What kind of music is best for training fluent musicianship?
To fully internalize the language of music in order to become a fully fluent musician, you must find the mindset of a child to be full of awe and wonder. The music we practise in this state is unsophisticated, yet it feels very deep and powerful, especially in the early stages when the language used must be very simple. To do this, we must let go of our adult musical taste and the associated repertoire, styles and genres, as well as any theoretical ideas of what music is or how it functions, and focus on the very simple model of musical language that I teach, practising in a pure, playful, unselfconscious state, like a small child.
MUSICAL CONFIDENCE – how to discover yours
Confidence is the most important asset you can have when doing music (maybe when doing anything). The key to musical confidence is to find genuine, honest self-expression. This takes courage and compassion!
Blissful dreamy jazzy piano over minimal electronic beats
In this piano piece, I improvise sweet, warm, delicious jazzy harmonies with lyrical flourishes to create impressionistic, soulful music that floats over a sparse mid tempo hip-hop style beat to create feelings of equanimity and balance.
Pianoteq’s new Shigeru Kawai – so beautiful
If you connect fully with this instrument, it yields such remarkably balanced resonance, such delicious sonority. It’s almost like a feather bed, except it can deliver heavier, harder sounds effortlessly too. In this improv, I focus on the low mid range which is so warm, sweet, thick, balanced.
Sparse music with flow and poetry
In this piece, “Darkest Before Dawn”, I use the poetic structure of the rhythmic matrix or groove to generate a powerful feeling of poetic flow and deep, melancholy feeling. It’s easy to play the notes, as there are so few of them, but the poetry needs disciplined focus as you let go to feel the waves of flowing energy. The sheet music is available here.
Clear rhythmic structure in Chopin’s Prelude in E minor generates a dark story
By allowing the symmetry and flow of rhythmic structure or groove to unfold with natural strength, with elastic tempo rubato that never breaks the flow, this piece tells its story with understated power. Without needing to exaggerate or emote, the darkness, melancholy and aching beauty emerge naturally.
How to play with great rhythm – 7 important keys
How to practise to make your playing rhythmically flowing and stable can be quite a conundrum. People often struggle to feel confident that they’re playing the correct rhythm and they tend to worry about going out of time. Often they resort to practising with a metronome and try to be perfectly in time but this just leads to more problems, tension and stiff unmusical playing. In this short video, I explain how to approach improving your rhythm and developing a strong sense of musical pulse and metre. Put these 7 keys to good rhythm into practice and you’ll find that playing with great rhythm can be easy and natural.
How to use an audible groove to sense the music’s structure
When music has some kind of accompanying figuration that shows the underlying groove, that can be a very helpful way to feel the rhythmic structure of the music as it unfolds. But you still need to consciously generate a strong matrix structure and know where you are within it at every moment, so that the music makes perfect sense – like a poem.
Who knew quick 11/16 time could have a flowing lilt?
On a hot humid day, I decided to make a refreshing, sweet piano improvisation over a cool groove in 11/16 time.
Returning to normal after bizarre dreams
The imagination can invent such extraordinary dreams that can leave us feeling a little untethered. Music has the power to bring us back to our centre.