Piano and Music Videos

This is a loaded and controversial topic that’s bound to elicit a strong response out of many of you. The relationship between drugs and music is very long and complex but there are some interesting aspects we can explore in this topic.

Neurologically, a lot of drugs (such as alcohol and marijuana) suppress certain parts of the brain. We’ve all heard of the simplistic idea of a left-brain and right-brain as it pertains to critical thinking and creativity. Certain drugs will suppress certain parts of the brain and some people – including musicians – like to experience this effect.

Drugs are of huge cultural significance as well and have been around for thousands of years. Caffeine is a drug taken by billions of people every single day and just like other drugs it affects the brain and body in different ways. When it comes to music, drugs – specifically mind altering drugs like alcohol, marijuana and others – have had and continue to have a dramatic effects on the musical world and musicians who inhabit it.

Charlie Bird Parker was one of the groundbreaking pioneers of be-bop jazz who was a drug addict. This affected musicians and people around him as they emulated his musical style as well as his drug use. It goes further than this when you look at the world of rock and roll and bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones who glorified the “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll” movement. These circumstances were much more cultural than anything else. But did it effect their music?

Drugs will not make you a better musician. Certain people might benefit from inhibiting certain analytical parts of their brain that allows them to lose inhibitions adding spontaneity to their music, but it doesn’t make them better musicians. You would not be able to take drugs to increase your learning or develop better skills but you might be able to improvise with a little bit more freedom of expression at first.

The downside to drug use is very well documented in the music world. While it might allow certain musicians to be more “creative” it does have it’s share of negative effects. Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, Ric James, Charlie Parker, and many more musicians have died as a result of their drug use. It is not something to take lightly.

Drug use is not a yes or no type of question. Many people enjoy listening to music either in their home or at live events and have a few glasses of wine or beer or sometimes smoke marijuana. Even legal drugs require a level of balance to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

First, why is it important to be able to establish the key? If you have a room full of people and you want to sing a song together, you must all start on the same note or you will have chaos! If you have ever sung Happy Birthday with a crowd of people, you know how confusing an experience that can be with everyone starting in a different key!

So, how do you establish the key? The dominant 7th chord or V7 is ideal for establishing a key, which would be a G7 in the key of C major or minor, the notes G – B – D – F. But there is an even stronger way to establish the key and that is with a Perfect Authentic Cadence. This is a chord progression as follows: I – IV – I6/4 – V7 I. So, in C major that would be CM – FM – CM with a G on the bottom – G7 – CM. There is no doubt where the tonic or “Do” (the first note of the scale) of the key is when hearing this progression – even with Happy Birthday! Although, since Happy Birthday begins on the dominant (G in the key of C Major), an additional V7 (G7) at the end of the cadence will assure your crowd sings in key!

I consider myself very lucky to have grown up in a musical household. Not only were both my parents musicians, they were teachers as well. This ended up being a very positive environment for me. What about households where a parent might not know much about music at all? Is it detrimental to their child’s musical development? Should they learn to play the instrument with their children? These questions are what we are going to be covering today.

Learning to play along with your kids can be very beneficial to both you and your child. Especially if you are having a child learn to play an instrument at a young age it’s a very good idea to learn to play along with them. Being able to guide and help them in their lessons will greatly improve their learning – especially when it comes to reading notes and learning rhythms.

Not only does learning an instrument with your child potentially improve the technical aspects of their development, it also allows your kids to be more engaged in the musical process. By seeing you learn an instrument along with them they will see you engaging in a similar activity and they will naturally want to emulate you. It’s a great bonding experience and will greatly enhance their enthusiasm to keep learning.

It’s certainly not the end of the world if you want your children to learn to play a musical instrument and you can’t play one yourself. I have seen this countless times and I’ve seen many great students come out of these types of circumstances. However, if you are not going to be directly involved in the learning process you need to make sure that you are providing a good environment for them to learn. This means getting the best teacher you can afford as well as motivating them (not forcing them) to learn and keep up their enthusiasm. If you take an interest in what they are doing and provide encouragement it will help them immensely.

Either way, you should provide a positive environment for them to learn their instrument and develop as a musician. Just paying for lessons and not taking an interest will eventually lead to disaster.

I just recently received this question from a viewer and I thought it would be a good thing to address. If you play piano – or other polyphonic instruments – you probably have seen these before:

If you’re a singer or you play the flute, clarinet, trumpet, or perform another monophonic instrument you may have never seen these before in your notation.

These notes typically only occur in polyphonic writing. For example, on the piano you have multiple parts and sometimes you will have two different parts that play the same note. Imagine for example if there was a choir and there was the same note being sung between both the altos and the sopranos. Instead of writing the note twice, it would be easier to write the note on the same line and just add a line going up for the soprano and down for the alto.

