight on a couple jazz-standard compositions (Duke Ellington's Don't Get Around Much Anymore and Jerome Kern's All The Things You Are) but this post is about Dizzy Gillespie's brilliant composition Con Alma, certainly one of the great all-time jazz standards).

    Referencing a number of Dizzy Gillespie recordings I can confirm that the version in Real Book-I needs some correction.   On the B-section move the highlighted notes up a half-step and everything's good.
    The so-called "Real Book" was published in the mid 70's by a group of Berklee School of Music students and the title was meant to be a humorous play on words with the earlier "Fake Books" that were published illegally  in the 40's and 50's.  ( These are amazing books, by the way if you can find some -- there are several editions.   Especially with the resurgence of Gypsy-Django style jazz, they are a terrific resource for tunes)  The early fake books had bare-bones chord symbols and rhythmically basic melodies and required a certain amount of harmonic understanding to interpret them musically. Often diminished 7 chords were labeled just "dim" over the note,  and min7(b5) chords were avoided altogether in favor of their relative m6 chord.  ( e.g. Fm7(b5) would be called Abm6 and the bass player would be expected to play an appropriate note, which often would be neither the F or the Ab and would require some understanding of how the chords connect to each other)
    There were no chord extensions above 7 and usually the 7th was not even included at all, except on dominant 7th chords. It was just understood that musicians would add these kinds of color tones and internal moving tones at their own discretion and that they had the skills to do that -- the books, after all, were intended for professional musicians.  I remember going into a music store, my father slipping the guy $10 and he would pull out a hidden book from a stack under the counter.    Go ahead, arrest me -- it's a little late now.

 Back to Con Alma, the Real Book version, notice the awkward notation in bar 3 with Ab, Gb and Fb played against an F#m7 chord which probably should have been called Gbm7 instead.  But the glaring problem is the wrong notes.....
   

excerpt from Real Book 1 from Con Alma, Dizzy Gillespie ( move highlighted notes up a half step)

Irving Berlin - The Original Songwriting Genius

Irving Berlin 1888-1989

George Gershwin called him "the greatest songwriter that ever lived".  Jerome Kern said " he has no place in American music -- he IS American music".   Those are compliments from high places.

 More gushing from Gershwin--
      "His music has that vitality - both rhythmic and melodic - which never seems to lose any of its exuberant freshness; it has that rich, colorful melodic flow which is ever the wonder of all those of who, too, compose songs; his ideas are endless".
 He believed in hard work, not inspiration, and has said that he did most of his writing under pressure. Playing everything in F# on a custom transposing piano, he worked with professional musicians to harmonize and  notate his music.  Berlin himself said the the lyric makes a hit song, but the tune makes it last.  To "reach the heart of the average American" was a stated goal and that he did.
Alec Wilder speaks of Berlin:
      "I heard Berlin play the piano, back in vaudeville days and found his harmony notably inept. --Yet Robert Russell Bennett states unequivocally that upon hearing someone's harmonization of his songs, Berlin would insist on a succession of variant chords ..and was not satisfied until the right chord was found. I must accept the fact that though Berlin may seldom have played acceptable harmony, he nevertheless , by some mastery of his inner ear, senses it, in fact writes many of his melodies with his natural, intuitive harmonic sense at work in his head, but not in his hands."   alec wilder

Here is link to an astounding list of 850 songs that he wrote, about half of his total output:

850 Berlin songs

 And just to give a sampling, here are just a few of the more recognizable and unforgettable songs that have stood the test of time. Every one of these is a great song:

alexander's ragtime band
a pretty girl is like a melody
oh how I hate to get up in the morning
god bless america
what'll i do
all alone
always
blue skies
puttin on the ritz
marie
say it isn't so
i've got my love to keep me warm
there's no business like show business
white christmas
happy holiday
easter parade
anything you can do I can do better
cheek to cheek
the girl that I marry
heat wave
how deep is the ocean
let's face the music and dance
play a simple melody
top hat, white tie and tails
change partners
isn't this a lovely day
coquette
alice in wonderland
i love a piano
steppin' out with my baby
they say it's wonderful
be careful, it's my heart

