To pianists starting the guitar (or “Message to me in the past”)

Collage of Flickr member Gino Guarnere Photography’s “IMG_9820″ and Flickr member zcopley’s “Fingerboard”

This week I was thinking about why it is that when I think about the mechanics of music (chords, scales, etc), I always visualize a piano keyboard in my mind’s eye.  One reason is that that’s the first instrument I learned on, the one I played for years and years.  The other is that I think there’s something very easy to see about the piano keyboard, where the guitar seems so foreign.  Visually the piano keyborad just all so nicely laid out, and there are patterns of white keys and black keys that make it very helpful to the minds eye.

A guitar has dots on the fret board every once in a while, for seemingly “random” (not actually true) reasons.  And then there’s the weird interval between each string: all fourths, except between the 2nd and 3rd strings, where it’s a third.  Wow, none of that is very pleasing or easy to understand by the mind’s eye! (Especially if you’re used to a piano).

Here’s a “what if…” that I figured out this week.  This “what if” would probably have helped me when I started to learn the guitar…

A dash of history

A lot of experimentation went in to developing the piano keyboard as we know it, from the Greek “hydraulis” (world’s first keyboard), to the oldest pipe organs, to the harpsichord and so forth.  From what I can figure, the design of today’s keyboard was settled around the 15th Century.

There are a lot of reasons we have today’s keyboard design, which I won’t go in to since I’m not an expert.  I’ve posted a couple links below if you’re interested.  Here’s what captured my imagination though.  I looked at a picture of the hydraulis and noticed its completely flat keyboard:

The Hydraulis:  note the totally flat keyboard

The “What if…?”

There are reasons governed largely by the laws of physics that we didn’t end up keeping a flat keyboard like the one on the hydraulis.  But let’s forget that for a moment.  What if we had?  In this imaginary “what if”, we’ll say that the piano sounds exactly the same, it’s just all white keys.

Each white key is a half-step above the next, so in twelve chromatic steps you go from C to C.  It would look like this:

Pretend the piano had no black keys

And so a C Major would look like this:

A C Major Scale on the imaginary flat keyboard

And G Major would look like this:

A G Major Scale on the imaginary flat keyboard

Notice a pattern?  The interval between each note of the major scale doesn’t change, no matter what key you’re playing.  That’s basic music theory, but visually on the imaginary flat keyboard, you can see how true it really is.  A lot of times when we’re playing the real piano, we can forget this, because each key feels physically different on our hands, due to the raised black keys.  But the pattern is always the same.  On my imaginary keyboard, the major scale pattern is this:

Pattern for a major scale in any key looks like this

Which brings me to the guitar…

The guitar is such a flat-keyboarded instrument!  You do have to wrap your mind around the interval between each string, but the great news for a guitar player is that once you figure out a scale– major, minor, whatever– you now know that scale in every key.  You just have to change where on the fretboard you’re playing.  And, as long as you’re playing bar chords or “closed” chords (where you’re playing every string in a chord and no open strings), once you know a chord in one key, you know it in every key.  This is the gift the guitar offers to guitar players.

If you’re reading this and you think “well, duh,” sorry to disappoint.  It is a bit basic, I know.   But when I was starting out on the guitar, I just couldn’t wrap my head around this… and I’m willing to bet there are others out there with the same problem right now.

 

Keyboard History Links:

http://www.pianoworld.com/keyboard_history.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_instrument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_harpsichord
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortepiano
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano

Improvisation breakthrough!: Reminder for me, encouragement for would-be improvisers

Note to self: I must read this post again in the future if I’m feeling discouraged.

Note to some readers: If you’re in place with your instrument where you believe that you’ll never be able to improvise, and you think you’ve never really been able to before, I hope you find something in this post for you.  Improvisation is possible!  I found it!

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"...it soared with the Wind..." by Flickr member David M

This past Friday I was playing the Key of the Week (G Major/minor) on the piano and I had a first.  Remember how a few weeks ago I posted about Keith Jarret, who likes to go in to shows “blank”, ready to respond to his instrument without a preconceived notion of what he’ll play?  Well for the first time ever I was able to play this way.

There I was, just minding my own business in G minor, playing some very routine chord changes… and then I was off!  I don’t know exactly how I got to this zone or space, but there I was. I also don’t really know how to describe it.  I can say that I stated with a few parameters:

• G (natural) minor, sometimes into G Major
• Emphasis on playing the fourth (C minor) and the fifth (D minor)
• Experimentation with three and four note chords, alternating in to playing single notes, staying away from “Hanon-like” patterns.
• Experimentation with rhythm

Was it really fancy?  No.  Was I playing really exotic progressions?  Nope. Grooving on elaborate rhythms?  nuh-uh.  Did I find the next “Hey Jude”?  Not a hint of that. Did it have sound good to anyone else?  I have no idea, but I also didn’t care. That was part of the magic:  just me and piano and the sounds we found together.

Months ago I started playing in very specific keys with the goal that (re)learning these structures would lead to something else besides theory.  I’ve also been telling myself over and over: “Listen.  Listen to what you hear and respond.”  I tell myself that even though I don’t fully know what it means.  I know the Great Something out there and I have the potential to have conversations.  This past Friday, I finally had one.

Blog post publishing day change: Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

In an effort to write better posts here, I have decided to alter my blog post publishing date.  From here on, Sundays will be my regular publishing date, with intermittent posting on other days of the week…

Final word about the Key of the Week

I’ve got it all set up.

