Notes & Numbers

The gist of something fun I found after cleaning the keys, a little oddball for sure but it’s growing on me! a little bit, right?

Greetings teachers, students, and fellow musicians! With various assessments going around I’ve made an updated video that covers proper Zoom settings for Macs, iPads, and iPhones, for you or your students as needed. There’s also a link to a related video for Windows computers, for those that need it.

Like/follow/subscribe if you find it helpful, on YouTube, on instagram, otherwise best of luck in the Wild West of good sound on the internet, and maybe I’ll see some of you in Reno!

9/X Though I surely met it through my own lessons, extra attention directed at common patterns for phrases in pieces (question/answer, short short long, limerick balance) entered my teaching lately thanks to an excellent presentation by the inimitable Peter Mack, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. In this video you’ll catch a glimpse of that along with some of the slippery bits that come from upbeat phrasings in the classic piece Reveille, typically a brassier situation than the keyboard adaptation we visit here.

I hope you dig it, please comment with anything specific you’re facing lately and I’ll do my best to put out clips from these after lesson videos that take on whatever you’re hoping to explore, and otherwise I hope you’re having fun making music!

8/X The first of two clips about musical phrases (though I’m sure to make more), this one focuses more on the interpretation of a phrase, and how each phrases combines with every other to give a piece of music direction; these are the decisions we make that bring a vital third dimension to the music at hand, rather than leaving it flat on the page. Plus some singing to boot!

As always these are plucked from videos I make my younger/newer students after lessons, but if you ever have a specific thing you want to know more about, say so in the comments and I’ll make a point to work that in somewhere somehow! Or, alternatively, hit me up for lessons 😉🎹🎶

7/X The effective use of arm weight is a foundational element of the technique I try to instill in my lessons. Knowing a piece means to know how it feels, both emotionally and physically, and ultimately to recognize how that focus provides a deeper familiarity and facility with the music we love.

That plus an overview of the appropriate way to treat dynamic markings (ranges not steps!) in music makes this a short but sweet video that I hope you’ll enjoy 😊🎹💪

6/X Pulling back the veil on something as magical as sound is a privilege and a joy. Exploring the notion of overtones/the density of lower tones is one of my favorite ways to do that as my students and I get acquainted with our instruments. Better yet it’s objectively cool no matter your musical experience, so I hope you enjoy this clip from a student video where we’ve been visiting exactly that!

5/X Patterns are a big deal! For the player they can help us keep track of where we’ve been and where we’re going, and for the listener it brings them in to the conversation in a way that opens up a piece of music to comprehension *even if it’s your first time hearing it*

For the learner, little observations like what you’ll find in the following can help us understand what we’re likely to meet as we carry on through our musical journey, in this case making some sense of the order of sharps one encounters as they travel clockwise around the circle of 5ths

4/X Music is fundamentally a matter of storytelling, rather than simple recitation; what we play is more than the notes on the page in time. In the same way that an actor falls flat if they stop at the correct pronunciation of the words they’re meant to say, a piece of music feels thin without a greater intent, a focus on the emotional web you’re trying to weave.

It’s a concept I’ll return to often in these clips, though with different depths or details from student to student, one point in the process to the next. For now, enjoy a visit with an early piece, Young Hunter, from the Faber level 1 lesson book 😄