A legend of the rock keyboard world!

Nothing like a bit of........

Beethoven to get one pumped up in the mornings!
I have started work on the 1st movement of Sonata No. 8 in C minor Op. 13, "The Pathetique".

It is a little hard to contain one's emotion and maintain at least some degree of detachment in the build up through the intense Grave opening before jumping into the Allegro di molto e con brio.

I am now so hyped and ready to hit the waves this morning for a good session as current conditions are indicating it may well be really good out there. Surf's up - yee hah!

Donald Fagen - The Nightfly!

I have always been a fan of Steely Dan and since taking up the piano appreciate them all the more. So I have spent some period of time recently searching for charts for their music and Bingo - I found lead sheets for 11 Steely Dan songs at Lucas Pickfords site where there are many other useful transcriptions also.
During this search, I discovered Donald Fagen had continued to release albums and that one in particular was extremely highly regarded "The Nightfly". So of course I went looking for the dots yesterday but with little success as the original publication is out of print and all I could find were a Donald Fagen - Five of the Best. Fate - you have to wonder about it sometimes because when I ordered the Five of the Best book I noticed that I had inadvertently mispelled my email address. Idiot Robin! So, this morning, I went back in search of the publication at SheetMusicPlus and buggar me if I didn't discover a downloadable link to Scribd for the complete original publication! So I have consequently cancelled my order - Enjoy!

The Yamaha S90XS? - What an amazing musical tool.....................

...........I have got for myself!
My new S90XS has kept me very busy over the weekend since I received it early on Friday morning.
I have sussed out alot of what it has to offer but I still have so much more to learn about it and feel a little daunted.
However, there is help out there though in the form of the Yamaha Arranger Workstation Forums and SNinety.com and Logic Pro Help for the DAW side of things. Each have proved to be useful for queries I have had in relation to newfangled terms I am learning about such as Performances, Multi, Master, SEQ PLAY etc!?

The arpeggiators on this thing are incredible and many of the heaps of default Performances sound oustanding and are such a lot of fun to play along with.

I have managed to get the XS talking to Logic Pro and I am looking forward to getting some of my favourite performances properly into Logic now that I have found out the method for doing so. My first attempt at it being an abject failure.

One thing I have to say about synths is they are certainly not very user friendly and I know Yamaha have really tried to make this product more so! Sheesh!

The new S6 piano voices have received a lot of flak but to my neophyte ears they are wonderful and very tweakable anyway and they will certainly do me. I have managed to pick up some tweaks created by one of the gurus at the Yamaha forum.

I have the theme for Couperin's The Mysterious Barricades down and it is wonderful to play it using the harpsichord voice. It actually provides some sense of the strings twanging away and just transports me to the 16th century. Amazing!

The Tenor sax voice is also a pleasure to use and there are heaps of other wonderfully realistic and rewarding sounds.

Want to have a one hell of a good time and own an all-time great music creation/performance tool? Then do yourself a favour and get either the S90Xs or the equally brilliant S70Xs!

A Yamaha S90XS is on the way!

So now I am getting serious about this piano thing! In case you don't know anything about this awesome instrument here are 3 vids for your viewing pleasure featuring the S90XS's little brother, the S70XS!

Moondance guitar solo!

Local guitar hero Colin Reeves, of local band MoodSwingz, creating a tidy arrangement of notes over the Moondance changes.

And yesterday I received..................

............Mark Levine's "The Jazz Piano Book" and the two other books that I mentioned I had also ordered in this post.
The Drop 2 Book








The Jazz Theory Book








Having spent all of last year building our new home, I have dedicated this year specifically to the piano, composition, performance and surfing!
Bring it on!

7notemode and Barbara Lister-Sink

As you know I have been trawling through lots of jazz based sites lately and there are a number of fantastic Youtube based player/teachers uploading thoroughly helpful and informative renditions and explanations of standards. Some examples include Lot2learn, jazz2511 and 7notemode. Anyway 7notemode is an advocate of the Barbara Lister-Sink method and uploaded this vid of a session he had with her which led me to investigating further what she has to say about playing the piano too. It is well worth viewing her YouTube videos and in particular that in which she plays Debussy and Rachmaninoff where her silky, smooth and seemingly effortless technique is a delight to watch and listen too.

Her method is based round her own ideas, the Alexander Technique and Russian Release method of piano pedagogy. I know a bit about Alexander Technique as my first guitar teacher ended up training as one so I was exposed to it and still use the little I have learnt today for myself and in my teaching.

During my training as a guitarist with my second and main teacher Stephan Bulmer, I was taught much of what she speaks about in reference to the use of the whole body in relation to the instrument and tension free structures. So I have been able to apply a little of what she talks about and I think it has already made some difference. Well worth a look!

