Episode 48 - Dancing about Architecture

Episode 48 – Dancing about architecture

G’day, everyone. I’m David Reidy; welcome to Piano, finally, a podcast by an old bloke who is getting around to learning the piano, finally.

[Crab Canon]

Welcome to show forty-eight. Thank you very much for joining me. If this is the first time you’re listening to the podcast, I hope you enjoy what you hear. If you’ve returned for another episode, then thanks. If you're also learning the piano or another musical instrument, please let me know how you’re progressing with it. You can contact me at [email protected].

Yet again, this week there was some unexpected music. On Wednesday, some of the Year 9 music students had a day of learning how to remix songs with two presenters who specialise in teaching music production to High School students. Although I was teaching for most of the day, I was able to sit in on the first session and then again later in the day to see what was happening.

One of the presenters is employed by the diocese to enhance music education in the schools, the other is a working musician who was able to offer some insight into the industry and the practicalities of being a gigging musician. Her stage name is Nyxen, and I’ll include a link to her YouTube channel in the show notes.

https://www.youtube.com/@NYXENMUSIC

As is often the case with these unexpected music events, it’s not the type of music I would typically seek out, but in this case, I found myself really enjoying Nyxen’s work, especially as she explained how it all came together.

The students were able to spend the whole day working on their remixes of Nyzen’s track Nightmare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4136AwqMjiA

The students were provided with a full set of stems from the recording and then led through the process of remixing the music to produce their own versions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay to the end, I had science classes to teach, so I haven’t heard any of the students’ works yet, but I hope to catch up with some of them in the coming week.

It's great to see the type of things that are being done as part of music education in schools; it has certainly changed greatly from when I was at school, where the height of technology was a melodica being passed around the classroom. Not only was it great for spreading music, but it also did a good job with respiratory illnesses.

Denis Zhdanov has an interesting story about his first attempt at an international piano competition. I’ll include a link in the show notes; it’s a bit of fun, featuring a nice piece of music at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOAuDBWLzXI

[Crab Canon]

I thought I would have mentioned the creator of this week’s suggestion already, but I checked back through the show notes and can’t find a reference. This is a bit strange as I watch a lot of David Bennett’s videos.

David Bennett is an English pianist and songwriter who has built quite a large following on YouTube with over a million subscribers. David’s videos are mostly educational, where he looks at the structure of songs and other music, analysing how they are put together and cataloguing the different musical techniques in the pieces.

https://www.youtube.com/@DavidBennettPiano

It helps if you understand a bit of musical theory, as many of the videos look at how songs are built around chord progressions, or with differing modes and scales. The videos are always interesting, and I’ve found it useful to see how the theory I have been learning is used in more contemporary music. Most of the music David chooses is from the sixties and onwards, and he often states that he is a huge fan of the Beatles.

Many of the videos are list-based; for example, there are videos where David goes through extensive lists, such as the top ninety greatest piano introductions. The channel is a lot of fun, and I’m sure I will mention it again with more suggestions.

The video I am going to highlight this week is called Film and TV Themes that will help you identify intervals. Intervals between notes keep cropping up in theory, and I have no problem identifying them on paper, but with a few exceptions, I have very little success identifying them by ear. Indeed, it would be a useful skill when trying to work out how to play a song at the keyboard. For example, how far apart are those two notes at the beginning of the Jaws theme?

So in this video, David has found examples of every interval from a minor second to a minor ninth in popular movie and television themes. The selections range from The Flintstones to many of John Williams’ movie themes, and are popular enough that I already knew the music in nearly every case. In each piece, the intervals stand out; they’re not hidden in other aspects of the music. David has found examples where the interval is a significant part of the passage.

This is a valuable resource, and although I’ll need a good deal of practice to get even remotely proficient at this, the video is certainly a good starting point. And to answer the question from earlier, the Jawstheme is the first example in the video; it uses a minor second, E to F.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JftZNTUJTJc

[Crab Canon]

There is a saying that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. The exact originator of the phrase is uncertain; it has been attributed to Martin Mull, Elvis Costello and Steve Martin, amongst others. Exactly who coined it is not particularly important, but I think it points to a trap that music learners, including myself, can easily fall into. And that is watching the dancing.

Now I know that this is not the original intent of the quote, which was to express the futility of trying to describe music in words. Still, it got me thinking about all the ways in which we can engage with music that are of lesser benefit than actually listening to it or performing it.

It is very easy to find ways to engage with music without actually playing it; it is even easier to find ways to not practise it and still feel that you are doing the right thing. It would be easy to blame YouTube for this, but that would be a bit like blaming McDonald’s for not running out of soft-serve ice cream before you made yourself sick. You could spend two or three hours a day watching YouTube videos about piano technique, or almost any other subject, and still not make any actual improvement to your playing.

But it’s appealing. There is a certain amount of knowledge that you do need in order to progress. It helps to have a basic understanding of what you are doing when you are learning, but it is easy to take it too far. It is also easy to put too much importance on that knowledge.

