Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is about the power of the perfect authentic cadence. Have you ever heard of this before? Well, I’m going to show you way more than that today! And what you’re going to learn here today is going to help you with your sight-reading, memorization of music, and improvisation. It’s that basic and important. It’s unbelievable. I’m surprised I have not done this video before because it’s so important.

What is a perfect authentic cadence?

In its simplest form, authentic cadence is basically just a five to one with some passing tones.

Cadence 1

But what I want to show you today is even more valuable. It’s essentially how to establish a key with primary chords. What are your primary chords? Primary chords are your major chords. If you go up your scale and play chords on all 7 of the scale degrees, you have major chords on one, four, and five. The other chords are secondary chords. Your two chord, three chord, and six chord are minor chords. And your seventh chord is the one diminished chord, the outlier. So you have the one, four, five which are primary chords

Seventh chords are as follows. I7 and IV7 are major seventh chords. II7, III7 and VI7 are minor seventh chords. The VII7 is a half-diminished seventh chord. Why half-diminished? Because it is a diminished triad with a minor seventh.

And the V7 is the strongest chord of all – a major triad with a minor 7th which creates the dominant 7th chord. This chord is so powerful because it can establish the key with just this one chord. So here’s a great voicing for your basic four-part perfect voicing, resolutions, note leadings, and distance between all the notes. It follows all the classic rules of harmony.

Cadence 2

Why do we have these rules?

We have these rules because they sound good! That’s why Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, Schubert, and all the great composers wrote utilizing this basic structure in their music. Musicians analyzed all their great music and realized the truths behind it—the gems of truth that date back to Bach chorales. This basic chord progression is I, IV, I6/4, V7 I. You have nice voice leading and good spacing between the bass and the tenor, because it sounds better that way. Notice with the V7, it has the root, the seventh, and the third, but there’s no fifth. (It’s missing D.) Why would that be? It achieves better resolution. Doubling the root and leaving out the fifth can help to avoid the four going up to five because it resolves better going down to three (F resolving downward to E).

Why is this chord progression so basic and intrinsic to music?

Knowing all your primary chords and how to establish a key is enlightening in your music because it intrinsically makes you understand the harmonic underpinnings of all the music you play, read, or improvise. You can do this same chord progression in all major and minor keys. Once you get comfortable with all your keys, you can start expanding your repertoire of chords. A substitution for a four chord is a two chord in the first inversion, a II6.

Cadence 3

Or you can spice it up even further with what’s called a Neapolitan sixth. What’s that? A Neapolitan sixth is like the II6, except it’s a major triad built on the flatted second degree of the scale. It’s almost like your II6 chord, but with two flatted notes. So you get a different flavor.

Cadence Neapolitan

You can get to the point where you can modulate using a V7 of another key.
For example, if you used a D7, D is the five seven of G.

Cadence 5

And instantly, you can modulate to G major! Start in C major, go to the D7, the dominant seventh, (the major triad with a minor seventh), and there you are in G major! And if you want to go to F major, the C7 (dominant 7th chord) brings you to F major.

The dominant seventh, the V7, is the secret to modulation.

Any time the key changes, the dominant seventh chord is pivotal. The V7 chord is almost always responsible for changing keys in music. Sometimes a diminished seventh can accomplish it too, but there’s nothing stronger than a dominant seventh chord for bringing you to a new key in music.

What is a dominant seventh chord?

A dominant seventh chord is a seventh chord built on the fifth scale degree. Build a chord on the fifth scale degree, (which in C major would be G B D F) and you get a major triad and a minor seventh. It’s the only place that exists in a scale. You can build seventh chords starting on any other note of the scale, and only the V7 has this arrangement.

I7 is major, II7 is minor, II7 is minor, IV7 is major, and V7 is the major triad with a minor seventh, it is the powerful dominant seventh chord. VI7 is minor, and VII7 is half diminished. Why half? Because it has a diminished triad and a minor seventh.

So the power of the dominant seventh can’t be stressed enough. For example, when you’re playing a sonata movement, they almost always modulate to the dominant (the key five scale degrees above the key of the piece). How does it modulate to the dominant in the exposition? Typically, it uses a dominant seventh chord! There’s modulation in so much of your music and the pivotal chord that gets you there is the V7, the dominant seventh chord, a major triad with a minor seventh

What is modulation?

