Roland announces Collection/Score Series for AT organs
February 4, 2008
Roland has announced the availability of its Roland Collection Series/Score series for the AT Organs.
These new tools offer organ aficionados a quick and intuitive path to musical discovery and proficiency. Each DVD in the Roland Collection Series/Score Series is an anthology of musical pieces with visual aids that capture the performance styles of top players and arrangers.
The new series helps players master fingering techniques, facilitate casual playing, practice changing registration while playing or improve pedaling by simply observing the supplied video footage. Roland also included registration data on the bundled floppy disk as an aid for practice.
The Roland Collection Series includes Hector Olivera Organ Music Collection Vol. 1, and Tony Fenelon Organ Music Collection Vol. 2. The Roland Score Series is comprised of Organ Book Vol. 1 and Organ Book Vol. 2.
In addition to the titles above, Roland offers diverse lineup of songs, and many more titles are planned for the future.
Effective piano lessons for kids
February 1, 2008
Perhaps, after you’ve bought a child’s first keyboard, you may decide they need piano lessons.
The Intercom Music Blog has written a seven step guide on How to Make Beginner Piano Lessons Effective For Kids.
Steps include practising consistently at the same time, avoiding interruptions (especially from the dreaded TV), keeping music books tidy:
Numerous educational studies have shown that children are more likely to follow rules and guidelines if they have had input in making the rules. This is a favorite trick of early childhood teachers which can easily be incorporated into piano lessons for children. Have a set of piano practice rules in your head, and ask the child what rules need to be in place for the piano practice. Then gently steer them in the direction of the rules you have in mind.
Programming a bass drum on synth
February 1, 2008
Alas, I don’t have the expertise to train you in creating some interesting bass drum sounds on a synth, but Ki Gray has written a useful piece in the American Chronicle giving some suggestions for doing just that.
He intros:
One of the most overlooked and powerful tools for creating percussion sounds in this modern age of soft samplers, emulators, and other sophisticated tools is the humble subtractive analog synthesizer. Learning how to generate exciting drum sounds also takes a lot of the mystery out of creating other percussive sounds, such as basses and plucked-string type sounds, as well as providing an exciting way to personalize your music.
First, let’s make a basic kick drum type sound. Most any analog or virtual/soft analog synth with one or more of the following will suffice: An oscillator,preferably with a sine wave generator, a resonant filter, a white noise generator, and an envelope (that preferably can be routed to the filter as well as the amplifier). With these simple parameters a wide range of percussion can be achieved.
Well worth a read, with plenty of experimentation on your favourite synth.
(Via American Chronicle)
iVideosongs launches high-def video site for teaching aspiring musicians
January 30, 2008
iVideosongs is an on-demand, high-definition video service designed to teach aspiring musicians of all skill levels how to play their favourite songs on an instrument.
iVideosongs instruction is provided by the original artists who wrote and performed the songs and also by expert instructors.
“Aspiring musicians want to play complete songs accurately, and that’s exactly what we give them,” said Tim Huffman, CEO of iVideosongs. “We’ve recruited established artists, legendary sidemen and some of the best instructors on the planet to teach rock, pop, blues and country songs. With iVideosongs, aspiring musicians learn the songs at their pace, when and where they want.”
Chris Foley’s “31 Days to Better Practicing” for pianists
October 16, 2007
Chris Foley at The Collaborative Piano Blog is about halfway through his “31 Days to Better Practicing” series, aimed at pianists who wish to improve their practicing and piano playing.
So far, topics covered include building a regular practice schedule (with tips for children, students, and adults), warming up exercises and ideas, goal setting, starting out on a new repertoire, slow practicing, memorising music, endings, and fingerings.
And there’s still just under half a month to go. Phew!
I’ve not had an opportunity to read all of Chris’s posts yet, but it looks like a great series, whatever stage of piano playing you’re at, or what you want to achieve.
Musical listening test study - testing musical perception ability
September 17, 2007
I’ve just found an interesting online research project being run by the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and UCL.
Here’s what the Musical Listening Test is about:
We are interested in studying musical perception ability in the general population. The following 2 tests, developed by Isabelle Peretz (University of Montreal), take less than 8 minutes each. They involve listening to pairs of tunes and deciding whether they are the same or different. Once you have completed both tests you will receive your scores.
The test involves listening to two sets of thirty pairs of short musical phrases, each of which may vary slightly in either pitch or timing of the notes. After listening once to each pair, you simply click a button as to whether you think the two phrases are identical or different.
I scored 26/30 and 27/30 on the two tests, which I’m pretty pleased about (and I know that I clicked the wrong button on one, so perhaps it should be 27/30 all round)
If you want to take part, simply go to www.delosis.com/listening/
NowPlayIt.com: interesting but limited piano tutorials from star musicians
September 17, 2007
VNUNet.com’s Anthony Dhanendran (from Computeractive) has reviewed the online music tutorials web site NowPlayIt.com, which offers musicians the chance to learn how to play the authentic instrument lines from popular songs directly from the band’s musician.
The service offers three levels of video: for £4 (around $8) you get a full ten- to fifteen-minute video featuring the artist explaining the track, working through the track on the instrument, and then showing the music video and note guides in split screen mode.
For £3 ($6) a non-celebrity tutor hosts the video, while the lite version (£2/$4) offers just the chords and video tutorial, with no other commentary.
Unsurprisingly, of the 300 video tutorials currently available, there’s not a huge number to choose from for pianists. That’s probably because the piano is not as prominent as guitar or bass, and a synth line would probably be too complicated to create a short tutorial for.
In general, it looks like a good site, and as they add more songs and artists, hopefully pianists will be a little better served.
Good potential.
5 Cs of learning piano technique
July 11, 2007
The Collaborative Piano Blog has published a useful list: “The 5 Cs of Learning Piano Technique” which will ground any piano player in achieving good technique, and therefore good playing style, and therefore good performance.
The five points are:
- Command
- Clarity
- Comfort
- Creativity
- Confidence
Practicing technique through exercises and attention to detail may at times seem boring, but Chris proves that it’s not only necessary, but can be fun - and it’s definitely worthwhile.
Learning chords expedites playing the piano
April 16, 2007
Mark Miller has written an article extolling the virtues of learning basic piano chords as a way to playing recognisable tunes on the piano quickly.
How chords expedite the learning of piano:
Teaching students how to construct and play chords is very ” concept-based”. This is not rote learning. Rote learning is fleeting. Concepts stay with us for our entire life. For example, once you understand that an ” Augmented ” chord means to raise the 5th of the chord up a half step, then you are able to form that chord at any time. Similarly, when you understand that a minor chord is the same as a major chord except you lower the 3rd or middle note by half step, you then can ” find ” or form that chord at anytime.
Learning your chords are the key to playing the piano life-long! How many times have you heard a parent say ” I took piano as a kid , but can’t play a note today”. This is as common as it is tragic. Imagine saying ” I studied arithmetic for 5 years , but I can’t add today!”.
Arranging a pop song in 60 minutes
April 12, 2007
Pianologist has written an excellent post titled “How to complete full pop song music arrangement in 60 minutes” which covers how to arrange music using a sequencer.
Of course there are prerequisites, like knowing how your software of choice works, setting up templates which can be used for new projects, and ensuring that the song is already completely written.
Sixty minutes might not seem much, and it may well not be enough to get a completely polished version, but following this advice it could get you well on the way to a complete track.
