May 01, 2013

Key chords, left hand over - Mariaan's got it all!

A May Day Mister Musicarta YouTube performance: ‘Mariaan,’ a piano solo by Musicarta.

The I - vi - IV - V chord progression (e.g. C, Am, F, G) is often considered a musical cliché, but, re-ordered and slightly tweaked, these four chords continue to generate hit after hit. See the mini play list on this Musicarta Key Chords sample page.

As soon as you drop chord ii into the mix (here, E minor), circle of fifths constructions become a possibility - if not inevitable! Chords ii - V - I is circle of fifths construction, as are the vi - ii - V and iii - VI - ii - V - I sections in 'Mariaan'. See if you can hear how they roll you along!

Musicarta’s Pyramid Variations home-study download introduces the circle of fifths – there’s a brief reference on this Pyramids Variations sample page . Circle of fifths is advanced work - a solid foundation of basics is a must!

'Mariaan' was improvised while still under the influence of the‘Bye-bye, Blue’ look-and-feel - there are lots of left-hand-over notes in 'Mariaan' too! A MidiPiano how-to version will hit Mister Musicarta YouTube in a little while - subscribe to the channel to be sure you catch it!.

Get the Musicarta site RSS feed to stay up to date with development at Musicarta, or visit the blog page regularly to see what's new. Subscribe to the Musicarta News for quarterly round-ups and specials.

Mariaan’s address again: ‘Mariaan,’ piano solo by Musicarta.

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Apr 29, 2013

Bye-bye Blue – on video

For some inexplicable reason, Mister Musicarta failed to blog the first YouTube appearance of ‘Bye-bye, Blue’, the originating cause of the flurry of left-hand-over textures here at Musicarta.

‘Bye-bye, Blue’ sprang from encounters in the teaching room with a young man who steadfastly refused to look at music manuscript. Nothing daunted, our resourceful teacher drew up a few pages of blank keyboard illustrations and proceeded regardless.

Chord tones became melody notes, and the resulting chord study became an object lesson in playing a melody and accompaniment at the same time – something any self-respecting modern keyboard stylist wants to get to grips with sooner or later.

‘Bye-bye, Blue’ is in development as a Musicarta digital home-study pack. It will be more video-oriented than previous volumes (and shorter!), and you can see a sample of how it will work over in the ‘Bye-bye Blue’ How-to Video 1 – also hosted on the BBB web page.

The video has also joined the Mister Musicarta YouTube Left-hand-over playlist. The left-hand-over trick looks good and adds a nice harmonic dimension – worth getting down.

Stay posted with the Musicarta site RSS feed, or sign up for the Musicarta News for a quarterly round-up. Subscribe to the Mister Musicarta YouTube channel using the any of the buttons on the site pages and the YouTube channel.

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Apr 27, 2013

Canon goes left-hand over!

The advantage of knowing a chord sequence ‘inside out’ is that you can practice keyboard textures without having to think too hard about which notes to use.

The Canon Diaries LH-over study applies Musicarta’s newly-popular left-hand-over note technique to the chord sequence of Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, one of the best-loved chord sequences ever penned and the basis of many, many pop music hits.

(Incidentally, Musicarta’s Canon Project digital home study download teaches this ‘mother-lode’ chord sequence, together with a host of practical keyboard chord skills, in an exciting, pain-free way. Check it out…)

This Canon study is accompaniment-only. Sing your own melody or lyric over it as you play, or improvise over the performance on any instrument. Note that this arrangement has a Musicarta-generated ‘B strain’ to build an extended AABA performance.

The current Musicarta fashion for LH-over textures was sparked by the revival of ‘Bye-bye, Blue’, a dot-free creative keyboard lesson-stream from Mister Musicarta’s distant past. Click through to the ‘Bye-bye, Blue’ Musicarta web page here. A Mister Musicarta YouTube Left-hand-over playlist has been started – expect further entries daily! Subscribe to Mister Musicarta YouTube for instant notifications.

Enhanced audio of this Canon arrangement as a backing track, along with the MS and MIDI files, will be included in the forthcoming ‘Bye-bye, Blue’ Musicarta digital home study download (available mid-May 2013). Get the Musicarta site RSS feed for hassle-free updates, or sign up for the Musicarta News for a quarterly round-up.