Modulation is changing keys. For example if you start with a piece that has no sharps or flats in the key signature, then suddenly you have F sharps all over the place; you’re probably in G major! That’s an example of modulation. What gets you there? The D dominant seventh chord, which is the dominant of G (the fifth note of the G major scale).

So try to play this chord progression in all keys! I promise that you’ll have tremendous benefits in your playing. You’ll understand your music on a deeper level. You’ll be able to learn music more quickly, read music more effectively, and improvise music with more fluidity. Try it out for yourself! Let me know how it works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Sheet Music Download for this lesson

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Why You Must Know The Perfect Authentic Cadence

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is about the power of the perfect authentic cadence. Have you ever heard of this before? Well, I’m going to show you way more than that today! And what you’re going

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share with you 20 skill sets you need at the piano. I tried to narrow it down to the absolute essentials for you. You can check to see how many of these skill sets you have. There are some things you might not have thought of that could be really important for you to take your piano playing to the next level. I’m going to start with the most important thing for classical players and something that’s great for anybody, which is…

Memorization

You may think you just have to be born with a great memory, but that’s not true. There’s a system for memorization that can be taught. Memorization makes playing the piano easier. It’s very encumbering to be watching the score. Sometimes it’s necessary, but when you have something memorized, it frees you to be expressive and just let the music come out of you naturally. What else is important? To learn more about memorization, click here!

Sight-reading

Reading music is essential because you can’t memorize everything. Plus, if you’re accompanying other musicians, you want to be able to see the score and their part. So you want to be able to read music to familiarize yourself with a wide array of music without necessarily committing it to memory. That’s another skill that can be developed. To learn more about sight-reading, click here!

Improvisation

Did you know that most styles of music are not dependent on reading every note in the score? Jazz, pop, rock, country, folk—you name it. Being able to improvise is so important. It’s also a great way to have fun with music. If you have a party and people want to sing some songs, being able to play by ear is great. Not to mention the fact that it can save your neck if you ever have a memory slip during a performance. You can get back on track if you can play a little bit by ear instead of starting over again. To learn more about improvisation, click here!

Scales and arpeggios

Learning all of your major and minor scales and arpeggios is one of the foundations of good technique on any instrument, and the piano is certainly no exception. It’s an essential toolbox of technique. The vast majority of Western music is built on scales and arpeggios. Having those literally at your fingertips is of tremendous value. Don’t be intimidated by it. You can just learn one a week, and it will take you about a year to learn all of them. There’s no hurry. If you haven’t done it yet, go for it! I’ve got a spreadsheet that you can check out that can keep track of all your scales and arpeggios. To learn more about scales and arpeggios, click here!

Octave technique

You hear people play rousing octaves, and you wonder, how is that done? Well, once again, a central technique of using the wrist. I have additional videos on that for you as well. And that brings us to the essential technique of the piano. To learn more about octave technique, click here!

Learn how to identify when to use the fingers, when to use the wrists, and when to use the arms.

They all come into play, but in different ways in different contexts of music. One of the most important things about learning technique on the piano is knowing which parts of the body to use. To learn more about finger techniques, click here! For more about the wrists, click here! For more about arms, click here!

Learn how to bring out different voices in your playing.

The piano is an instrument that can play many different parts at once. You, of course, have your left and right hands, but it’s much deeper than that. Sometimes, you have inner voices. You can even have different parts within one hand. Learning how to bring out different voices is such an essential technique. And once again, there are ways you can practice that. I have techniques for this. To learn more, click here!

Learn how to achieve a smooth melodic line.

Did you know that the piano is a percussion instrument? That’s right. When you play a note, the hammer is hitting the strings. You get a strong attack and rapid decay. So how do you get a smooth melodic line? Well, it’s the art of illusion. It’s a matter of using the weight of the arm to smoothly transfer the tone from note to note. The pedal can help with that as well. To learn more, click here!

Learn how to get a beautiful sound out of the piano.

Have you ever heard somebody play and everything just sounds harsh and ugly, and then somebody will play the exact same piano and everything sounds beautiful and warm? How is that possible? Singers have physiology that makes it so, and with other instruments, there’s such a connection with the throat, the breath, and the lips. But yes, on the piano, there are ways of achieving a beautiful sound. And there are ways you might get an ugly sound if you’re not careful. So this is a really important subject for you if you haven’t covered it before in your playing. You want to always get as gorgeous a sound as possible. To learn more, click here!

