Cinco De Mayo - Lesson 2

The second lesson for the spring - completing what I considered an assessment of where I stood and where I was likely to go with instruction.

I was originally a student of suzuki, and when I played the piece I had prepared for the teacher, he (knowing that I was a former suzuki student) said that he wasn't surprised to find that the rhythm was my greatest challenge.

I knew going in that sight-reading skills would be my biggest challenge. I spent a lot of time on the song to try and master the rhythm and be able to read it correctly. In fact, I was able to play it pretty well as it was written, my only downfall being that I decided to listen to a recording of the tune & ended up trying to immitate what I had heard. That was mainly because I was concerned about it sounding too "amateurish".

I've since given in to the fact that I'm going to have to sound hokey and unrefined for a while & have spent some time reading the piece and being able to play it from start to finish in perfect rhythm. Lots of slow playing with the metronome.

One idea that I was already familiar with and which makes a lot of sense and has been paying off a lot is the fact that if you practice perfectly, you will play perfectly. Of course, the idea of doing anything "perfectly" in regards to music is bad, but the idea that how you practice music is how you play it is still true. (If you practice too fast and everything mushes together, that's how you will always play it, even if it's the best you've ever done, it's still sounding mushed to your audience)

---

Another big thing that was touched on during the lesson was that I was making very large movements on the keyboards with my chord choices.

I initially was concerned about this because I knew about the chord range and knew that I was going out of the range, but I didn't know where to go and waited for the teacher to give me some guidance. If you didn't know, the chord range is from the F above middle C to the C an octave below middle C.

To be able to stay within the chord range, I had to invert some of the chords. In fact, the teacher explained that I was free to practice open voicing in which I was free to play any of the notes from the chord, anywhere within the range.

Another thing that makes a tune sound polished and professional is tone-sharing or having the same tone or pitch occur in multiple and consecutive chords. This creates a relationship between the chords.

Finally, the teacher gave me this advice - keep the bass line moving in the same direction. So there is a chord progression in the tune that is Cm7, Eb, E7, Dm7(b5), G7; the chord progression is such that the bass line goes Eb, E, F, keeping the bass line moving in an upward direction.