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Apr 05, 2013

KCD Suspensions 'pad' arrangement video

A video of the new chords-in-the-left-hand arrangement of the Key Chords Suspensions riff has been uploaded to Mister Musicarta YouTube.

As per previous blog entry, Mister Musicarta is starting to realise that his ten-finger solo piano style isn’t quite the latest thing and will be serving up more combo-style arrangements in future.

The soft whooshy oooh-aaah voices on a DAW synth are called ‘pad’ voices, apparently. Hopefully, Musicarta’s ability to find voices above and beyond the current Casio-tone lead will improve, but please, always remember Musicarta is how-to, not hi-fi.Here’s the link again. Please bolster M’s self-worth with a view or two!

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Apr 04, 2013

Suspensions goes DAW

The KCD Suspensions chord study has a new arrangement, which might cast it in a new light for you. Audio only so far, on the KCD Suspensions page.

For those of you who don’t know, DAW stands for digital audio workstation, where electronic music is built and honed to perfection.

While Mister Musicarta realises he’s no sequencer he does realise that his ten-finger solo piano style isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. So Mister M will be working up more combo-style arrangements in future. Hopefully, his sequencing will improve, but please remember, Musicarta is how-to, not hi-fi!

Have a listen on site, and watch out for the YouTube version, coming soon.

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Apr 02, 2013

Key Chords Suspensions teaching notes on site

Following the new policy recently announced, teaching notes for the Key Chords Suspensions video are now appearing on site.

Most of us keyboard players are capable of learning more and faster if we approach the task methodically, and the expanded teaching notes are an attempt to help the player wanting to get a Musicarta solo into his/her repertoire.

The other thread in the teaching notes is ‘theory that works’. Understanding the mechanics of something like suspensions puts a lot more harmonic material right under your fingertips, but it looks like so much more ‘theory’ and it’s not always easy for young pop-oriented players to see how much it can help them.

Hopefully, these video-linked single-piece pages (see also the home Suspensions page) will tip the scales in a case or too! Pop along to the KCD Suspensions riff teaching notes page, and see if it does the trick for you.

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 28, 2013

Suspensions and Scales

There isn’t much by way of formatting or functionality in a YouTube video description, and Mr Musicarta wondered if casual YouTube visitors wouldn’t find it easier to read the notes to the various YouTube ‘theme’ videos on-site. The new model is being trialled with the all-new site Suspensions page, which he cordially invites you to visit.

Lessons here in Cape Town have had a distinct suspensions theme recently, and have spawned a number of mini-riffs. We’ve been impressed by what good value a little suspension-resolution (sus-res) back-room capacity is. Think about it – for every chord you know, you get 2-1 and 4-3 potential too! That’s triple your mileage!

And if your melody is going to hit an accented non-chord tone (there I go again), you’re going to want to know how to make room for it. If this is gobbledy-gook to you, pop along and tackle it head on.

For your convenience, a YouTube Suspensions playlist has also been put together. Have a listen through and you’ll soon recognise the powerful sus-res sound. There are more suspensions mini-riff videos in the pipeline, so subscribe to Mister Musicarta YouTube to stay posted.

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

P.S. If you want to learn your scales watching a man with very long fingers play them, get along to this ABRSM Scales video page. Do not try to make your hands look like this! I’m sure the player is a very fine pianist, but your average pianist should be cultivating a more hand-holding-a-ball look!

You might find these videos helpful in conjunction with the Musicarta Key-specific Keyboards for cultivating your ability to ‘see the keys in the keyboard’. Then check your understanding – and get seriously practical – by seeing if you can play the Triad Shapes Drill in the key of your choice. Now we’re talking!

Mar 25, 2013

Vote Alberti for chord mileage

The ‘Alberti bass’ – after the Italian composer who first popularised it – is a great way to get some yardage out of your triads, as the latest Pyramids Diaries YouTube video demonstrates.

The left hand covers any triad and ‘waggles’ it bottom, top, middle, top. You can do it all day! The left hand has to be in the middle-ish of the keyboard, of course – it gets muddy even at C-below-middle-C.