Interpretation

Interpretation is a wide open area. It’s very subjective, but it’s something important to understand and have a grasp of. You work so hard to learn a piece of music. How do you actually let it unfold? What do you have to say about it? Do you just play it the way your teacher told you to or the way you’ve heard it in a recording? Or do you have something unique you can say about the piece? How do you develop your own voice in music? That’s what interpretation is all about! It’s the reason we play—to express our love and our unique ideas about the music. The reason we work so hard is so we can bring our ideas into these pieces of music so others can enjoy our concepts of them. To learn more, click here!

Appreciate different period styles.

To understand interpretation and many other aspects of technique, you really have to have an appreciation for the different period styles of music, from the Baroque to the Classical, the Romantic, the Impressionist, and the 20th century. They’re all different styles, and there are styles within those styles. Not to mention, the piano evolved over time. So the period the music was written in wasn’t for the same instrument as earlier or later pianos. When you’re playing Baroque music, it might not have been written for the piano at all. It was more likely written for the harpsichord! So understanding the period styles and the instruments the music was written for is very important for being able to play appropriately on the piano. To learn more about the Baroque period, click here! For Classical, click here! For Romantic, click here! For Impressionism, click here!

Another important aspect of piano technique is ornamentation.

There’s all kinds of ornamentation, such as trills. Sometimes in early music, you’ll see different squiggly lines that are representative of things that you do to embellish the music. How to translate those symbols is one challenge, but the other is simply knowing how to execute them cleanly. And there again, there are different aspects of knowing how to measure your trills and things of that nature. For more about executing trills, click here! For more about ornamentation, click here!

Music theory

A solid foundation in music theory can really enhance all aspects of your playing. Certainly, if you’re reading music, it’s helpful to know what key you’re in and to have some grasp of the chord progressions and modulations. When you’re learning a piece of music, a foundation of music theory will help you understand where you are in the structure and the harmonies. It’s going to help you learn it, remember it, and play it. For more about music theory, click here!

Harmony

Harmony is kind of a subcategory of theory. Having an understanding of the keys you’re in and the relationship of tones is what harmony is all about. To learn more about harmony, click here!

Dictation

One way to develop harmony is through dictation. Jazz players do dictation all the time. If you play popular music, sometimes the sheet music can be very drab and not really grasp what the original performance was about. So you listen to it and kind of copy it by ear. You can even write it down. This is a tremendous way to develop your ear and an affinity for different styles of music. To learn more about dictation, click here!

Music history

Having a grasp of music history is so important. I mentioned the period styles, but it goes so much deeper. You want to understand the culture and customs of the time and how the music fit into society. Was it something for the elite or the music of the people? The history of the time can be enlightening and might shed some light as to how the music should be approached. Is it folk music? Is it music for the Royal Courts? Having an understanding of music history can give you a depth to your playing that is really important. To learn more about music history, click here!


Accompanying

I talked about reading and sight-reading being important, but accompanying is an art unto itself. You want to be able to play with other musicians. All too often, pianists play by themselves so much that they lack the camaraderie that you develop playing with other musicians. You learn so much by doing this. You develop a better sense of timing, balance, and nuance. There’s nothing greater than playing with other musicians and learning from them. When you play with great musicians, it rubs off on you. You might feel squeamish about playing with people who are better than you, but take the opportunity. It will be enriching for you. For more about accompanying, click here!

Maintain a repertoire.

How many pieces can you keep in your repertoire? What pieces should you learn next? What is a well-balanced repertoire on the piano? These are really important questions for developing your piano playing and your musicianship. You need appropriate challenges in your repertoire—something that’s not going to take you an inordinate amount of time or something that you’re never going to be able to play at a high level without a foundation of learning other pieces first. You need to know what pieces to play, what pieces to study, and how many pieces you can keep in your current repertoire. It’s not limitless. But you can drop pieces and restudy them. If you try to keep everything at your fingertips and in your head, you won’t have time to learn new music! So maintaining a repertoire is a delicate balance. To learn more about maintaining a repertoire, click here!