The Jazz Piano Book

I have been surfing all the online jazz piano sites recently and have come up with some ripper resources and very helpful information.

There are some great start up lessons on Scott Ranney's site Learn Jazz Piano and LessonRating.com has useful resources and reviews the best piano lesson sites online. Somewhere along the way one of the many sites I visited recommended Mark Levine's "The Jazz Piano Book" as the best seminal resource available. So I "acquired" it and having worked through the first few sections, can recommend it highly as the explanations and examples provided are very clear and informative. I really feel like I am understanding the jazz process far more than my futile attempts to do so many times on the guitar. It all makes so much more sense on the piano and I am absolutely delighting in the new vistas that are opening up for me, following my decision 6 months ago, to take up the piano seriously! I have just completed an order for an official copy of "The Jazz Piano Book" along with 2 of his other publications "The Jazz Theory Book" and "Jazz Piano Masterclass with Mark Levine" which delves exclusively into Drop 2 voicings. Magic!

The International Music Score Library Project!

Wow, what a great resource I stumbled upon today as I was looking for Beethoven Piano Trio scores.
The Petrucci Music Library at this site provides tens of thousands of scores by thousands of composers that are free to download. Quite extraordinary and must have site to Favourite/Bookmark if you are at all into playing classical music on the piano.

The Mysterious Barricades

Couperin's strange little gem for the harpsichord has always been a favourite transcription for guitarists, due to a similar lack of sustain as the harpsichord, unlike the piano where the degree of existing sustain can destroy the charm of this piece.

On Radio National recently, the luminary of the day being interviewed, someone called Bill, who knew an awful lot about Lucian Freud, had chosen this wonderful piece and it was played by George Malcolm on the harpsichord. Well, what a treat that was and it sounded far more convincing than when I had played it on the guitar. So immediately I tracked down a terrific free arrangement in F ( rather than the original Bb ) by William Wallace and have started working on it.

Brilliant!

Thanks to Play Piano for this one

David Sprunger's fantastic Blues for Piano & Keyboard Course

I have blogged earlier about the brilliant and comprehensive resources that David Sprunger offers at playpianotoday.com.
Having worked through his "Pattern Piano & Keyboard" over the last few weeks, I ordered and downloaded his "Blues for Piano & Keyboard" course couple of days ago.
I cannot believe what good value he offers considering the numbers of hours of effort that David must have had to put into preparing his really comprehensive resources.
And amazingly the first 9 lessons of the "Blues for Piano & Keyboard" course can be viewed for free.
Sometime in the quite distant future, as it is going to take me a long time to absorb and practise all the material in the "Blues for Piano & Keyboard" course, I intend to also purchase:

• "Phat Chord Voicings"
• "Piano & Keyboard Salsa"
• "Intros, Fillers and Turnarounds"
• "Modulation Tips & Tricks"

Oh and hey I forgot to mention - You do not need to be able to read a note of music as it is all by ear!!!!!!!!! What's holding you back? Go for it and enjoy as I am doing!

Here is what another fan of David's can do

Bert is brilliant!

I'm a fan!

Or a Yamaha S90XS.............................maybe!

Really impressed by Yamaha's latest offering and may purchase the S90XS instead of the Roland RD-700GX.

Josef Hofmann

And just in case Malwine Bree's book on the Leschetizky method was not enough for you, here is another digitised book of interest that can also be downloaded for free.

"Piano Playing: With Piano Questions Answered" by Josef Hofmann.

Theodore Leschetizky

The teacher of many of the great players of the 20th century, Theodore Leschetizky's name comes up frequently when one researches the topic of piano playing. Here is a link to a fully digitised copy of the original publication (that you can download for free) "The Groundwork of the Leschetizky Method" authored by one of Leschetizky's assistants, Malwine Bree, and fully approved by the Maestro describing his ideas in relation to piano playing.

Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers

An innocuous looking little book but chock full of gems to guide us along the road to piano mastery for no cost to you at all.

The Art of Piano - Great pianists of the 20th century

I discovered this documentary by accident whilst Googling Neuhaus's book The Art of Piano. Amazingly, the complete video is available on YouTube, surprisingly so as it does not appear to be out of print. Maybe the distributors figure that people are going to want a better quality version of it and buy their own copy.

Oh you want to know what I think of it? Well, sensational and hugely inspiring to be frank and fantastic to see Glenn Gould included with this illustrious group of humans.

I cannot imagine the number of rigorous hours of effort they must all have subjected themselves to and marvel at the individual differences in wonderful tone between them all.

Well worth checking out for a bit of inspiration.