Solo Piano Jazz - The Self Administered Lobotomy

One thing I've observed in great Brazilian and Latin and Afro-Cuban music, is that the various rhythmic instruments each tend to play specific and independent rhythms - if any single part is pulled out from the mix, it could stand alone and be successful.  When the parts are played together, they are each doing something different and they don't, for the most part, line up with each other.  The parts fit together like a puzzle yet none is duplicating the other - each is an interesting rhythm unto itself.  When this happens, the groove is infectious and locked in like a well-oiled 12-cylinder engine.  Rhythmic counterpoint might be a good phrase to describe this.
 ( The converse is also true - when there's a lot of rhythmic redundancy by musicians, the groove is dead in the water and it's more like an un-oiled 12-cylinder engine, case in point, the typical American jazz version of the Brazilian Bossa Nova)

    This concept of "rhythmic independence"  is very effective in Solo Jazz Piano arranging.   By maintaining rhythmically independent parts, we trick the listener into hearing orchestrally.  In the example below, the parts will be heard as 3 independent rhythms and the listener might infer images of 3 different instruments if we shape the tone,  and balance the parts consistently.  Top part, melody might be heard as vibes, middle chords as brass section, bottom note as bass trombone.
  Notice that there is virtually nothing lined up except the first note of bar 3 ( green ) -  all of the other bass notes and chords ( red ) are played alone, and all of the melody notes ( orange) are played alone except one .   This mode of thinking is far-reaching and will work in any style of music - it applies equally well in my Klezmer band, my Polka band and my various Jazz bands and, of course, in Solo Piano. It also applies when designing bass, drum and percussion parts or just when improvising in any group setting.


                SOLO PIANO INTERPRETATION (sk) IN 3/4   First 4 bars of
                          "CONTEMPLATION"                                               
                                     Composition by McCoy Tyner:

McCoy Tyner

Actual Lobotomy not Recommended - Instead,  Just Practice, Practice, Practice

An Ear For Music

Ear training is all about Paying Attention

By request, I am posting an ear training exercise to help improve the ability to recognize chords  using a "top-down" frame of reference. See my previous post on this topic.  Always make a mental note of the subjective quality of the starting note because most often, this is exactly what is staring us in the face.  This is the note that will provide the clue to naming a chord that you are hearing. When you hear a melody note, either recognize immediately that subjective quality of that note or sing arpeggios as spelled out in this exercise, to hear what the chord is.   After getting this down, do the entire exercise with minor chords instead of major, and only when that is mastered, do it with 4 part dominant-7th chords, major seventh chords, minor seventh chords and minor 7(b5) chords - these are more difficult ( as you probably expect!).  ( 1 is the root, 3 is the third, 5 is the 5th, 8 is the root, 10 is the 3rd )

I suggest doing this without looking at the notes written out on the staff - this is not a sight-singing exercise.  (At the bottom of the page is the same exercise shown as written on the staff just for reference.)


 A.   pick a note in the middle of your vocal range 

 B.   play it

 C.   sing it

 D.  Do this:

1. sing up from that pitch (and back down) the 3-note major chord that has that note as its ROOT
             ( root position ) ( 1,3,5,3,1 )
2. sing down from that pitch (and back up) the 3-note major chord that has that note as its ROOT
          ( 2nd inversion )  (8,5,3,5,8)

3.sing up from that pitch the 3-note major chord that has that note as its THIRD
           (first inversion)  (3,5,8,,5,3)
4.sing down from that pitch the 3-note major chord that has that note as its THIRD
           ( 2nd inversion)  ( 10,8,5,8,10 )

5.sing up from that pitch the 3-note major chord that has that note as its FIFTH 
          (2nd inversion ) ( 5,8,10,8,5)
6.sing down from that pitch the 3-note major chord that has that note as its FIFTH
           (root position)   (5,3,1,3,5)