Sometimes you might even see double stem notes for different rhythms. You might have a half note and a quarter note on the same note. This might sound confusing and it can be but it’s best to break down the music and understand how it is supposed to sound.

The Concerto goes back centuries and is a very important musical form. You might have seen my video on What is a Sonata?; This is a good follow up.

When we talked about Sonatas, I referred to the famous C Major Sonata K545 of Mozart. We discussed the structure of a Sonata extensively in the last video and we talked about how Sonatas can be written for any instrument and usually feature piano accompaniment.

A concerto, by contrast, is a piece of music written for a solo instrument or a small group of instruments along with a symphony orchestra. Symphony concerts often feature soloists at the start of the second half of the program. You will usually see a pianist or a violinist playing solo in front of the orchestra as they back them up. In the Baroque era, Bach wrote the Brandenburg Concertos for small groups of instruments accompanied by a small orchestra. There are countless Classical and Romantic period concertos which feature more than one soloist with an orchestra as well.

Many of you are probably familiar with the famous Tchaikovsky B flat minor Piano Concerto which starts with the thunderous chords on the piano. (You can hear them in the video example provided above.) While the piano is playing these huge chords, the orchestra is playing a beautiful melody which accompanies it.

There is a structural similarity between Sonatas and Concertos that is significant. Concertos are often written in the Sonata-Allegro form! If you want a detailed explanation of this please check out the link for the Sonata video provided above.

The ability to record professional-level music has really grown substantially in the past decade. What you can achieve today with just a simple computer in your home exceeds what you could achieve in a top of the line recording studio just a few decades ago.

As a child I grew up around studio equipment – tape recorders and other seemingly archaic recording technology were all around my home and in my father’s studio. As a young adult, I owned my own commercial recording studio and it was both a formidable investment and came with great compromises. Today, this is no longer an issue – anyone can set up a home studio with a few hundred dollars and a bit of knowledge.

Now before you go out and set up your studio, it’s a good idea to get a grasp on exactly what you will be using it for. Is it just audio recording? Maybe you want to incorporate video – what if you are a composer and you want to print out music you compose? These are all things you should be aware of before making your initial purchases. Planning and budgeting will lead to much better results when everything is in place.

You should also be aware of what operating system and software you intend on using. If you’re going with a Mac you can use Apple Logic or Mark of the Unicorn’s Digital Performer; on PC you have programs like Sonar/Cakewalk, Cubase, Reason and many others. When it comes down to picking the platform and the software, you should investigate what specialty the programs might offer. Most of them do nearly everything, but some of the programs specialize in certain areas better than others. It’s a very good idea to research the available programs thoroughly before making a purchase since some programs can be expensive and the learning curve can be steep.

Music recording in the home has become so advanced that you can literally plug in a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) enabled keyboard, play something, and have your program instantly record and transcribe the notes of what you just played! It might not be perfectly accurate transcription – it will assuredly need a little human editing – but it’s a great leap in the ability to transcribe music.

The one aspect of recording that hasn’t changed as much over the years is the recording hardware itself. Microphones, amplifiers, speakers, and room acoustics haven’t changed as much and still remain an important – and potentially expensive area of recording music. Surprisingly, some of the best equipment out there today is older technology. Tube amplifiers, ribbon microphones, and other older technology can still produce amazing – and in a lot of cases better results than newer digital equipment.

The bottom line is, you will need the following equipment to get even a minimal setup going:

microphone(s):
Look for quality here; it makes a huge difference.

Speakers:
You don’t necessarily need anything top-of-the-line here. But since this is your reference they should be relatively neutral rather than flatter any particular frequencies.

Computer:
You can get away with a mid-level PC or Mac.

Recording Interface:
You can use anything you can connect a microphone (or several mics) to a computer with. Make sure it’s compatible with your operating system and computer hardware and that it fits your needs.

Recording Software:
It is very important to research this thoroughly since you will be spending a lot of time familiarizing yourself with this.

MIDI enabled keyboard and printer
Choose a keyboard that suits your playing style. You only need a printer if you want to have score printing capabilities.

This is a very extensive topic and could be covered in-depth for hours upon hours – in fact, they have entire college courses dedicated to this subject. The good news is that anyone looking to set up a studio to record music in their home is able to achieve it with minimal investment in both time and money. You can forgo the audio interface and use the onboard capabilities of your computer if you want. Even Apple’s Garage Band on the iPad has substantial capabilities!

We are living in a wonderful age of technological advancements that enable everyday people to achieve tremendous results with only a minimal amount of investment.