I want you to try something new this week. Start paying attention to what you are listening to. If you don't think that a part of your brain is always listening to other things besides what you're focusing on, you're in for an interesting and illuminating experience! Start out by trying to count and then name at least 5 different things that you can hear, right now. I can hear: the cat scratching on the floor, birds singing, the motor of a fan, a plane in the sky, and a car door shutting. None of these activities involve playing music or even singing. They are just basically daily sounds that happen to be in my daily environment. But if I listen just a little closer, I can hear music. The fan motor is actually humming on a certain note, although I don't know which one right now. There's percussion in the cat's scratching noise and the car door shutting. There's always harmony in the different bird songs and even the plane seems to have a hum that is actually a note on the keyboard. As you can see...in these simple non-musical types of sounds, there is still music! Discovering the presence of music in everyday activities that aren't musical is really fun and can be incredibly revealing about what type of music we naturally tend to like and connect with. Let's look at a few of the easier sounds to find music in:
What others can you think of? Here's a little less obvious one. Listen to the tone of someone's voice as they talk to you. Listen to that more than the words so you can hear the "song" that each of us have in our voices. What it really is, is that we each seem to have a specific key in music that we communicate in or through most of the time. It's really interesting! So how does hearing music more in our everyday lives serve us and our growth in our piano playing? First, being more connected to the subtle things in our surroundings helps us with everything, not just piano. It keeps us more alert and in the moment. But it will also connect us to the music that is already inside of us! If we're looking for it on the outside, we'll end up finding it on the inside as well. Second, noticing what types of sounds and/or tones that you feel the most connect to will help you know what kind of music really gets you going, and what type of music you need to play a lot of! This will increase your joy of playing a lot. One of the great things about playing the piano is that we get a wide range of sounds and can mix up playing melody lines with chords. Not every instrumentalist is able to do this on their particular instrument. For example - do you tend to like a lot of percussive types of sounds and rhythms? Then you'll want to play music like that. If instead, you like softer melodies with the rhythms more in the background, then you need to experiment with more types of music in that style. You can even take this one step further by trying to imitate some of the sounds that you're picking up from your surroundings, on the piano! This is a great way to get you on the road to improvising and there's no pressure about "getting it right", because you have to experiment with different notes to find a correct match to what you're hearing. Try finding the notes on your keyboard that you hear the birds singing. You'll notice that some of them are more percussive in their sound than others that seem to sing endlessly. I'm suggesting this as a first try because it's one of the easier ones to imitate. You could also try a train whistle, a car horn, or an ambulance siren. I hope you have some fun with discovering all of the music that surrounds us each day in the most mundane and non-musical activities! Finding those everyday sounds on your piano keyboard is a neat way to learn your keyboard more, find some new notes, harmonize with nature, and find a new passion inside of you about what kinds of music you really connect to and want to learn how to play! Stay Tuned to PianoLessonsOnTheWeb.com to learn much more and achieve your dream of playing the piano!
Barbara
7/7/2017 07:42:45 am
I saw a biography of one of the great composers which said that he would listen to the sounds of nature and incorporate these sounds into his music. I have an old book on bird songs that shows their songs on a staff. I found them too difficult to play but maybe I will try again.
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tim
7/8/2017 10:34:22 am
Sounds interesting! I have heard something similar but I forget which composer it was.
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