Hobbies

Here are six very good reasons to learn how to play piano in the New Age style:

1. It’s easy. No months spent learning theory here. Just a few chords and you’re off enjoying the joy of improvisation. Learning chords is the key to playing easily and effortlessly! And with New Age piano, the chords you learn can be used right away!

2. It’s fun! You can actually create your own music! In the classical music world you spend all your time learning how to play other peoples music. With New Age piano, you can sit down and “compose” a piece of your very own

3. It sounds good. You can, by using a few modern sounding chords, sound good playing piano right away.

4. Techniques are easily learned. New Age piano uses techniques that anyone can learn how to play in a matter of minutes.

5. No note reading involved. New Age piano is very much an improvised music. This being the case, chords are really all that you need to know. Although note reading is nice, it’s not necessary in order to create your own music

As an amateur songwriter, who struggles with a computer far from powerful enough to run the necessary software to record vocals of good quality, I have looked for good solutions. And I’ve found a few.

In a short while you will hear songs that are totally computer made ? including the vocals. Yamaha made the technology, and licensed it to various companies. Vocaloid is the name ? remember it if you like music!

I have had the pleasure of testing Leon, the Virtual Soul Vocalist, from www.zero-g.co.uk.

The complexity hid behind the seemingly simplistic interface is astonishing. I hardly had to look at the manual at all while exploring ? quite atypical for music software.

You draw your vocals using the mouse, and then add lyrics on top. Then, add harmonics, vibrato, attack etc. as you want, tweak the phonemes (your words are automatically converted, and you can edit them as you wish using the reference guide in the manual) and go. Record the vocals as WAV and import them into your favourite sequencer to add music, or use the program as a VST plugin.

Rarely is a chord played with its tones contained in a single octave, the root on the bottom, the third in the middle, and the fifth on the top.

Usually chords are “voiced!”

This basically means that the positions of a chord’s tones are scattered over the keyboard. The tones may be altered, doubled, added to, missing, and so forth.

There are a great variety of possibilities available in voicing chords. Voicing chords properly is an art within itself. Using the correct voicing techniques in your playing will give your improvisation a “hip,” mature and full sound. Chords played in root position just does not seem to do the job when playing Jazz, Rock, Pop, Blues, Gospel and “Smooth Jazz” piano.

Learning and mastering good voice leading techniques in your playing is not difficult if you just follow some simple rules.

1. The most important notes in any chord is the 3rd and the 7th. The 3rd of the chord defines whether the chord is a major or minor chord. The 7th of the chord will define whether the chord is a dominant or major chord. Usually the bass player will play the root and fifth. The root and fifth are not essential tones and can be completely left our from your chord progressions. If you must use the root and fifth try using it in your right hand, not your left. You should add your “color” tones in your right hand.

SoundEdit Pro
http://www.deprice.com/soundeditpro.htm

SoundEdit Pro is a digital audio editor for a user-friendly price. It’s the perfect program for home studio recording and for people who are just getting started with audio editing. SoundEdit Pro provides an intuitive, easy-to-use interface and is designed for the everyday user. It has dozens of amazing audio effects and tools for converting audio files into different formats, including MP3, WMA, WAV, Ogg Vorbis and many others. It even includes the possibility to directly load audio tracks! And that’s just the beginning of what you can do with SoundEdit Pro.

Audio Record Wizard 3
http://www.deprice.com/audiorecordwizard.htm

This sound recorder program is designed to work directly with your sound card, so can record almost all audio from your sound card at near-perfect quality. You can record sound from a microphone, line-in, and just about any other programs (such as winamp, realplay, windows media player and others). Direct to disk feature allows you to record sound without running out of memory. Audio Record Wizard can also record directly to the mp3 format if you choose, saving you valuable disk space. You can select the different mp3 recording modes as required.

AudioStreamer
http://www.deprice.com/audiostreamer.htm

I have always had a big problem with my addiction to music. I tend to hear I song I like, then rush out to the local record store to buy the CD, without consideration for whether or not I would actually like the rest of the songs on the set. After years of this habit, I have amassed a huge CD collection, but I have been left with many one-hit-wonder discs that I no longer listen to and just gather dust while taking up space in my small apartment (anyone else fall for the infectiousness of Chumbawumba’s "Tubthumping" back in the ’90s only to find the rest of the CD less than appealing?). I know I am not the only one with this infliction I like to call " Itchy Trigger Finger Music Purchasing," and we all could use some help in weeding out the now-undesirables to make room for hopefully wiser purchases in the future.

