If you’ve played music for any length of time you may be familiar with etudes. What they are exactly is a two part answer, because there are fundamentally two different types of etudes. Even though they are both called etudes, these two different types are radically different from one-another. So let’s explore this topic and explain the differences in etudes and how they relate to your music.

Etude comes from the French word meaning, “study”. Etudes generally focus on overcoming specific technical challenges. One type of etude is strictly an exercise. There are famous Czerny and Hanon etudes that are famous exercises, but they aren’t pieces people generally perform. Their main purpose is to develop technique on an instrument.

Most Hanon etudes are simply a series of repeated note patterns. They are valuable for younger students to develop strength. Hanon Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises also contains the standard fingering for all major and minor scales and arpeggios, a staple for serious pianists. Brahms and Czerny also have etudes that are used for developing technique as opposed to necessarily providing great musical compositions. However, some Czerny etudes are quite enjoyable to listen to.

The other type of etudes are musical etudes. Chopin, Liszt, and others have created masterful pieces of music called etudes. These etudes explore different technical issues such as double thirds, sixths, octaves and other unique challenges. Yet, they are masterful works of music.

Musical etudes from Chopin, Liszt, Moszkowski, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and others are sometimes extremely complex and can be daunting for intermediate students to attempt to play. But the good news is there are some musical etudes from composers such as Burgmüller that are very nice pieces of music which help develop technique, yet provide intermediate level students with richly rewarding music to play! There are musical etudes that range from student level to virtuoso. Mastering a musical etude can greatly benefit your development as a pianist and give you music to perform as well.

Welcome to my ongoing series of music theory lessons. Today we will be covering Pentatonic scales.

“Penta” means five, and as such these scales all have 5 notes in them. Major and minor scales contain 8 notes and chromatic scales contain 12; so 5 notes is quite a difference from other scales. As far as the intervals for pentatonic scales go, you can form one in any key by using the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th note of that major scale.

It’s actually great that we are using a piano keyboard as an example because the black keys on the piano actually form a pentatonic scale all on their own starting on G-flat. You might have noticed that if you play just the black keys on a piano, they tend to sound good together. That’s because it’s literally impossible to play a wrong note using just the black keys!

What’s really great about pentatonic scales is that all the notes sound really good together. I’m not kidding when I say you can play the black keys and make nearly anything sound good. Even someone who has never played the piano before can play just the black keys and create something that sounds pretty nice. If you’ve never improvised before this is a great place to start learning; just start playing the black keys and make something up. If you have a friend, try playing together just using the black keys; you will be pleasantly surprised at how good it can sound!

That’s really about all there is to know about pentatonic scales. I hope you enjoyed this exploration and look forward to next week’s video when we cover more music theory topics.

Solfeggio, sometimes called sight-singing, is the ability to read and sing music at sight. This is an incredibly important skill for all musicians. So how do you develop these skills?

There are a couple of different systems and each one has different values. I’m going to explore these and you can decide what the best course of action is for you.

I grew up with a method called “movable do solfege”. You’ve probably heard it before: “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do”. “Do” is the tonic, the first note of the major scale, and you simply progress up through the scale degrees. In movable do solfege, no matter what major key you are in, the tonic of that key is always do. For example, if you are in C major, C is “do”. This is important to remember because this is not the case when it comes to “fixed do” solfege.

In “fixed do” solfege C is always “do” (and “re” is d and so on). The notes never change syllables.

While these two methods are completely different, they are both important in their own ways.

The strength of “fixed do” comes from naming notes. No matter what iteration the note takes it will always correlate to the particular syllable in the “fixed do” system. C will always be “do”, D will always be “re” and so on. This can be incredibly useful – especially if you’re a conductor – because you will be able to determine the absolute pitch of each of the notes. Scores are transposed and there are different clefs so being able to determine the absolute pitch is a very powerful tool.

So why would you want to use movable do? Why should you constantly be changing the pitch of “do” and why would you want it in different places? The value is that you can hear music in the context of the key, so you can figure out the notes you are hearing. In other words, if you hear a pattern of notes (for example: do, mi, so ) you can determine that it’s a major triad chord; no matter what the key. This makes it possible to quantify the pitches relative to one another and determine these patterns of notes much easier. This can really help for people who don’t have perfect pitch – it’s a much easier way to know the notes you are hearing.

But what about the relative minor? There are actually two schools of thought for this. The way I was trained is that the key signature determines where “do” is, so the relative minor begins on “la”. This makes perfect sense and is still easy to grasp even if the piece switches between major and minor. This works out the same for all of the modes which share key signatures with major and minor scales but start on different scale degrees (like all the white keys from D-D would be a D dorian mode which shares the key signature of C major which has no sharps or flats).

The last thing we need to address is how to deal with accidentals (sharps, flats, and naturals). These are simply ignored in fixed do solfege but in movable do we add extra syllables to account for these accidentals.

An ascending chromatic scale would be:

Do-Di-Re-Ri-Mi-Fa-Fi-So-Si-La-Li-Ti-Do

Descending chromatic scale is:

Do-Ti-Te-La-Le-So-Se-Fa-Mi-Me-Re-Ra- Do

Movable do solfege is how I grew up with music and it’s how I hear music. I use it for every aspect of music, whether it’s reading music or even performing. All music is essentially playing by ear so even if you read it’s important to have a system in place that allows you to understand what you are hearing.

This is a term you may or may not be familiar with. The plagal cadence is a IV chord resolving to a I chord at the end of a piece. Why is this significant? Typically the end of a piece has a V – I or V7 – I cadence.

So why is the plagal cadence important and how can you use it in your music? It is a certain tool you can use to add a fresh color to the end of a piece. I highly recommend you listen to the accompanying video to this article to understand the function of a plagal cadence. Ultimately, the sound is what sets it apart.

A classic example of a plagal cadence is the “Amen” in a church service. Once you hear it, you will always remember it!

Somebody asked me this question the other day and I was very confused – I wondered what they could be talking about. But once he explained the questions I began to understand that it actually made a lot of sense.

C is the starting note for most pieces you start with on the piano and a C major scale is played by playing all the white keys consecutively on the piano. You’d think that because this is the basic foundation of music that the note would be called A and you would then name the other notes accordingly.

Upon thinking about this I began to understand why things evolved this way and why C is the way it is. To understand this concept you’ll have to go way back into time before minor and major tonality was entrenched into Western music.

Originally, music was built on modes. Modes can be started on any of the white keys (and can be transposed to other keys with sharps or flats). For example, the notes from D to D diatonically is the Dorian mode and the Aeolian Mode is from A to A.

The ionian mode, which is the major scale, was not very popular at the time. If you listen to Renaissance music, you will rarely hear something written in the major. At the same time, the minor modes were very popular and the aeolian mode was one of the most popular. This might explain why A is the starting note!

If anybody has different information about this or another explanation I would be glad to hear it. These are my personal thoughts and conjecture based on my knowledge of music and it’s history. I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on why C is not called A.

Perhaps you have heard of a picardy third, and possibly not. It can possibly provide a compelling element to your music. The picardy third is a single note that can dramatically change the nature of the end of a composition and be a welcomed addition when placed in the right context.

So you’re probably wondering, how do you produce a picardy third and what does it sound like? When a piece is in the minor key, a picardy third is created by raising the third of the last chord of the piece so it ends in the major. You and your audience would expect the piece to end on a minor chord, but the picardy takes an interesting turn and ends it in the major!

When used effectively this can add spice to your music. In a long and dark piece it can add a “ray of sunshine” to an otherwise dark piece of music.