arrange • compose • conduct
What will the harmonic language of your next piece be? Hopefully, your musical studies and experiences have given you fluency in multiple harmonic languages. Pentatonic; modal; tonal; functional jazz; modal jazz; atonal….the list goes on.As I begin to write a piece, I am thinking about the harmonic language, and how […]
I like to ask myself this question sometimes, as a self-reminder. In my mind, sheet music was invented to help us recall more and more difficult music. The sheet music isn’t the music, it’s a short hand for us to be able to sing or play the music well. Certainly, […]
A student mentioned that he’d been having trouble memorizing music recently. In particular, he’d been struggling with memorizing the words. He’s a fine young musician; learning melodies or even tricky harmony lines comes quickly for him. But he was puzzled over why the words weren’t staying in his memory more […]
For singers brought up in a “classical” mindset, the first chance to interpret in a jazz idiom can be disconcerting. Do I need to sing the exact rhythms on the lead sheet? Why are there chords in parentheses at the end? (Either it’s part of the piece or it isn’t, […]
I’m in the background watching my son discuss a merit badge he’s working on with a counselor, and thinkng about the motivation that comes from discrete, earnable achievements. Of course, concerts are the ultimate discrete achievements – specific pieces are brought from unfamiliarity to performance in a limited amount of […]
Jazz singing is an oral tradition. You need to listen to multiple recordings as you begin to prepare a song, for one big reason. It’s this: the interpretation of the song has evolved away from the original sheet music and into something living. Only by listening to multiple recordings can […]
A math educator friend posted a fun 3-minute math puzzle on Facebook yesterday – it was fun for me to play, though I only got close to the right answer. (If only I was still calculus-adept…). Of the responses, several were by musicians/music educators, and in his replies, my friend […]
I talked with my students about a specific type of vertical awareness today. I think it’s really essential to train ourselves as choir singers to be able to see beyond our own staff – it’s one of the gifts of being in a choir rather than a band or orchestra, […]
I spend part of most days writing music. And a small but significant portion of that time, every single session, is focused on musical clarity. Why focus on clarity? Alice Parker says that only 5% of the music you can imagine can be notated, so why worry so much about […]
Until you learn attain sufficient music literacy, every piece you learn is an island. One of the biggest gifts music literacy can give you is the gift of perspective. That is, the ability to recognize common characteristics from one piece to the next. Imagine you are an explorer in the […]