Knowing chords is important; they are at the root of pretty much all Western music, and you generally won’t find a piece that doesn’t use them. Being able to confidently play all the notes together, even with awkward fingering, is a key skill, and one that will only get better with continual practice. Being able to transition between chords while playing legato is something I have been working on for the ending of Afternoon Snooze. So, working on chords is definitely a good use of practice time.

What is not a good use of practice time is working on naming chords. At least it’s not a good use of time for a beginning piano learner, and that’s because, at the moment, all the chords I have to play are written out in the sheet music. If I were playing from a lead sheet or I was part of a band and talking about approaches to a piece with other band members, knowing the difference between a C seventh and a C minor major seventh chord would be important, but it’s not at the moment.

So why am I watching a video about it instead of working on getting my hands to work together on the Mozart? Because it has the illusion of making progress, and that’s the catch. I will undoubtedly need this information eventually, and it will eventually be important to understand it, but not at the moment.

It is much too tempting to watch a video or read an article rather than get started practising. And so I have made a rule for myself. On weekdays, I won’t watch any piano YouTube videos or read any piano literature until after I’ve done at least thirty minutes of practice. That also includes watching videos about the latest piano gear and software. I’ve decided that there won’t be any more dancing to the architecture until I’ve at least got some way towards building the building.

[Crab Canon]

I’ve mentioned Bill Hilton a few times on the podcast; he’s an English music educator who has a YouTube channel and an active Patreon community. I’m a Patreon supporter of Bill, and I’m going to review one of the benefits that comes with a Patreon membership.

One of the perks that the membership includes is access to two collections of Bill’s teaching materials, Piano Packs and Exercises, Inventions and Ideas. It’s the second collection that I’m looking at today.

The E, I & I collection is made up of nine PDFS, each of which is divided into sections. I have started working through them, and I’m on the first PDF. The first exercise part of this instalment includes a simple (or not so simple, it is deliberately designed to make you think) exercise to cover finger dexterity. Bill makes the point that the exercises in these documents are not designed to replace traditional scale practice, but rather serve as an add-on. They have been designed for adult learners and so are a bit more involved than you would find in a series made for younger learners.

In E, I & I number one, the exercise is a short pattern in C major and F major that is played hands separately and then hands together. It has a non-obvious fingering scheme, so non-obvious that Bill does not include finger numbers, leaving it as an exercise for the pianist. Given the order of notes in the ascending and descending parts of the pattern, this is not trivial, and I’m still not completely happy with the solution I am using.

The invention is much simpler; it involves pedal use and works on playing repeated notes by cycling fingers 1, 2, and 3 rather than just using the same finger each time. It is also marked pianissimo to practise quiet playing. I found this much easier to get started, but still a challenge to get to a reasonable standard.

There is a second exercise and an idea section making up the rest of the first instalment in E, I & I. The exercise looks at legato and staccato playing with both hands. The final idea section talks about some strategies to build up physical skills for playing. I’ve now added some time with the E, I & I materials in each of my practice sessions; they make a nice addition and let me reduce some of the scale playing time.

There’s a link in the show notes to the first video and download in the series, which is free to everyone. The subsequent eight instalments are available via Bill’s Patreon page. As a reminder, please use the web to sign up for Patreon memberships, not the iOS application. If you use iOS, Apple takes a 30% cut, although a court has recently halted this practice in the United States.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8kQ2qn7qCk

[Crab Canon]

I have the next concert in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra series next Sunday. This concert will feature Sir Stephen Hough playing Brahms' First Piano Concerto, with the premiere of Iain Grandage’s LiFTand selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. I’ll record the podcast episode on Saturday, so I’ll review the concert in episode fifty.

If you’d like to contact me, email is the best way. You’ll find me at [email protected] and the website at www.pianofinally.show. In both cases, pianofinally is all one word. The show is also on Instagram and available as audio-only on YouTube. You can subscribe via any popular iOS or Android podcast application or from directories such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. I also post an excerpt and link for each episode as an Instagram reel.

If you’re learning an instrument, let me know where you are in your journey. What’s going well, and what are the challenges?

So, until next week, I hope your piano stays in tune and you enjoy your time at the keys.

[Crab Canon]

The Bagatelle in F by Daniel Gottlob Türk has now got to the same stage as the Canon; I can play it without a problem nearly every time, so it has moved to once per practice session, just to keep it current. Both the Andrew Craggs pieces, Afternoon Snooze and Blackout Blues, are getting close to acceptable, but not yet up to speed.

I have made one artistic decision, which I think I can make as I’m not preparing these pieces for an exam. I think the tempo marking for Afternoon Snooze is too fast. It is marked with a crochet equal to 80 beats per minute, but I think that is far too fast. If the piece is meant to be about a snooze, then I think it should be slower and lazier, and so I’m playing it a fair bit slower.

I’m also including the arrangement of Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja with both hands together, and very slowly. If you’re wondering just how much slower that is than is specified in the score, those four bars should take just under two seconds to play.

The Mozart is the best of the three; otherwise, the pieces are first takes recorded using the Kawai NV10 as the keyboard and Pianoteq 8 on the M4 Pro Mac Mini, pretending to be an Bösendorfer VC in classical recording mode.

[Practice pieces]