Performing

One of the important skill sets that has to be practiced is playing for people. Because if you play by yourself, it never really comes to fruition. The act of playing for people is where the music comes alive. When you’re playing by yourself, you know what you’re doing. When you’re playing for others, there’s a give-and-take. You’ll find that you will do things in your playing that you’ve never done before. Some of them may be unfortunate things, but you may find that, particularly if you have the wherewithal to play for people on a regular basis, it can become an inspiration for ideas because you get the feeling for what people are really paying attention to and the things that leave them flat. It’s just like a comedian working out material. They don’t really know what’s going to land and what’s going to fall flat until they do it in front of a crowd. The same is true with your piano playing. Playing for people is what it’s all about! You might think no one wants to hear you. That couldn’t be further from the truth! People will be impressed with your accomplishments. If they don’t play, everything will seem amazing to them. It’s all relative. There are different things that everybody can bring to the music. You don’t have to be the most virtuoso player in the world to be able to share emotions, feelings, and nuance about the music and taste that you have that’s unique to you. So play for people. People will enjoy it, and you will grow as a musician. To learn more about playing for people, click here!

Adjusting to different pianos and different rooms

When you play on different pianos, it feels completely different, and it can give you ideas about the piece you never had before. The rooms you play in also make a tremendous difference. Have you ever played in a room that’s completely acoustically dead, where there’s no reverberation at all? You end up working harder, and you may have to use the pedal more liberally in order to make up for the lack of acoustics in the room. You might go to a hall and try out the piano before a performance, and it sounds glorious in the beautiful echoey space. Then the audience comes in, and all those bodies with clothing absorb the sound, and it’s a completely different acoustic. So learning how to adjust instantly to a piano and to a room is an essential part of piano playing. And it’s enriching because you will learn more about the pieces you play, even if you’re not performing. Any time there’s a piano somewhere where you can play, play some of your pieces on it. I guarantee that you will learn something from the experience. To learn more about adjusting to different pianos and environments, click here!

I hope these are helpful for you!

But we have just scratched the surface! What about pedaling? Here is more on that subject for you:

HOW TO USE THE PEDAL ON THE PIANO – KEYBOARD KALEIDOSCOPE – ROBERT ESTRIN

And there is also independence of the hands at the piano:

HOW TO PLAY HANDS TOGETHER ON THE PIANO

These are just 20 tips and essential skills on the piano with two bonus tips! Any of you who can think of other skill sets that are important, leave them in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

The 20 Skill Sets You Need at the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share with you 20 skill sets you need at the piano. I tried to narrow it down to the absolute essentials for you. You can check to see how many of these skill sets you hav

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Are there musical geniuses like Mozart alive today? In the world today with billions of people, there have got to be some people with tremendous talent. There are great players and child prodigies, but is there anybody at the level of artistry, creative beauty, and pure genius of Mozart?

The answer is yes!

If you have not seen her already on YouTube, you must check out Alma Deutscher. I’ve been following her for years. She started posting on YouTube when she was five. There are videos of her playing the violin from a very young age. She is unlike any musical talent I think you’ve probably ever seen in your life. Just to give you an overview, she’s now 18 years old. She has composed three operas. She composed her first complete opera when she was only ten years old! There are some videos of her performing where the audience chooses notes and she improvises using those notes. She can instantly create a composition on the highest level, beyond what you would think of as improvisation.

She is an accomplished pianist, violinist, and singer.

She’s great on all three of these instruments, as well as being a conductor. She’s written violin concertos, piano concertos, and three operas. It’s just amazing. You could see her evolution through time. But from the youngest age, there is a spark of joy in her, and an appreciation for beautiful melodies, which just flow out of her naturally, whether she’s improvising or composing. If she just played the violin, sang, played the piano, or composed even a fraction of the music that she’s written, she would be noteworthy. But the fact that she does all of these things is astounding! She is much like Mozart, who was great on violin, piano, conducting, improvising, and composing for so many different ensembles, from opera to piano to symphonies, from the youngest age.

There are still musical geniuses like Mozart alive today! But where can they shine?

Are there places for people like Alma Deutscher? Where will her career take her? This will be very interesting. Many composers today are in the film industry because it’s one area where people can actually make a living composing music. We no longer have royal courts with benefactors the way they existed back in Mozart’s time.

I want all of you to check out Alma Deutscher!