Bending Those Piano Notes

Pitch Bending-

It can be done easily on harmonicas, saxophones, trumpets, fiddles, and just about every instrument including drums, even accordions with some creative half-key techniques,  and is probably, in it's purest form, an emulation of the voice.  Pitch bending is pervasive in jazz, pop and blues - synthesizer-makers have given us a myriad of portamento pitch bend bars, wheels and blowing devices just for that purpose, but what do we do on the acoustic piano where the hammer is literally disconnected from the key when it strikes the string?  Grace notes and glissandos give us some measure of satisfaction, but there's another way, using illusion. 
  The basic principle involves deception, something as jazz pianists, we use all the time in other ways. (Future post idea!)  A simple pitch bend illusion is illustrated here - in the 1st example, if you are careful to lift the finger off the key on the eighth rests and give the whole note its full value  ( i.e. PLAY THE RESTS!)  it should sound like F is being repeatedly bent up to Gb.

Here, if we start the pitches together, it will sound like the Gb is being bent repeatedly down to the F,

Here are a couple examples of using the Bending technique in a simple Blues line.   Play the rests and give the written notes full value as notated! Imagine the note actually bending as you play these and you will be more successful in creating the illusion. Vary the weight with which you play the sustained note ( the F) and it will change the effect. Varying the duration of the eighth notes will also change the effect.

Schimmel Pegasus Grand Piano - speaking of things that are bent....

Fingering for Piano: A Hands-On Guide

Ultimately, piano fingering choices determine the smoothness of the musical phrase and enable us to accomplish accurate hand-position shifts with musicality and control.  These are the 2 reasons we even care about fingering, and they are pretty important reasons if you care about making music.  The ideas presented below will become second-nature and will start to be applied even when improvising and sight reading, but good habits need to  be established from the start for that to happen.

Here are some principles to think about when making fingering choices.

  The thumb and 5th finger are both considerably shorter than the other fingers.  They are not an ideal length to play black keys when playing melodic passages.  The entire hand would have to shift toward the fall board (the board that faces you)  to make that happen, particularly in the case of the thumb.  So, avoid using the thumb on black keys and favor the black keys with 2, 3 and 4.  (Exceptions include times when playing primarily on the black keys or playing chords that include black keys, or, in melodic "emergencies" where there is just no other practical solution).

  When a hand position change is called for, accomplish this by crossing over or under.   In the right hand, the thumb can easily cross UNDER 2, 3, or 4 to progress upward.  And 2, 3, or 4 can easily cross OVER the thumb to progress downward.  Hand position can be shifted at that time, without losing a point of reference, which will insure accuracy.  ( conversely for the left hand ).

To shift hand position, don't resort to "hopping" - instead cross over or under. Hopping adversely affects your ability to control the melodic line and destroys the phrase. The music should drive the fingering, not the other way around.   Two different notes --- two different fingers. Design the crossing to make the rule apply.

   Design the fingering to minimize hand position shifts by utilizing all 5 fingers - only resort to hand position shifts when absolutely necessary.  The fewer hand shifts, the easier to play; the easier to play, the more one can concentrate on the music.  Observe if you are avoiding 4 or 5, a common problem!

   The thumb is strong, 4 and 5 are relatively weak -  fingering choices can affect the tone and effectiveness of the passage. Work on strengthening weak fingers to minimize the effect but be aware when it happens and, in the meantime, design fingerings to get around the problem.  Try different possibilities to see how the choices affect the expression of the music.

   Focus on the space between notes - how much, how little, is the first note hanging over into the next, is there a gap - is it appropriate to the phrase?  Design fingering that is driven by the music.

   Search for comfortable, efficient fingering, minimize finger extension with good fingering choices, find the easy way.

   Stick to a fingering (unless your improvising!).  Learning a piece with unsettled fingering will take you many times longer to learn.  In the music, write in only the fingerings at critical junctures, where there is a cross over or under, or a hand position shift - don't write in the fingering of every note - intuition will fill in the spaces.

   The span of 1-3 is pretty much the same as 1-5, curiously, depending on the hand, but that knowledge can help you when solving some tricky fingering puzzles.



   Experiment and find ways that expend the least amount of energy, that maintain the horizontal motion of the hand up and down the keyboard ( vs. in and out ) and that are the most comfortable to play.

Eubie Blake - Giant Stride Fingerings by the Master Interpreter