The more Pyramids (Diary) Variations I write, the more the chords seem to do their own thing. They really mix it up here – borrowing from other parts of the sequence, going chromatic here, contriving a little extension there… The version presented here is literally one of a dozen I could have settled on.

I wrote Pyramids as a teaching vehicle with a quite deliberately regular pattern – only later did it become apparent that a little mediant substitution in the bass turns the chord sequence into pure circle-of-fifths. Nowadays, I have to haul it back from the brink all the time – otherwise, we’d be forever playing Pet Shop Boys ‘It’s A Sin’!

Because the Alberti left hand effectively plays on every quaver, the syncopation is a little easier to get; that is, your off-beat right hand notes are always coming with a left hand note, and not dropping into thin air. Ideally, there would be practice notes with build-up of syncopation. Hopefully, you create those exercises for yourself.

And, hopefully, you squash each of the Alberti broken-chord triads back into vertical all-notes-at-once and learn them as a string having reference to the chord symbols. Musicarta is about levelling-up. Yes, we do need to just drill in some repertoire, but, in the end, playing the notes is just start.

So please, latest check out the video. The self-respecting graduate Pyramideer will naturally look-and-listen to the first eight bars (tops!) and go off and complete their own version of the variation, as with the three ‘seed’ versions on the surviving Pyramids skeleton ‘Continuation Page’.

So I won’t keep you!

Yours in harmony
Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 21, 2013

Snake Dance, Round Two

The ‘Snake Dance’ is a great place to do some focused syncopation training, and the second YouTube Snake Dance Syncopation Challenge video is now showing on a screen near you.

This concludes the Snake Dance challenge. Mister Musicarta has a bundle of further complications in a drawer somewhere, clearly labelled ‘Extremely Nasty’, and doesn’t intending risking hopefully cordial relations by imposing them on you. Visit the Musicarta Beat & Rhythm home page for additional beat-and-rhythm boot camp stuff.

Quick TOC: Challenge Video One, Challenge Video Two, Beat & Rhythm home, download the basic music.

Keep at it – Rome wasn’t built in a day! One day, you just CAN – which is, all said and done, just a critical mass of single repeated efforts.

Yours in syncopation
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 19, 2013

Mad March Syncopation Challenge

The ‘Snake Dance’, (aka The Streets Of Cairo, Poor Little Country Maid, There’s A Place In France) is an evergreen beginners’ novelty piece. It’s also a great place to do some fun-but-focused syncopation training. Mister Musicarta challenges you to see how far YOU can get with Part One of the Musicarta ‘Snake Dance’ Syncopation Challenge!

Here’s the YouTube video - also embedded on the Musicarta Beat & Rhythm home page, where you will find links to other similar beat-and-rhythm boot camp stuff. You can download the ‘theme’ music here, but try to ‘get it’ from the video first. Learning and playing by ear and from memory are where it’s at, in the end!

The hands stay in D minor Basic Music-making Position (BMP) with the LH thumb making an optional one-semitone excursion to B flat for variety (bars 10 and 11). Once you’ve got your starting positions, it’s just try, try, and try again, but you’d be wise, when the going gets tough, to stop and figure out the together, left, right (TLR) which-hand-plays-when ‘events’. One section of the manuscript has the TLR analysis between the staves, but learn to do it for yourself – it’s the efficient way of working.

The right-hand-under is an extra, for novelty (and showing off), but it certainly focuses your attention on which hand is doing what! Try to get to the final ‘LH rolling, with-gap/RH-under’ benchmark performance (and well done you!) – and stay posted for trickier stuff to come.

Quick recap: YouTube video, Beat & Rhythm home, download the music.

Yours in syncopation
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 16, 2013

Is it World Suspensions Week?

First the Key Chords vi-IV-V-I material (twice!) - and now the Pyramids Variations chord sequence gets the suspensions treatment.

Musicarta never tires of batting on about how suspensions are a great way to get more out of your chords. They’re also a great game to play with your chords. You can ‘suspend’ (haul up) any chord tone – try it and see!

You can also push the chord tones down a scale-step and let them spring back up into place, but you’ve got to have your chords secure before you start pulling chord tones hither and thither, or you’ll get heck-of-a confused. That’s the benefit of studying Pyramids, for example. Knowing a chord sequence inside out frees you up to play with it.