Check out her compositions and her improvisations. Watch her from the youngest age to what she’s doing now. I think you will be astounded at this world-class musician in our midst. I just thought I’d call it to your attention to her. I’m interested in other great artists of our time. If you know of anyone like this, share it in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Alma Deutcher Improvisation

https://www.almadeutscher.com

https://www.youtube.com/@AlmaDeutscher

Are There Musical Geniuses Like Mozart Alive Today?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Are there musical geniuses like Mozart alive today? In the world today with billions of people, there have got to be some people with tremendous talent. There are great players and child prodigies

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I am so pleased to have a special guest today, Bijan Taghavi! Bijan was a student of mine from the time he was eight years old until after high school, when he went to the Manhattan School of Music as a piano major. He studied classical music, played concertos, and accompanied metropolitan opera singers, but all along, he also played other styles of music. I’m proud to announce that:

He is coming out with his second album with his trio, TrioGram!

Robert: Welcome, Bijan!

Bijan: Thanks for having me, Bob. I’m so happy to be here.

Robert: So tell me the latest. What’s going on with you? Then we’ll start from the beginning and talk about your metamorphosis in music. I’m sure everybody’s interested in this.

Bijan: I’m actually in town visiting Cleveland now because I’m playing at the Treelawn, which is a new jazz club. They got their piano from you, actually. It’s literally a two-minute walk from here in the Waterloo Arts District in Cleveland. So I’m going to be playing here, and then we’re off to Europe for a tour for our first album, which came out a few months ago. And then, pretty soon thereafter, we’re going to be going to L.A. to do our second TrioGram album. It’s a jazz piano trio with myself, led by my friend, the great bassist Will Lyle. We’re going to have a special guest drummer who played with the Bill Evans Trio: Joe LaBarbera. So I’m so excited about that. It’s going to be great!

Robert: That’s really exciting! This is your second European tour, is that right?

Bijan: It’s my second international tour. I did a Bijan Taghavi Trio tour back in 2018 in Japan, which, by the way, has an incredibly vibrant… I was going to say music scene, but it’s actually a perfect situation where the musicians aren’t necessarily as great as they are here, but the audiences actually love jazz over there, so it’s a perfect problem. There’s more demand than supply! So when we go there, they absolutely love it. The venues are packed, and it’s a lot of fun.

Robert: Fantastic!

You’re teaching at Hillsdale College.

We could talk a little bit about your academic background, but I think people would be really interested in how you started off in classical, but from the very beginning, you’d come in with blues and Elton John tunes. I always worked with you on these other styles, but you were spearheading major concertos by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and then suddenly you had a pivotal event that shifted everything. Talk about the difference between classical and jazz. What was it like for you to make that shift? How did this happen?

Bijan: When I switched to studying with you, that was really when I became serious with the piano. Before that, I had just gone to the Yamaha School of Music. I was there for maybe five years or something. I started when I was three and a half. Elton John was actually my inspiration, so that’s probably why later on, when I first started venturing outside of classical music, I started just exploring with some Elton John tunes. But then I went to a performance of yours, and do you remember where I sat in relation to you?

Robert: Yes, yes. This was very early on, and you were just a little kid. I was playing a private concert in a beautiful home in Huntington Beach, and this little kid came over and sat with his head right on the edge of the keyboard! I said, “Can you go to the other side?” Because you were blocking the audience!

Bijan: Completely blocking the audience!

Robert: The entire performance, you were just riveted! For such a young kid, that was really pretty shocking! Then I heard you play, and I could hear that, you know, even though you were elementary, you had a lot of talent and so much enthusiasm. I always enjoyed working with you. The interesting thing was that, from the very beginning, you’d spend your allowance money on sheet music. Not many kids do that!

Bijan: At the time, I remember you weren’t taking students, or at least that’s what you said. Maybe you just didn’t want to take the elementary level first. But then, once you heard that I was spending my allowance on sheet music, that showed you that I was really committed to doing something with the piano, whether it was professional or not, and that I was taking it seriously. You know,

Studying with you—it’s not hyperbole to say it really changed my life in terms of my trajectory.

First of all, with the piano, I figured out how to practice, which I’m sure people who watch your YouTube channel know is a big concept that you emphasize in your lessons and everything. I learned everything I know about how to play the piano, piano technique, how to get a good sound out of the piano, piano tone, etc., from you. I did all those main classical works, as far as even playing solo piano concerts at your old Art District Concert series.

You even prepared me to play the Grieg Piano Concerto with the South Coast Symphony.

