Musicards website helps with piano and music theory

Do you need to brush up on your music theory? Do you want to more quickly identify notes, intervals, chords, piano notes and key signatures?

If so, the Musicards website could be for you.

It’s a set of online flashcards mainly aimed at keyboard players.

It features:

• Note names
• Key signatures
• Intervals
• Triads
• Piano note names
• Reading piano notes

It also has a couple of features for guitarists.

This site is cleanly laid out and provides a good range of options for each type of test.

For example, elect to test yourself on triads (chords with three notes) and you will be given a random selection of eight on-screen flashcards of chords written on a stave. You can choose to view major and minor triads, in a variety of keys, on one or both clefs.

Or, on the ‘reading piano notes’ test, you see a virtual keyboard and have to visualise the position of the notes displayed on the cards. When you click on the card, the note is highlighted on the keyboard.

This is a nice site. The only couple of annoyances I had is that the large keyboards don’t mark where Middle C is, and on a smaller display the page can jump about when clicking on cards that need to display a note on the keyboard.

However, this is a really useful site that’s well worth visiting from time to time, whether you are a beginner or advanced musician. We could all do better on music theory.

Take a look at Musicards.

New Piano Essential Book from Berklee Press

Berklee Press announced the availability of Piano Essentials: Scales, Chords, Arpeggios, and Cadences for the Contemporary Pianist by Berklee faculty member Ross Ramsay. Based on Berklee College of Music’s Level 1 and 2 piano proficiency requirements, this new title gives pianists and keyboard players the necessary tools they need to be an expressive, dynamic performer.

Piano Essentials: Scales, Chords, Arpeggios, and Cadences for the Contemporary Pianist enables musicians to:

• Advance performance skills and build fluency at the piano
• Increase speed and agility on the keyboard
• Internalize common chord patterns
• Improve sight-reading skills
• Memorize new material in less time
• Improve tone, dynamic range, and sense of rhythm

The book includes play along accompaniment tracks and performance examples to help readers apply their new skills.

All Berklee Press books are distributed by the Hal Leonard Corporation.

About the Author

Ross Ramsey, faculty in the piano department at Berklee College of Music, has been teaching piano for twenty five years, and has been included in the Who’s Who List of American Teachers several times. He composes and produces music for local and nationally broadcast television, radio, cable, and video programs, and has been a featured soloist on piano and keyboards with various artists touring throughout the United States and Europe. Ross is a product specialist and clinician for Yamaha Corporation of America, Digital Musical Instruments and Pro Audio Division. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music in 1986.

For more information, visit their web site at www.berkleepress.com.

For love or money? Edinburgh pianists pulls out of Jools Holland’s opening night

I expect pianist and composer Stuart Mitchell was looking forward to playing at the opening night of Jools Holland’s Jam House on Queen Street in Edinburgh.

However, he claims that he was offered an ‘insulting’ fee to perform and refused to ‘work for nuggets’.

It’s believed that the amount offered fell short of the Musicians’ Union minimum rate of £53 for a two-hour performance.

r Mitchell, who plays regular gigs at the Balmoral Hotel’s Palm Court Lounge and the new Rat Pack venue in Shandwick Place, added: “Quite frankly, I would rather stay at home than play for that amount. It doesn’t fill me with any great pride as a musician. And I can’t understand how they expect other musicians to actually work for that. It’s as if they assume Edinburgh musicians are so desperate that they’ll play there just because it’s associated with Jools Holland. That was the attitude they used with me. The money they were offering was well below the Musicians’ Union rate.”

Sure, the life of the professional musician is hard, and finances are important. Yet I can’t help wondering if the love of music has been lost somewhat in a squabble over pay.

I’d probably be honoured to be asked to play at Jools Holland’s club, particularly as a pianist - after all, Jools is a reasonably good pianist, isn’t he?

£53 for two hours work? I know it amounts to a lot more than that, but then again I’ve known musicians work for a lot less, as much for the prestige and the association as the money.

Has Mitchell “made it” to such a degree that an association with ‘the hottest gig in town for live acts’ is not a draw in itself?

Would it have been better to accept the fee graciously, and then be able to look back and say “I played there on opening night”?

I’m not a professional musician, so it’s unfair for me to judge, but I would have thought many musicians would be falling over each other to play.

The club agrees, as it’s statement suggests:

A Jam House spokesman said: “Our staff has been inundated with CDs and biographies from musicians who want to play.”

Read the full article: Brassed-off jazz pianist says you can stick your Jam House

Get Elton John and his red piano this Christmas

A concert by legendary pop artist and pianist Elton John is a unique gift featured in the 2005 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book.

