Piano | Classical Music Entertainment

Learning to Play the Harpsichord

The harpsichord is a very common instrument that is used in Baroque and classical music. While many people use another player during the 18th century many people do not know how to currently playing the harpsichord properly. Learning to play the harpsichord has become a lost art in the classical world. Here is an overview of how to properly play the harpsichord if you’re considering learning this lost art.

The first way to learn how to play the harpsichord is to learn how to play the piano or keyboard. Having prior experience in piano or keyboard will allow you to pick up learning how to play the harpsichord. Many people recommend that you have a few years experience with the piano or keyboard before you move on to the harpsichord. Playing these instruments is very similar to each other.

After learning to play on the keyboard or pianos you will be able to progress up to the harpsichord. The difference between the harpsichord and the other instruments is that the keys are more pronounced and require that you push on them harder. Is recommended that when you try to switch between the other instruments and harpsichord you practice pushing on the keys harder.

The hardest problem about playing the harpsichord is that many people tried blind the keystrokes together. Harpsichord need to have each key Bush separately so that the sound is distinct and different from each other. The first lesson you’ll have the harpsichord is learning to play each individual key separately. This allows you to learn how to properly push the keys and blend the sounds together.

Most difficult part about learning how to play the harpsichord is finding a room that will allow you to gain proper acoustics. Without the proper acoustics you’ll not be able to notice if you’re playing the harpsichord properly or not. Many people who are learning the harpsichord will be required to play and a practice room that has the acoustic set up properly.

Filed Under: Instruments, Music Tagged With: Baroque, Piano

Music at a Young Age

If your child is looking for something to do, you might consider putting them into piano lessons. Children who begin playing music at an early age will be more likely to have better memorization skills, goal setting skills, routine setting skills, and have a stronger focus. Plus they will become greater musicians and understand music theory better when they grow older.

Learning music may help a child’s memorization skills by hearing the notes on the piano (or another instrument), playing them, and memorizing where the notes fall on the piano. It’s similar to how a young child memorizes what to do at school. After reading time comes color time, and after that comes lunch, etc. They will be able to memorize music better if they begin at a younger age.

Children can learn goal setting skills by taking piano lessons. They set the goal to learn certain songs and to make it to every lesson. At a young age, children may not have opportunities to set goals. Piano lessons can help their comprehension of goal setting.

When learning to play the piano, children need to focus. There may be distractions outside the room, but they have to focus on what they are playing and remember all the things they have learned in previous lessons. The child must multitask. They are reading music and moving different fingers all at the same time and have to focus to get it all right.

Piano lessons help children to set a routine because their teacher has a routine every lesson. For example, they’ll start out practicing scales, then move on to what they have practiced outside of the lesson, and perhaps work on something new.

Starting your child in piano lessons at an early age is a good thing. Once they get older they may not have the time or be more stubborn about it, and it will take more time to learn what they could have learned sooner.

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Child, Music, Piano, Piano pedagogy

How to Play the Piano

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More than any other instrument, the piano is synonymous with classical music. Whether you are thinking of Beethoven’s symphonies or Chopin’s pieces, the piano is often the backbone of a composed piece of classical music. The piano can be a difficult instrument to learn as it requires a certain amount of coordination between the left and right hands. However, if you follow a few simple steps you should see your performance improve in no time.

The first thing to do is to learn the sequence of the notes and familiarize yourself with their appearance on the piano. The standard octave runs from C to the next C, and goes C D E F G A B C. Middle C is often the first note anyone learns on the piano as it is the boundary between the right and left hands – anything higher than middle C should be played with the right hand, while anything below the note should be pressed with the left.

Although it is often the case that the left hand will be playing chords while the right will be playing the melody, it is important to keep both hands agile and used to playing sequences of notes. This is something many pianists forget when they are starting out and concentrate on the right hand while the left is forgotten. Simple exercises such as scales and arpeggios can be done with both hands and help to keep the fingers nimble. Learning chords is also an important part of playing the piano. You should begin familiarizing yourself with the base, third and fifth notes of each chord and should try working them into pieces that you are playing. Of course, other than the technical aspects one of the most important things you must do is practice, so keep playing every day!

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Piano

The Man With The Dulcet iPad

In April 2010, classical music aficionados in San Francisco were treated to a surprise. Before an audience of hundreds, a beaming pianist ceased his master performance of Flight of the Bumblebees on the piano—and seamlessly continued his performance on the iPad instead. As the pianist devilishly tapped the conductor’s shoulder mid-flight, the audience hushed a bit to watch. The conductor gamely turned and tapped out a guest measure on the computer, and the crowd could barely suppress peals of delighted laughter.