But then I made the transition. It was really sort of two main catalyst events for me that made me switch. The first thing was that I had a concert with a Latin jazz flutist, Néstor Torres. That was the first true sort of jazz experience that I ever had. At that time, even though I had spent, like you said, some allowance money on rock songs, Billy Joel, Elton John, and a little bit of blues, I didn’t really know how to read chord charts. So that was the craziest thing for me to look at. They were looking for a jazz pianist out of the high school group because he came to our high school, and I just said I could play jazz piano. Then I was handed, over the summer, this stack of like 20 lead sheets. Now it might be easy for me because I’m so used to that, but at the time, reading a lead sheet was like the craziest thing. I didn’t even know what I was looking at!

Robert: I remember you coming into your lesson with this book. We had done some theory, but to realize an entire concert’s worth of lead sheets? There’s no way there would be time during a lesson! We just scratched the surface, but somehow you assimilated all those scores! And that was when you were still in high school.

Bijan: Yeah, I was still in high school. My guitar teacher, who also helped me a lot in making the transition, gave me this sort of cheat sheet that had every single chord on it. And there were unnecessary chords too. It was like maybe a stack of like 25 chords written on this page. It had the chord, and then it had the formula. I didn’t really understand how there are only four chord families, and you don’t need that list of 25, but I went through each chord methodically in the lead sheet and figured out what the chords are. So it was a lot of work. But I sort of temporarily quit my foray into jazz after that. In retrospect, Néstor was right. He told me something that sort of depressed me a little bit about the possibility. He said, “Look, kid, you’ve got a long way to go.” Particularly with my improvisation and things like that, because I didn’t have much jazz language then, even though I was experimenting with things. That’s an area where you were really encouraging to me. I’m indebted to you forever for that. You encouraged me to keep going and to explore more and more.

The second catalyst for me was when I heard the great late pianist Oscar Peterson. When I first transitioned to jazz, I didn’t have a jazz teacher for the longest time. You would help me out a lot, but:

I didn’t study with a jazz teacher until I went to the Manhattan School of Music later.

So I had sort of a year-long period where it was really just Oscar Peterson. I actually didn’t like jazz, which is the funniest thing. Some of the greatest jazz pianists like Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner, for me, my ears weren’t even ready for that. But I was lucky enough that Oscar was able to draw me in. Now I can appreciate all those artists, and I’ve taken so much from those other pianists as well. But those were the main two catalysts for me.

Robert: With all my students, I give a solid background in the three macro skills of memorization, sight reading, and improvisation. One of the things I do from the earliest stages is just have students play a very simple chord progression. First, I will go on one side of the piano and comp and let the student play all white keys. I’ll do a Dorian mode. Then I’ll switch it and let the student comp (and I solo). Then I say, “Okay, now the hard part. See if you can comp with your left hand and solo with the right hand.” And there are varying degrees of success. Sometimes people just start playing methodically up the keyboard, one note at a time. I’ll say, “Hold some notes longer than others,” to try to get some variety. But right from the very first time you did it; I couldn’t believe you were able to do it the first time you tried! That’s when I realized that you had an incredible affinity for this. The other thing was your sense of rhythm with popular styles. You had a great groove, even as the youngest kid, in addition to being able to play Beethoven and Chopin scherzos and all of that.

But getting back to TrioGram, what is the whole concept of TrioGram? On your albums, It’s all original music. How much of it is yours? Tell us a bit more about your trio.

Bijan: Yeah, it’s a lot of original music. TrioGram is an association of myself and one of my best friends, Will Lyle, a great bass player. We’re both from Southern California, actually, although we never met there. We met afterwards when we were both in college, and we found out we’re both from there. But he and I had worked a lot together in the past, and we always meant to do a project together. We thought, what better way than to do a piano trio? First of all, as a pianist, a piano trio is one of the premier settings to feature a jazz pianist because you’re in control of everything. You’re playing the melodies; you’re the main soloist instrument, although the bassist can solo as well. So it really features the pianist. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s also kind of intimidating at the same time. But it was this project that he and I put together. Basically, it was just the end of last summer in 2022. We were both incredibly busy, but we thought, let’s do a record together at the end of a month. So we only gave ourselves a month. Naturally, he and I both got busy. I’m doing a lot of work in Michigan, and he’s doing a lot of work in New York. But our drummer mistakenly thought we were still going on with the project even though we had decided to stop it. He just did this little post on Facebook. He said, “Hey guys, I’m going to be in town doing this recording session.” I was like, “Hey, Will, did you not tell Kofi that we’re not going to be doing this anymore?” Then we talked about it and decided that maybe we should go ahead and do it. So it was really put together at the last minute. We decided the tunes last minute, and we wrote the tunes last minute, but it turned out a lot better than we expected. It was great. We did a lot of original music. He did some original tunes, and

I did some original tunes, one of which was dedicated to you, actually. It’s called “Changes.”

