I have had a number of questions about last week’s so today I want to talk more about the harmony. Let’s start with a definition. Diatonic chords are chords that are naturally derived from the key. In other words, all the notes in the chord are part of the scale of the key. If you […]
Category Archives: Free Lessons
In case you missed it, here is part 1 of my interview with Faye Lopez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzQ4CK1CYtE Today, I posted part 2 which covers her arranging process and some tips about texture. If you don’t see a video below, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reCQzH-XrSQ
A few weeks ago, I posted part one in an interview with my piano teacher Ted Howe in which we discussed his background. Today, I want to post part 2 in which we talk about some thoughts on what pianists in general need to be working on. Specifically, Ted talks about playing by ear, harmony/voicing, […]
I want to write one more post about the Composers Symposium I went to last week because there is another thing that made a big impression on me: how difficult it is to write a good melody. Melody writing is hard because frankly there are really not many solid rules. It is not like the […]
As I mentioned in my last post, I was at the Composers Symposium last week meeting with other writers and publishers. One of the big things we did was introduce our music to each other and get publisher feedback. In the room were decision makers for Hal Leonard, Lorenz, Fred Bock and probably other publishers […]
I am in the middle of recording my new project and last week, took some time to learn Melodyne. Melodyne is an amazing piece of software that allows you to manipulate individual notes inside of a sound file. That sounds like a big deal because it is. Think of it this way. Let’s say that you […]
I have not written a lot about how I think pianists should look when they play the piano. That is partly because I don’t consider myself an expert. I have never been completely comfortable with what I do in that area. But today, I want to talk about that a bit. Two competing thoughts come […]
This weekend, I had a concert and because it was Mother’s Day, I was asked to play some from my project Heirloom. Typically, I don’t do any of that stuff in concerts because it is more designed to put people asleep than keep them awake. In fact, I haven’t played any song on that project […]
If you want to watch the earlier parts of this interview, here they are: Part 1 (Danny’s bio and how he got into professional studio work) Part 2 (How the studio music process works) Part 3 (Charting) In this last portion of the interview, Danny discusses licks (what I often call fills). I actually get […]
Read Part 1 here Read Part 2 here In this segment, Danny discusses how charts work. For those of you who don’t know what I mean by a chart, I am referring to the music notation used by studio musicians. Basically, a chart contains the overall roadmap of the song down to every bar but […]
Read Part 1 here. Here is the second (of four) segments from my interview with Danny Crawford last week. In this one, he discusses how a song goes from an initial rough idea to a professional-level recording and the process used to generate an entire project worth of tracks in one day. Keep in mind […]