Category: g) Classically Inclined
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Cutting to the Chase (Reaticulate)
I’ve been asked to explain a bit about the really groovy looking window that appears on the right-hand side of my REAPER orchestral template. What is it, why is it there, how do I get it and so forth? Well, one of the old problems for MIDI musicians concerns what is known as “chasing”. You’ve…
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With One Foot on the Platform…
Well, you’ve got to do something when you’re waiting for a train, right? The piece, incidentally, is Liszt’s El Contrabandista, which makes the Mephisto Waltz look like Für Elise… Bот блестящee представление. Sometimes you get amazing surprises on street pianos (and they don’t always come from passing concert pianists).
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Rachmaninov Had Big Hands
Here Igudesman and Joo show how to tackle Rachmaninov’s famous C# minor Prelude if you’re a little digitally ungifted by nature. Rachmaninov was a big guy. He also had Marfan Syndrome, aka hypermobility. He could span an incredible 13th and make unusual stretches in between the fingers. Nevertheless, he generally wrote within standard compass and ability.…
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Fostering Talent
It’s a hell of a story. The life of the inimitable Florence Foster Jenkins was begging to be told, and has now hit the big screen in a biopic, starring Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant. (She was inimitable, because nobody in their right mind would have wanted to imitate her.) Lovely Flo would have done…
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What the Fugue?
You go back to Bird and I’ll go back to Bach Here’s a piano exercise I find really useful. I’ll run it down first, then tell you why it’s useful and how you can use it as more than just a practice drill. We’re going to take the changes to a standard (one with quite slow…
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Note Perfect
Well, there’s no such thing of course, but I needed a snazzy headline for another software review. If you don’t use Sibelius, you are excused and can run and play. If you do, I’d like to tell you about the best playback option I’ve ever found for it. It’s called NotePerformer. There’s always been a…
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Beethoven’s Dynamic Duo
I was talking to a jazz pianist the other day about technique, in particular dynamic and tonal control. He asked for some exercises and I thought about it for a bit, then suggested he work on the Beethoven E minor Sonata (opus 90). This rather underrated piece* does require healthy hands, but it’s not going…
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Everyone’s a Critic…
Jazz musicians will possibly know Nicolas Slonimsky for his Thesaurus of Scale Patterns. Famously, Coltrane practised out of it and I come across musicians today who still explore it. Just the other day, I was chatting to a saxophonist about Tcherepnin’s nine-note scale (the interval pattern is half, whole, half, three times over, and it’s…
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I Could Read a Book
Heard occasionally on the bandstand: “Oh come on guys, surely you don’t have to read THAT one?” Well, in theory we should all know just about every tune by memory. But this isn’t the ’50s and not even the busiest musicians gig every night anymore – and even when they do, it’s not always jazz…
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Cueing at the Alphabet Soup Kitchen
Yup, that’s spelled correctly. Cueing. I’m not talking about the delightful British pastime of standing in line for something and drawing a perverse comfort from covertly bitching about how ugly and stupid the people ahead of you are. Nope. Cueing musical parts. It’s more an issue in extended classical pieces than in jazz, but some…
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