This mischievous virtuoso was Lang Lang, the world-class pianist and showman from Hong Kong. For years Lang Lang has been making waves in the world of classical music both for his magnificent skills and his colorful, crowd-pleasing demeanor. His iPad stunt captured him a new audience of millions as the video rippled across the internet.

Even the origins of his piano career are steeped in his sense of fun and flair for physical humor. Lang Lang proudly admitted that his interests in the piano and classical music were borne out of an early experience watching Tom and Jerry cartoons. Their escalating mayhem set against a backdrop of “Dueling Pianos” struck young Lang Lang’s sense of humor as well as his developing aesthetic.

The life of a young talent is often painted as a meteoric and almost perfunctory rise to fame. Lang Lang confesses that his own was a bit of a struggle. He was expelled by a master tutor at age 9, and contemplated giving up the piano entirely. A sympathetic schoolteacher attempted to cheer him up by suggesting that he play along with Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, just for fun. The ploy worked, and Lang Lang remembered his love of music.

His enthusiastic, bombastic style is such an integral part of his oeuvre that he’s earned the name “Bang Bang” among his detractors. His fans, however, believe that this is part of his appeal. He has played at Carnegie Hall and at the Nobel Prize Ceremony. But thanks to his larger-than-life style and his iPad, Lang Lang brought his love of music to millions.

Filed Under: Instruments, Music Tagged With: IPad, Music, Piano

Clara Schumann–A trailblazer for women composers.

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The second of five children, Clara Josephine Wieck was born in Leipzig, Germany, September 13, 1819 to Marianne Tromlitz, a soprano, and Friedrich Wieck, a respected music teacher and owner of a piano manufacturing firm. Clara was an unusual child. She could barely talk, and at first, her parents thought she was a deaf mute. She didn’t begin speaking normally until age 8. Like so many other musical geniuses, she may have suffered from a form of highly-functional autism. However odd her beginnings, she was brilliant, and by age 11, was on her way to becoming a world-class pianist and composer.

One of her father’s students was a frequent childhood playmate of Clara’s, and would dress himself like a ghost and jump out from the shadows to scare her. Later in life, she married him. His name was Robert Schumann.

Clara was extremely nervous before a concert, and was rarely satisfied with her own performances. Chopin once said, “she’s the only woman in Germany who can play my music,” and claimed he composed with her in mind. She composed over 23 piano works. Her fame exceeded that of her husband, whose own compositions were considered “weird” all over Europe. Clara was dubbed the “Queen of the Piano,” whereas her husband was referred to as “Clara Weick’s Husband.” Perhaps this contributed to his moods and breakdowns. She tended him until he died in an asylum in 1856.

In addition to her music, she handled all her own business and concert details, managed 3 households, and took care of her 8 children. “I once thought I possessed a creative talent,” she once wrote, “but have given up that idea; a woman must not desire to be a composer, no one has done it, and why should I expect to?”

She resumed her concerts after her husband’s death. Clara had a loont life and a 60-year career, longer than any of her male contemporaries. Her friends included Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Feliz Mendelssohn, and her best friend, Johannes Brahms. She pioneered the world of music for all women.

Filed Under: Composers Tagged With: Clara Schumann, Music, Piano

Erik Satie – French pianist and classical composer

Born May 17, 1866, Erik Satie was said to have “been born very young into a world very old”, probably because he was raised by his grandparents following his mother’s death when he was four. There, he received his first music lessons from an organist in. By the age of 10, Erik and his younger brother Conrad returned to Paris to rejoin their father who was engaged to marry a piano teacher. After they married, Alfred and his new wife began to publish salon musical compositions.

In 1879, Satie was a student of the Paris Conservatoire, but was branded lazy and untalented by his professors, and was subsequently kicked out. Two and a half years later, he re-entered, but was still unable to earn the respect of his educators, and he dropped out to join the military. His military career was short-lived, and the details about his discharge aren’t known.

By 1887, he moved to Montmartre, and began a close friendship with romantic poet Patrice Contamine. By then, some of his early compositions had been published by his father. During that same period, he befriended composer Claude Debussy. By 1891, he was the official composer and chapel-master of the Rosicrucian Order.

