One of the great tragedies in the way music has been taught over the past century has been the irrational focus on rote replication of classical music. Over the years, I have heard from hundreds of pianists who tell me the same sad tale. Many of them have advanced degrees in music but once they leave the glass tower of […]
Tag Archives: play by ear
I think practically every musician should learn to play by ear. I know that there may be a few people here and there that just can’t learn that way but most can. It is completely natural to learn music by ear; in fact, it would be easy to make a case that it is more […]
I have a concert coming up this weekend with Nathan Prisk at Grace Baptist Church in Dacula, GA. This is the first time we are doing a full concert together with his new music and that means I need to learn it. I got around to starting on it yesterday.
Over the past four weeks, I have been covering modulations, an starting next week, I am going to start covering chord progressions. Today, I want to take a breather and just talk about a few things that art important to me. I read something this week written by a very confident musician, and it made […]
Because it is Christmas and no one is working on music anyway, I want to take a week off from anything too heavy and just give you some thoughts about how to practically learn music. This is a controversial subject and I am hardly an expert, but here is the way I see it. Imagine […]
This is a special lesson because it is in my opinion the lesson where you start improvising. There is a fine line between playing by ear and improvisation and we are going to cross that line today. Let me tell you a bit of my history before we start. I understand that most pianists don’t believe […]
Is it more important to be able to read music or play by ear? I really don’t know the answer, but I know they are both important. I am teaching my son who is eight to play the piano and though we focus mostly on reading music, I am already teaching him to play by […]
If you have followed me up until this point, you have a good idea on how to identify and name most chords in church music. There may be exceptions but that is fine for now. I hope you have been doing the exercise of going through the hymnal and learning to quickly identify the chords […]
I don’t know about you, but I like public broadcasting. I love many of the concerts, especially during their fund raisers. Last Friday, I was pumped because I thought I would get to watch the new Celtic Woman concert. Unfortunately, the schedule was wrong and they were showing Scott Houston’s “Play Piano in a Flash!” […]
I got an email today that highlighted a problem that I want to address.
Your child needs to learn this skill. Here is a simple way to get them started.
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