Just $1.5million (which will be donated to the Elton John AIDS Foundation) will buy you an exclusive four-and-a-half hour concert for up to 500 people, which will be recorded into the piano which is then yours to keep.

Only one concert will be performed.

Alternatively, for $54,000 you can buy one of fifty (very limited edition) red Yamaha Mark IV Disklavier pianos, personally signed in gold by Elton John.

These are very exclusive Christmas gifts. If you have the money, and you’re quick enough, take a look:

• Private Concert by Sir Elton John
• Elton John Concert and Yamaha Piano Featured as a Fantasy Gift in 2005 Neiman Marcus Christmas Book

Thanks to Tri Valley Herald for original article.

Piano lessons can be fun: learning to improvise first

In Edward Weiss’s press release he argues that simply learning notes, whilst great for being able to play other people’s music, is not effective at allowing pianists to learn how to create and play their own music.

Imagine a writer forced to copy another novelists work. Insane right? But that’s essentially what people do when they recreate another composers work. It is not a creative act but a recreative one because while the pianist’s interpretation may be artistic, it does not mean that he created something original.

Whilst he doesn’t say that there’s no worth in playing other people’s music—indeeed, I personally think great pleasure can be obtained both by player and listeners by learning and playing great composers’ piano works—he believes that musicians should learn how and why music is constructed in the way that it is.

Learn piano the easy way first. Learn how to first improvise, then compose your own music. This skill is invaluable even if you do read music because you begin to see how the thing is made and once you can see this, your appreciation of it will increase tenfold!

I agree with his sentiments, though I would never discourage anyone from learning to play the great piano works to the best of their abilities, either.

Yet I can also testify that there is a lot to be learnt and enjoyed from improvising and experimenting with music, something that doesn’t so readily come from merely reading on a printed stave. You don’t have to be a jazz pianist to improvise, either.

Read the full press release: Piano Lessons Can Be Fun!

Pianist Geri Allen plays the jazz greats

Geri Allen of Detroit started taking piano lessons at age 7, encouraged by her parents to study and appreciate the arts.

She attended Cass Technical High School, a magnet for for musically-gifted teenagers.

She was part of a jazz ensemble at school, and took a lot of her influences from Motown.

She graduated from Howard University with a degree in jazz studies in 1979 and went on to study with pianist Kenny Barron in New York. Later she went to Pittsburgh University and gained a Masters degree in ethnomusicology.

She is also a very talented, award-winning composer. In 1995, she was the first recipient of Soul Train’s “Lady of Soul” Award for jazz album of the year for “Twenty One,” featuring drummer Tony Williams and bassist Ron Carter.

She says:

“You have to have a command of the instrument in order to play jazz,” she pointed out. “And the spontaneity of jazz music makes it even more challenging.

“For a musician, it requires a technical realm of virtuosity,” she said. “Like Bach does for classical music, Charlie Parker epitomizes the creative expression in jazz. He is one of those artists who has contributed to how the world sees us.”

Read the full article: Montclair pianist/composer Geri Allen explores the music of the jazz greats

Vietnamese pianist Dang Thai Son to perform at Toyota Classics 2005

World famous pianist Dang Thai Son will perform at the Toyota sponsored Classics 2005 concert in Vietnam on November 23rd.

He is considered one of the world’s leading concert pianists and has toured extensively in over 40 countries.

The concert will include works by Brahms, Lehar, Grieg and Liszt.

Intermediate-level piano ballet music book reviewed

Susan Kramer at Bella Online briefly reviews Denis Agay’s The Joy of Ballet Music which includes arrangements for intermediate-level pianists of some of the most famous ballet music ever written.

Brian Eno auctions his old synthesizer gear

Music Thing reports that Brian Eno is auctioning off his analog synth gear.

Gear includes his well-used Yamaha DX7, a Prophet VS, DX7 Programmer, and a couple of Mackie mixers.

Gifted teen not hindered by missing fingers

Mason Flink is a very gifted 17-year old pianist. To hear his dexterity as he plays Chopin and Schumann melodies, you would not realise that he has a condition called ulnar dysplasia, which means that he has just three fingers on his right hand.

That hasn’t stopped him playing since a young age. He comes from a musical family and he says he was destined to play an instrument.

Practically, he can’t play five-note chords with his right hand, and four-note chords he uses his left thumb to play the additional note.

“I don’t think he ever realized he didn’t have five fingers,” said Johnnie Cardinale, his piano teacher of a decade. “We’ve never not chosen something because we felt like he couldn’t handle it.”

Mason said he doesn’t consider his missing fingers a limitation. “I don’t know how it would have been the other way,” he said. “I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

He’s now playing a benefit concert at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, where he was treated as a child.

Read more of this great story: Missing fingers? Pianist never gives it a thought (free registration required)

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