Piano Solo

Have you ever seen someone playing piano without sheet music and wonder “how are they doing that?”

It’s like magic to the uninitiated. They think this person must have years and years of piano lessons under their belt. And while some pianists do have years of classical training it doesn’t mean a thing!

That’s right. In fact, taking classical piano lessons can actually hinder your ability to just sit down and freely improvise. No, what most improvising pianists know is how to use chords. Chords and knowledge of the scale the chords came from is all that is needed to make music at the piano.

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Chopin used them extensively. So did Beethoven and Mozart. Arpeggios are beautiful and are perfect for the New Age piano style too!

You can hear them in George Winston’s music. David Lanz uses them in many of his compositions, and of course, I use them as well. Why? Because the piano is well suited for this technique!

The left-hand is used mostly to create this cascading flow of notes. For example, in the lesson “Wood Thrush” we use over 2 octaves of the keyboard. This creates a very nice background over which we can improvise (or compose) our melodies.

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January 27, 2006 is the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As a result, many people will hear of him and his music for the first time. No doubt, the so-called Mozart Effect will also be mentioned in different places and publications around the world.

Just in case people haven t heard this, I want to make sure that you know before 2006 arrives, that listening to Mozart does NOT, repeat NOT raise your IQ. Not only that, but the people who did the original research and wrote the book The Mozart Effect never said that it did! It is frightening to me to think that well-intentioned people could do such good work, publish this

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Even after two centuries since his death, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart remains as one of the most famous and highly influential composers the world has ever seen. His enormous output of Classical music spans over six hundred compositions, including several works that have become seminal pieces of symphonic, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Today, there are many Mozart compositions that are still a staple of standard concert repertoire.

Mozart is also unique in the sense that it is rare among composers to have their lives celebrated outside the boundaries of their art. But Mozart s own life was the subject of many myths and controversies, some of them so colorful that they have become the subject matter of countless biographies and

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Chopin used them extensively. So did Beethoven and Mozart. Arpeggios are beautiful and are perfect for the New Age piano style too!

You can hear them in George Winston’s music. David Lanz uses them in many of his compositions, and of course, I use them as well. Why? Because the piano is well suited for this technique!

The left-hand is used mostly to create this cascading flow of notes. For example, in the lesson “Wood Thrush” we use over 2 octaves of the keyboard. This creates a very nice background over which we can improvise (or compose) our melodies.

(more…)