It’s become apparent to me that as important as the Key of the Week is to me, that it’s overly cluttering this blog.  After thinking about carefully about it, I’ve decided to make some changes.  Key of the Week is going to get it’s own spin-off blog and Twitter feed!  You can check them out here:

http://keyoftheweek.wordpress.com

http://www.twitter.com/keyoftheweek

I’ve also added a page to this blog (found above) explaining Key of the Week and where to find details.

Now on to other matters…

Coming Full Circle: Review of the “Key of the Week” process

At the end of this week, I’ll hit a milestone with my Key of the Week program:  the first full cycle of all the major keys!

I’m confident that the Key of the Week is an important practice tool for me.  Over the course of the last 3 months, I’ve visited keys that felt familiar and others that I thought I’d never want to use.  The greatest strength of the program is getting to explore all the keys systematically.  As I think back, the only times the program didn’t seem to be working were entirely my fault– not enough or no practice time.  That’s a time management issue that runs parallel to being able to play music.

So this coming Monday, here I go again, right?  This next week brings me back C Major again, except I think I’m going to try something a bit different.  I’m slowly moving toward a model of exploring the Key of the Week two times a day.  What I’d like to try is to play the major key in the morning, and the minor key in the afternoon.  I’m very weak in my understanding of minor keys, so I’ll probably stick with just playing scales rather than exploring the key.

I realize that when I say something like “exploring the key” that I’m not being very articulate.  It’s hard for me to do that.  I got a suggestion from Twitter that I could try to explain via a YouTube video, but the problem is I don’t have a solidified, explainable method yet.  I’d like to have one but I don’t.

I can say what I start by doing (and this is on the piano, by the way) is playing triads– root position, inversion 1 and inversion 2.  I’ve intermixed these triads with the triads from the 4th’s and 5th’s.  So for example in C Major, that’s F (4th) and G (5th).  As that goes along, I then sometimes go back to playing the major scale, but not necessarily chromatically.  Lately I’ve been jumping around on the scale and thinking about fingerings– how to play so that no matter what sequence of notes get played, I can always smoothly end up going back to the root note (C, in my example).  Two days ago, I also started playing in contrary motion as well as harmonies between the left and right hands.

See it’s kind of all over the map what I’m doing.  I’m trying to stay away from studies like Hanon’s, which while valuable feel like a military march up and down the keyboard.  I’m trying to follow sounds and see where they go, but I do set limits.  Right now I’m not interested in things that sound jazzy or dissonant.  I’m focused on the pillars of western music:  The root, the fourth, and the fifth.

Ultimately, I think that playing the Key of the Week in manner I’ve described, where one “follows the sound” is a very individual road a musician travels.  While many musicians may travel this road and come out sounding like each other or a certain genre, that’s just the surface of things– the end result.  How they got to this point, what alternatives they explored, what they could do spontaneously from that point… that’s all stuff that each one of us finds by following the sound via practices like Key of the Week.

Key of the Week: F Major

What exactly does one do with the key of the week?  It’s really up to you.  I’ve intentionally left this vague.  The main goal is to frequently think about the key of the week on a daily basis, even when you’re not at your instrument.  The longer term goal is to make each key more and more instinctive to play and use, so every key feels as free and obvious as “the people’s key”, C Major.  Remember, no matter what technical ability you or I may posses, there’s always something else to learn.

Going in blank

Recently I read an article about Keith Jarrett someone on Twitter recommended.  You should read it for yourself, but I’ll say now I was struck by two things.  One– the obvious theme to the article, that Jarrett takes to the stage with his heart on his sleeve, pouring his life’s emotion in to his work.  That’s great that he’s that honest.

The other thing that struck me was his blank-minded approach:

‘Before each improvised show the pianist says he must free his mind of any musical thoughts. “If I have any concept of what to do before I get to the piano, that’s a bad thing.” ‘

Wow.  That’s a place I’d love to get to.  Right now I’m in a very cocoon-like place with my music, where I’m trying to put some core elements in place to be able to improvise and create my own ideas, so of course Jarrett’s approach seems elusive to me. His approach reminds reminds me of “Zen and the Art of Archery“, where the the idea seems to be come to the moment of shooting the arrow with “no mind”.

But how can I really do that?  It’s one thing to come up with some melodic or rhythmic idea, then save it, mull it over, and refine it over a period of hours or days… but to have this kind of sublime dialog between me, my instrument, and the space where music comes, right now this seems like a promised land I’ve yet to actually see.

Key of the Week: B♭ Major

What exactly does one do with the key of the week?  It’s really up to you.  I’ve intentionally left this vague.  The main goal is to frequently think about the key of the week on a daily basis, even when you’re not at your instrument.  The longer term goal is to make each key more and more instinctive to play and use, so every key feels as free and obvious as “the people’s key”, C Major.  Remember, no matter what technical ability you or I may posses, there’s always something else to learn.

George Washington was here.

I have very limited online access right now as  I’m travel to a relative’s wedding in Virginia.  Wow it’s nice here, I’ve never been to this state… very lush.  Very colonial.

I’ll be back next week.  Till then, keep playing and practicing!

Key of the Week: E♭Major

What exactly does one do with the key of the week?  It’s really up to you.  I’ve intentionally left this vague.  The main goal is to frequently think about the key of the week on a daily basis, even when you’re not at your instrument.  The longer term goal is to make each key more and more instinctive to play and use, so every key feels as free and obvious as “the people’s key”, C Major.  Remember, no matter what technical ability you or I may posses, there’s always something else to learn.