I have an established this routine for tidying my overflowing CD collection:

· Scan through your CD collection with this golden rule in mind ? "If you haven’t listen to it two years, pull it out." Make a pile of these discs that have not had a recent relationship with your stereo.

OK, so I lied about the fun part.

Maybe piano playing is the just 2nd most fun thing adults can do. But 2nd place isn’t bad when you consider the popularity of the competition.

But there’s no question at all that it is MUCH safer than sex.

How so?

·Piano playing has no threat of easily transmitted diseases, unless of course you lick the keys.

·To date, piano playing is not known to cause pregnancy.

·Piano playing does not lead to jealousy, rage, spousal abuse, or murder. No love triangles here ? there’s plenty of notes and songs to go around.

·Piano playing is generally not done in fast cars leading to accidents.

·Very few pianists talk on their cell phones while playing the piano with both hands.

·Piano playing is generally not done under the influence of foreign substances. Very few piano players sniff glue or inhale helium. But the few adults that do play under the influence find that falling off the piano bench is really not that big a deal.

·Piano playing does not often lead to 911 calls or other forms of emergency action.

Piano lessons for adults is generally LOTS more fun than it is for kids, primarily because the only adults that play piano are people who really want to, which is certainly not true of most kids that take piano lessons because their parents want them to.

But that’s not the only reason by a long shot.

Adults in record numbers are signing up for piano lessons all around the world, for a variety of reasons, including:

* Because of the internet, adults have become aware that piano lessons don’t have to happen in a music studio or store, so they are not locked into a schedule of showing up for a lesson every Tuesday at 4. Now they can choose their own time and schedule and learn at their own pace via lessons available on the internet.

*Adults have become aware that traditional methods of learning by reading music and practicing scales is not the only way to learn to play the piano. They have become aware that learning chords and chording techniques is a viable option.

Those of you who have been reading my articles for some time now know that I believe improvisation to be the cornerstone of musical creativity. Why? Because without the ability to just play, we become stifled and the “real” music that is within each of us withers and dies.

Now, if you’re a writer, you have lots of support in this area. There are books, (many, many books) that explore the topic of freewriting to its fullest. There are plenty of exercises and advice from professionals in the field. There are even classes designed to “free the writer within.”

But what about music? Where can the aspiring piano improviser go to get help and advice on this topic? Traditionally, they would turn to Jazz - a word synonymous with improvisation. Jazz is a big believer in learning scales and chords. In fact, there are 1000’s of scales and 1000’s of chords to learn. This can be a turn-off for the beginning student who simply wants to dive in and express through music.

Learning how to improvise need not be difficult. There are only 2 things required:

1. The ability to trust your intuition

Piano playing doesn’t have to be boring. There’s no law that says you have to play a song the same way everyone else plays it. By learning some basic music theory and chord formations, you can have the time of your life playing music like you’ve always wanted to.

Every musician has a different method of arranging. Some start with the bass, some start with the melody, some just arrange everything all at once. You’ll eventually discover the process that works best for you, but here’s a basic guideline list to get you started.

- Play the song as written. Pay careful attention to the melody and harmonies so you understand how the song is supposed to sound before altering it. Make sure you can play the song very well before moving on to an arrangement.

- Analyze the song’s chord structure and form. Know all the chord changes and any key changes. Separate the piece into parts using the letter system discussed in this course; often, you’ll be able to add some spice to an arrangement by simply knowing where a verse switches into a chorus.

Piano improvising and arranging is an art but definitely not a science. It is all based on chords and chord progressions. There aren’t any steadfast rules for creating an arrangement, nothing to dictate the limitless potential of your imagination. Musicians learn to arrange by simply arranging ? and improvise by improvising — over and over again. It’s a big game of trial and error. But it’s also a scientific method: you keep the experiments that work, and abandon those that don’t work.

That being said, there are a few things that can help you in the knowledge of piano improvization. Don’t think of these as rules, but rather points on a roadmap guiding you through the vast world of arrangement and improvisation possibilities.

- The first step, of course, is to learn as much as you can about chords and how they work. Once you get a handle on piano chords and the chord symbols that represent them such as Fm7, G9, D, C7, etc., you can then learn how to break those chords up in various patterns.