Robert: A great tune, by the way. We’ll have links for you so you can check out some of Bijan’s music.

The last thing I want to ask about is your upcoming album. You’ve got another drummer featuring on this album. Tell us about that, because that’s a really exciting development.

Bijan: After we did the first record, Will and I did a series of tours. We did one on the West Coast, where we went to Mexico and did a series of shows there with incredible audiences. They were so supportive of our music. Then we went to California and Arizona. In California, we had featured special guest drummers with us, and in L.A., we played with the great drummer Joe LaBarbera, who was one of the drummers for the iconic Bill Evans trio. We had the rehearsal, and I’m really picky with musicians and drummers because there’s a very particular thing that I want, and Will is the same way. But after the rehearsal, he and I went outside, and we just started dancing like a bunch of old Iranian women! We were celebrating! It was the most incredible thing. I had never played with a drummer where I felt so good and comfortable. He knew how to support you and play under you, and the sound he gets out of the instrument, I could go on forever. His time feel is just so incredible! We have another tour coming up.

We’re going to be playing with Joe LaBarbera in California, in
San Francisco on July 26 at the Black Cat and on July 27th at Campus Jack’s Jazz Club in Orange County.

And we thought, since we’re doing these gigs with them and we’re going to be in California, let’s do another record with him. So we’re going to be doing another album with Joe LaBarbera, and I’m so excited for it.

Robert: Well, we’ll have links to your website, and once again, it’s great having you here! I know you’ve got to get to your gig up the street in about 5 minutes.

Bijan: I’m going to change and run over there!

Robert: Thanks again for coming. And once again, I’m Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com.

Bijan: Thank you, Bob.

You can find Bijan’s music and tour dates at BijanTaghavi.com.

Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Student of Robert Estrin: Bijan Taghavi – Jazz Artist

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I am so pleased to have a special guest today, Bijan Taghavi! Bijan was a student of mine from the time he was eight years old until after high school, when he went to the Manhattan School of Musi

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how great music is storytelling. This has many ramifications. For example, a great piece of music sometimes evokes images and emotions that can tell a story. It may not tell a story with words as much as with feeling and direction. Interestingly, this is also true of great improvisations. For example, listen to a great jazz pianist crafting a ballad. As it unfolds, it can remind you of so many things in your life that you can’t even put into words. That’s what’s so great about music!

A performance can sometimes tell a story.

What I’m going to do today is something a little bit different. I thought I’d challenge myself and play the beginning of Chopin’s G Minor Ballade. I will play it twice. The first time, I’m going to try to play it absolutely faithfully to the score. The second time I’m going to try to tell a story. I’ll let the notes evoke something to make you feel it’s going somewhere and keep you on the edge of your seat, wondering where it’s going next. Can this really be done? I’m going to see if I can play this absolutely accurately the first time. Then, I’m going to go back and see if I can do something more than that and tell a story with the same exact notes, markings, rhythms, and phrasing. I will add subtlety of emotion that can somehow transcend the notes. Is this possible? This is what this experiment is about today.

It’s just like the lines of a play.

The lines of a play can be read in so many different ways. Everything the playwright wrote is in there, yet each actor has a completely different feeling and tells a different story. That’s what I’m going to attempt to do now. I’ll see if I can take the same passage of music with all the same markings, the same notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression and see if I can tell more than what is on the page.

See video for my performances of the beginning of Chopin’s G Minor Ballade.

I wonder, could you hear a difference? I’m really interested in your opinions of these two different performances. They both are accurate from a technical standpoint, all the notes that Chopin wrote were in both of them. I’m wondering what your feelings are about them, if they evoke different senses. Do they tell different stories? That’s what music is all about. It’s telling stories that can’t be told with words – stories of emotion. That’s what I believe. I’m wondering how many of you feel the same way, and what these two different snippets of the Chopin G Minor Ballade did for you. Let me know in the comments, on LivingPianos.com, as well as on YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Supplemental Content:
Chopin Ballade #1 in G-Minor on Steinway Model D Concert Grand

Great Music is Storytelling

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how great music is storytelling. This has many ramifications. For example, a great piece of music sometimes evokes images and emotions that can tell a story. It may not