Making Time for Music in a Busy Season

The school year has kicked off, and life has turned into a whirlwind! I'm making the most of my piano time when I can get it, but it's been touch-and-go for the past week. To make up for the missed practices, I've begun exploring musical work away from the keyboard. Two activities have been key: mental practice (studying the written score away from the piano) and ear training. Both are great brain workouts, but I have to admit, ear training has been a lot more fun!

Ear Training Adventures

Over the past few weeks, I've tackled PWJ's beginner ear-training courses on intervals (ascending and descending) and triads. Even though I can play most tunes by ear, it's a challenge for me to identify intervals out of context away from the piano. I did better with triads, but there's still work to do. To practice, I've made recordings where I play triads in different inversions and try to identify the chord quality (major or minor) and inversion. It's wild to realize minor third + perfect fourth (for example: E-G-C) creates a bright major chord, while perfect fourth + minor third (example: G-C-Eb) turns it moody, melancholy, and minor. How have I never noticed this before? Probably because thinking in intervals doesn't come naturally to me (yet).

Listening with Intention

I'm still figuring out which songs fit into which category!

I've also been diving into intentional music listening--specifically, pop songs with clear, common chord progressions (think I-vi-IV-V, I-V-vi-IV, etc.). It's fun and simple since they're mostly familiar songs, like "Arthur's Theme," "Last Kiss," and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (which hit me with serious nostalgia). It's also challenging because I'm listening closely for chord changes and paying attention to the "feel" of each shift. And knowing which chord is being played, I try to sense its major or minor quality. These songs are almost exclusively built on triads, so no sevenths, chord extensions, or alterations for now.

I've already made several playlists, and I think I've begun to get a good sense of how the different progressions (such as I-V vs ii-V, or vi-V vs vi-ii) feel. It's really helped to spend, say, an hour straight listening to songs with one type of progression and then switch to songs with another type. Of course, not all songs use a particular progression exclusively throughout the song, and my brain is now registering, "Oh, we're back to the progression!" or "Looks like we're doing something else now."

Join the Fun

If any of my three readers is interested in knowing what's on my playlists, please let me know--I'd love to share. Better yet, try listening to a favorite song and see if you can tell where the chords change, and if the song sounds different when you're focusing specifically on the changes!

Comments

The Amazing Practice Tracker 2.0: Leveling Up My Piano Game

(Apologies for the cheesy clip art. I needed to come up with something, or the Blogger template would show a fuzzy, overly-enlarged snippet of the first chart below.) When I showed my husband my piano practice tracker, he said I should market and sell it. Ha. It’s not for sale, but I’m excited to share how this tool has transformed my practice—and why it might inspire all three of my readers. Since my last post about the Amazing Practice Tracker, I’ve made it even better. Here’s a peek at how it works, using my June data. All The Pretty Colors, All the Pretty Winners My tracker now sparkles with color: darker shades for active pieces, lighter ones for maintenance, technique, and sight-reading. Each day, the piece I practice most gets a bright yellow highlight—a little “gold medal,” if you will. (Click image for a slightly larger view.) A leaderboard automatically shows the day’s top piece and time. And if that isn't enough, I keep track of the month's leaders--specifically, ho...

Eureka! Secondary Dominant!

I am such a nerd, and I love being a nerd! Today I was working on Section 5 of You Are My Sunshine, specifically on getting this section up to performance level. In other words, I was practicing being a performer , not an arranger . But then, of course, I came up with another idea. I had just played the delicate sixths and descending rag rolls of "when skies are gray" (I chord) and then moved to the parallel octaves of "you never know, dear" (leading to IV). The shift sounded abrupt to me. Harsh. It needed something. It needed musical WD-40. Something to ease the hinge between textures. And then I stumbled upon it! Right before moving to IV, I can slip in a V7/IV — a secondary dominant! So I tried it, and it sounded so good that I actually yelled "Secondary dominant!" out loud in my house like I was Archimedes discovering water displacement in the bathtub. It's such a small thing. One little chord. But it smooths that transition, leaning the harmony ...

The Tyranny of the Dots

In the Billy Joel documentary And So It Goes , Billy talks about "reading the dots." He didn't want—or need—to "read the dots," meaning the music notes on the page. He had developed his own rock 'n' roll piano style and, after a few years of classical training, he left the dots behind. I didn't want to read the dots, either, once upon a time. As a little kid, I had a good ear and could quickly figure out just about any tune on the piano. But in first grade, I finally started piano lessons, thus beginning my life with the dots. The Wall of Dots Between Me and Music I hated the dots! I wanted to learn them, sure, but it was so hard. If my teacher played what was written, I could play it right back for him. But if he asked me to play it from the dots, I felt like I would pop a blood vessel in my brain. It was so frustrating for my six-year-old self to have the code to a simple tune sitting silently before my eyes and not be able to crack it and bring th...

Picking Up the Pieces: A Piano Practice Journal

Search This Blog