We don’t talk about learning music in new ways very often, but rote / learning online has gotten popular in the past year. Technology has improved enough to let people learn online, and online learners can become fairly skilled! Today, we have an interview with my new friend Sydney from Smart Game Piano, who’s teaching videogame music online, by rote! From easy pop songs to…read more
Wouldn’t it be fun to combine two unlikely pieces of catchy music, especially a modern piano piece with a classical piece? What if we combined music from Overcooked (a videogame) with… Rachmaninoff? My new friend Sydney joined me on this adventure. She runs Smart Game Piano where she teaches people how to play cool video game music by rote! Check out her website, Instagram, and…read more
Chunking is a specific way of grouping small “chunks” of music together for zoomed in practice. It helps you save time and frustration in the practice session! Chunking is zooming in on tiny sections of music you’re having trouble with, so that you don’t spend an hour playing through mistakes when you could be targeting trouble spots with laser precision, in less time. I’ve described…read more
You probably know a song that makes you think of someone sweet or important in your life. Unless you’re tone deaf. But, if you’re tone deaf, then you wouldn’t be reading a music blog. Well, except my dad. He was probably tone deaf, and he still read my blog. My dad had helped plant a tree beside my grandma’s house when he was in his…read more
It’s customary to say “the year has been a [insert object that goes up and down, like rollercoaster]”. Well, son, I don’t want to say it, but… the year has been like hormones. For me, there was the highest of highs, I felt like I was flying, when my dreams were coming true. It also brought me to the pits of the earth–I sunk so…read more
Armed with new sheet music, I told myself I’d learn jazz everyday up until Christmas. I sat down to film my progress, good or cringe-worthy, and worked at it for an hour or two everyday—jazz is a whole new ballgame if you’re a classical musician. I know that we’ve talked about not having goals because that highlights all the things we don’t have… but I’m…read more
When I took my first design classes in university, we were taught to use pen and paper to sketch pages and pages of… stuff. I’ve drawn boxes, circles, squiggles, unicorns, if you name it, I’ve probably attempted it. (I also love to draw in my free time. In fact, for a while, I drew comics for this blog!) In an industrial design class, the professor…read more
Holidays are right around the corner! I’m going to talk about some of the music I’m playing right now. If you come to this month’s online Music Hangout, you’ll probably hear me play some of these pieces. To spice up my music when I’m playing Christmas music, I’m trying to use more jazz improv techniques. Some of these techniques, like pedal tones, are simple to…read more
The hangout is back again! Let’s chat about music. Dec 16 2018 Update: We talked about Music performance during this hangout! The actual hangout starts around 13:00 as I signed on early in case people got a blank screen when they came on. Tips for giving a smooth music performance. What to do before, during, and after a performance. What happens when you run out…read more
I did not teach online piano lessons for a long time because they didn’t work. I’d tried a few lessons, and I couldn’t hear the students’ playing sometimes. I was way too OCD to miss even one note. This was four years ago, and recently a few people urged me to try it again. So, I did. I accepted some online piano students. I kept…read more