Something like this versions is to be found in the final ‘Further Variations’ section of the Pyramids Variations workbook. The video tells you what chord tone is being affected (1, 3 or 5 - 1 being the root or name-note of the chord), hence 6–5, 4–3, 2–1 etc.

So brush up your Pyramids basic music-making position performance, then check the video and see what you can do. TIP – don’t try to go straight for the finished product. Sketch the outline first – the chords, the suspensions… The rhythm ‘fancy’ is the icing on the cake – you do that last!

Have fun!

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 15, 2013

Pyramids - still alive and kicking!

Musicarta’s all for his pupil’s getting more bang for their buck. Hence this Pyramids ‘segue’ performance, put together for a pupil’s forthcoming eisteddfod. (A ‘segue’ – pronounced segway – is a smooth, uninterrupted transition.)

In fact, it’s easy to build quite extended performances from relatively little material – and get away with it! Most listeners don't object to repetitions if they’re even only slightly different.

The old classical sets of variations would often start with a ‘statement of the theme’, and that’s what this Pyramids performance does. You can read about the various sections of the segue in the video titles. A1A2 and AABA are types of song form – all explained in the Pyramids Variations workbook and surviving website contents pages.

The Pyramids Variations is the ideal place to learn to start playing (and playing around with!) chords at the keyboard – and to pick up some useful music theory along the way. Available as a digital home study pack from Musicarta – follow the link in the site page right hand columns. You can be playing like this in no time at all!

Yours in harmony
Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 13, 2013

MEPS Revisited - new YouTube offering

Following a particularly delightful lesson the other day, Mister Musicarta took his head out of the Key Chords filing cabinet to dash off a quick MEPS instalment. (Musicarta Easy Piano Style (MEPS) aims to get beginners and near-beginners playing the keyboard as quickly as guitarists get round to strumming out chords. Regular readers will be familiar with this green streak in Musicarta’s make-up.)

The MEPS ‘Add 9’ improvisation starts from the Basic Music-making Position (BMP) and dresses it up just a bit by ‘adding 9’. ‘9’ is the most-likely added tone in general non-jazz improvisations. ‘9’ is also ‘2’, of course, and you’ll sometimes see ‘add 2’ instead of ‘add 9’ in chord symbols.

After that, it’s a simple matter of riffling through the six notes of the pattern following a chord sequence, which for this improvisation is:

G F G F G (extended)
Em D Em D
G F G F G (extended ending)

The way you ‘join up the top notes’ to make a melody is up to you. There’s only room for two or three notes between top finger 3 last note of the pattern and the chord tone of the next chord – which you must choose and get to on time!

No matter. If you ‘just copy’ and throw yourself into it, you’re sure to come away with something. Prioritise the rhythm. Play nonsense connecting notes at the top, but keep going at all costs. Art emerges out of mess – you can’t demand guarantees in advance when it comes to creativity. And work with what you’ve got! “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

Here’s the link again.

Yours in harmony
Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 12, 2013

Key Chords YouTube playlist

A Key Chords YouTube playlist has been organised. Here’s the link.

For that matter, here are the other major Musicarta YouTube playlists:

Enya Studies (Musicarta Easy Piano)

The Canon Project

The Pyramids Variations

Hope that saves some time scratching around. For a bit of play-by-ear practice, load up a playlist and see how you go!

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion

Mar 12, 2013

Key Chords performance video posted

A new Musicarta Key Chords video has been posted on Mister Musicarta YouTube. It’s a slightly extended performance of the B flat riff material in Module Nine of the Key Chords digital home study pack.

By Module Nine of the workbook, you’re pretty comfortable with the four (I, IV, V and vi) key chords covered in Volume One – and branching out of simple all-white-key C into ‘sample keys’ D and B flat major.

To back-track just a fraction: If you want to get your hands round chords, I, IV, V and vi (in any key) are the ones you should start with. And if you get this feed, you probably know that the Musicarta Key Chords Volume 1 keyboard creativity home study digital download, now available at only $14.95, is the most effective way to get on with the job.

So I won’t bang on about it. The video again – more soon!

Yours in harmony
Mister Musicarta
Your creative keyboard companion