Making the decision on what software to purchase.
A lot of you guys ask about my health and I have not publicly said anything for a few months so here it is: my eye is healing slowly but has a long way to go. My back has done pretty well. I am pretty much pain-free and while a few lingering issues are being stubborn about disappearing, I am thankful for the progress.
If there has been a silver lining to my health saga, it has been that I have learned some very important things. Many of you have already learned those things, but for those that have not, maybe my experiences can help you. I want to talk about the dangers of chiropractic care, especially if you are dealing with bad chiropractors.
Here is a question I get all the time:
My choir director throws a piece of music on me at the last moment and I have to play it on the spot. How can I do this without struggling?
I have a weakness for cake. I am sort of picky about it; what I really like is buying cake by the slice from a great bakery. This weekend, Marla and I were on a little trip and when we saw a bakery that looked promising, we went in.
The question I asked on my Facebook page today was this: which note in a dominant chord is most expendable.
The answer is the 5th. The 5th is not only unnecessary but actually hurts the sound a bit I think. In fact, I never put the 5th in a dominant chord unless the melody is the 5th.
We all have those awkward moments when accompanying a group or soloist where a page turn goes horribly wrong. I don’t know about you but I always take a moment before starting a song to bend all lower right page corners, but things still happen. Pages stick together, fall off the piano or any number […]
Triads are sort of the basic building block of homophony, which is a technical term for the dominant way that harmony has been used in Western music for the past few centuries. They are useful without doubt; you can play most any song with triads.
But remember this: triads are not the end of harmony as we know it; they are the beginning of harmony as we know it. Being dependent on triads today is sort of like driving around in a Model T. We can celebrate the history of triads but they have severe limitations in music and music development has grown past them.
Over on Facebook, I am running a daily quiz where I ask a theory question and pick a winner at random each day. I am doing it to promote my Music School and every winner gets a free non-live class in starting in August.
I often post clips of music performances on my Facebook fan page. I think the people that follow that page may be the most honest people on Facebook because they are brutally honest in their evaluations on those clips.
People often ask when they should use secondary dominants in their music. The short answer is this: when it sounds good. But let’s talk a little more about it. Here is the simple rule: any time you play a minor 7th, you can change it to a secondary dominant by raising the third of the […]
Here is a practical real life consideration for those of you who write or arrange.