I came across an interesting quote the other day that I posted on my Facebook page. “I practice my saxophone three hours a day. I’m not saying I’m particularly special, but if you do something three hours a day for forty years, you get pretty good at it.” ~Kenny G. The takeaway here is obvious. […]
Tag Archives: arranging
After last week’s post about transitioning between songs, several asked me to demonstrate. Yesterday, I recorded this 15-minute video demonstrating the six tips in that article. * Planning ahead * Making modulations easy * Starting all transitions early * Playing fill music while waiting for the leader to start * Giving cue signals to the […]
One of the current trends in church involves how congregational music is selected and executed. In the past, a congregation might just sing a diverse group of stand alone hymns. Today, churches choose songs to support an overall theme and package the songs together into melodies. I like the trend, but it does put a […]
When you hear musicians talking about backbeats, they are referring to accenting beats that are normally considered weak. Most typically, that means accenting beats 2 and 4 rather than 1 and 3 in 4/4 time. Backbeats are a relatively new thing in music. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a backbeat in […]
All around where I live, it has become customary to host weekend outdoor concerts in the town centers. I enjoy going to them from time to time because it is often a great atmosphere. Nine times out ten, the music is provided by a cover band. A cover band is a group of semi-pro musicians […]
IMPORTANT NOTE: When I use the terms “normal people” and “average people” in this post, that is not in a derogatory way. I am just referring to people who are not musicians or high art lovers. I had an interesting week last week. I started at a Christian music industry conference and toward the end […]
If you missed yesterday’s post, I started talking about the turnaround. A turnaround is a sequence of chords that are used at the end of a section that fill up space and naturally lead to the start of the next section. As a simple example, if you end a section on a I chord and […]
There is a foundational principle in harmony and it goes something like this: the path between two chords can be altered in many ways as long as the end points are preserved. That may sound confusing but let’s take an example. Let’s say you are in church and you end a verse of a hymn […]
I have to be honest about something. What I am sharing today is not that difficult but nevertheless took me a long time to learn. It is a tip for learning to write more efficiently. In the six CDs I have previously recorded, I have written or arranged all the music. My process has always […]
There are certain musical elements that are so versatile and useful that basically every real life pianist needs to know them. I say “real life pianists” because I am referring to those of us who don’t sit in ivory (pun intended) towers playing Bach all day but rather play in the every day situations of […]
Making the decision on what software to purchase.