I just published a new arrangement of “When We All Get To Heaven” on my sheet music page. If you are a monthly hymn arrangement club subscriber, don’t purchase it. It will be coming to you shortly. This is not an easy arrangement, especially for those that don’t have swing in their bones. This is […]
Tag Archives: performance
As promised, here is a video I did to demonstrate some tips for how perform We’re Marching to Zion (my new arrangement). I don’t know that I have ever talked here on the blog about a few of these things but then I don’t know I have ever published an arrangement like this before either. […]
There is an elusive idea in the performance of music that we all instinctively know: just playing the notes is not enough. In fact, I would go so far as to say that just playing the notes and observing every other marking on the music (such as dynamics and articulations) is not enough to qualify […]
When I look back over the time I have been a piano player, I can easily see how my thinking has changed over time. I started playing when I was eight and within a few years, was playing in church. Somewhere along the way, I started playing offertory arrangements. Back in those days, options were […]
Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that you can be a great musician but never play well in public? It’s true… Here’s why: performance is an entirely different skill than music making. Some musicians are highly skilled in music but just not highly skilled in performance. The opposite is just as true […]
I think one of the hardest things for musicians to do is to intentionally play at a level of sophistication that is lower than they are capable of. We are wired to want to demonstrate our skill; in some cases, we just flat out want to show off. In my early years, I remember picking out […]
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 […]
I heard a curious thing a while back. I heard a young person play two pieces of music. The first one was an extremely technical classical piece. It is the kind of piece that only the top classical music students would tackle. I know it well but I would not touch it with a ten […]
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. […]
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 […]