He became known as the Velvet Gentleman, because he always wore gray velvet corduroy jackets and carried a black velvet umbrella. He was a dignified figure, all but when overcome with fits of laughter. He had drawling voice and a deep laugh, said to make him an entertaining conversationalist.

Satie never married. “I am a man whom women do not understand,” he’d say. His only known love affair was with an artist, Suzanne Valadon, the mother of the painter Maurice Utrillo. Her first painting was of Satie.

Besides music, his second favorite form of communication was letters. Most of them were witty, though once, his letters landed him in jail for slander. For most of his life, he lived in one room over a café in a shabby neighborhood. He walked 6 miles to the bars where he played piano, returning home with a hammer in his pocket for self-protection. He died at age fifty-nine of cirrhosis of the liver.

Filed Under: Composers Tagged With: Music, Piano

Garin Bader – “One Heart’s Journey”

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Garin Bader was just 3 when his mother, a piano teacher, began teaching him to play the piano. By age five, he made his first appearance on national television, performing on The Merve Griffin Show. By his teens, Garin received over a dozen classical piano competition awards, including the Artist’s International Young Musicians Audition, and the International Chopin Competition of New York. Part of his Chopin gold medal win included a private tour of Chopin’s home, a memory he tells in the narrative of his concert.

Today, Garin Bader enchants audiences in prestigious concert venues across the U.S., and internationally, including Carnegie Hall and the London Palladium. He is not only an exceptional classical stylist on the piano, his show has expanded to blend his love of magic and illusion for an evening of “mugic” that fills the stage with visual delights, consistently surprises, and leaves audiences spellbound. His closing scene portrays himself as 19th century Mozart composing at his piano with quill in hand, writing by the light of a lit candelabra he produces by illusion. Mozart’s rival, Solieri, steals in from the wings to poison Mozart’s cup, locks him in a trunk, then raises a black canopy. Seconds later, when the canopy falls, Marie Antoinette steps out of the trunk, an impressive twist on traditional magic’s metamorphosis illusion.

Garin’s extensive travels inspired him to record “One Heart’s Journey”, a CD of original “musical portraits and landscapes”. Each melody paints a story, particularly “Table for One”, which is part of his expanded show and features the choreography and dance of his talented wife, Vanessa. “Valiant Return”, “The Wish”, “Just One More Night”, and “Reaching Through the Moon” are just a few of the selections that will refresh your soul, relax your mind, and make your spirit soar.

When he’s not performing, Garin Bader can be found in his studio in Las Vegas where he teaches a core-force fitness strategy he’s developed for improving strength, building confidence, and enhancing your life. This strategy is key to his success, and he’s committed to teaching his methods to others.

Filed Under: Instruments Tagged With: London Palladium, Music, New York City, Piano

Sergei Prokofiev – Russian Composer

Composer Sergei Serveyevich Prokofiev was born on April 23, 1891 in the farming village of Sontsovka in the area of the Russian Empire now known as the Ukraine. Having lost two infant daughters prior to having their son, his parents were loving and doted on him. His father was an agricultural engineer, and his mother was educated and possessed a thorough knowledge of music and the piano, which proved invaluable to Sergei, whose passion to compose began at age 8 after seeing Tchaikovsky’s “The Sleeping Beauty”.

As a youngster Prokofiev rarely smiled and was fairly unpopular. He always said exactly what was on his mind with no social filter. In school, he kept a record of the mistakes other students made. Even he admitted he was “full of splinters”. When he played the piano, he left out the black keys because they scared him. As late as his 20’s he wrote “white” music to be played entirely on white keys.

Prokofiev is known for his concertos, operas, symphonies, film music, ballet scores, and his infamous “Peter and the Wolf”, a work for children. Critics were hard on him. His violent playing jarred audiences who said the way he attacked the keys made them think of somebody uprooting trees. They made fun of his long, dangly arms and huge hands, which seemed to always move as if playing an invisible keyboard.

He married twice, once to Lina Llubera, a Spanish singer, with whom he had two sons. He later married Myra Mendelson, a Russian Writer.

He loved to play chess, always wore a tie and coat to breakfast, and was a chain smoker.

He was hard working, and could work 14 hours a day, stopping only to eat and scold his children for making noise. He didn’t get along with neighbors, and was once evicted when one complained he’d repeated the same chord on the piano – 218 times in a row.

When he died of a stroke at age sixty, his death went unreported for a week because Joseph Stalin had died on the same day.

Filed Under: Composers, Music Tagged With: Piano, Russian Empire