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A few months ago (by which I mean over a year), I published this blog post to update you all on the fact that I was orchestrating my piano and vocal score of music set to Blake’s poetry works: ‘Songs of Innocence’ and ‘Songs of Experience’.


Despite the fact that I finished orchestrating it well over a year ago (not all that long after the blog was published, in fact!), I sat on it for a very long time as a result of things such as moving house, focussing more on teaching etc. - but thanks to the wonder of Black Friday I found an offer I couldn’t refuse to help me progress this;


The company EastWest do a subscription to what they call ‘ComposerCloud’. This is all of their virtual instruments and effects for a couple of hundred pounds for an annual subscription, yet Black Friday saw a 50% reduction (£120). Now, I’m not made of money, but that’s a whole lot cheaper than spending hundreds on real instrumentalists and recording space etc. (although, tragically, that is the state of the modern music industry: computers rule, real musicians are becoming all the less valid - from the financial business perspective, of course).


So I downloaded this on Black Friday and forgot about it thanks to getting welcomely waylaid by getting engaged and then Christmas and New Year etc.


And I have taken the first steps in creating backing tracks for when (if) I ever welcome vocalists onto the project (of course this is the plan!)…


Using the example of ‘The Little Vagabond’ (because I do enjoy that one!), here is a screenshot of the orchestration from Presonus software ‘Notion’:



Songs of Innocence Songs of Experience William Blake Jack Mitchell Smith Piano Composer


From which I have to export the file as a MIDI file. And this is where the magic happens as this is uploaded into Apple’s ‘Logic Pro X’ - the all round studio software in which you can record audio, but at present I am using it as a sequencer.


A sequencer is a very fancy software that allows you input notes as data rather than sound and then play around with them. Think about the holes on a piano roll for the old pianolas and you’ve kind of got the first idea: the sound isn’t stored on the paper, the data is stored on it. You just load it an it plays it.


With this in mind, each individual note can be shortened, lengthened, increased or decreased in volume and - most importantly - assigned its own sound. Obviously, tracks stick together, so the flute part stays all on one track which overall makes it easy because if you find a good flute sound it just assigns it to the whole track…but if you wanted to have some notes a bit more ‘stabby’ or some a bit more slow on the attack then its fair to say EastWest have gone the extra mile by giving you samples of just about every instrument (orchestral, pop / rock, drums, pianos, synths, even vocals!) being played in all sorts of ways!


Here is how ‘The Little Vagabond’ is currently looking in Logic Pro X:



Songs of Innocence Songs of Experience William Blake Jack Mitchell Smith Piano Composer


And to say I am blown away by the results is a slight understatement, somewhat!


Here are some samples of various pieces.


Bear in mind that I have not even scratched the surface yet - I have just assigned default sounds.


Also, because the MIDI data was input into a computer rather than played, the velocity of all notes is unnaturally IDENTICAL! I have not tweaked this yet, so all instruments are kind of doing their thing at the same volume all the way through.


I have used a default EastWest Spaces reverb effect for a little depth which remains to be tweaked, but just listen to the overall realism of the sounds here!:



Eyes peeled for more updates!



 

Jack Mitchell Smith is a piano teacher based in Congleton, Cheshire. Click here to find out more.


Weekly blogs are posted that may help you with your musical or piano journey. Click here to sign up to the mailing list so you never miss a post!


 
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Whilst it is possible to work towards increasing your hand span, it’s fair to say that not all of us are blessed with hands that can stretch enough to get comfortable hand positions at all times, meaning that we are often faced with the challenge of playing pieces of music smoothly whilst stretching our fingers out to reach certain notes.


Yet a lot of the time, simple piano techniques that we learn from the off - such as arpeggios - are exactly what we need to be doing!


Rather than work in C major for my examples, I’m going to work in D major as the stretch here is a little more awkward by default thanks to the third being a black note (F♯).


Let’s remind ourselves of the D major triad and arpeggio:



D major Piano Arpeggio


D - F♯ - A makes up our triad, and an arpeggio is a chord played from bottom to top and back down, with the top note being the same as the bottom (so one octave of a D major arpeggio would be D - F - A - D - F - A - D).


This is a fairly simple technique to incorporate into our playing because most people can span at least just short of an octave, so whilst they can’t necessarily span the entire stretch it requires only the subtlest of wrist / arm movements to help them reach the notes.


Therefore, this half of the blog isn’t really of huge benefit to you!


But this half is:



Rearrange the Notes of an Arpeggio to Span More of the Piano Keyboard



That’s right - and that doesn’t mean just to do a simple inversion.


Try removing a note and switching it up and arpeggiating it that way. It’s not a strict arpeggio any more, but the technique you’ll be learning and the way you’ll be encouraging your wrist and arm to naturally move up and down using fairly modest intervals will go a long way to helping you stretch bigger intervals in the long run!


For example, remove the major third from the D major arpeggio (F♯) and put it on the top!


Therefore, you are now playing:


D - A - D - F♯ - D - A - D


The trick here is to work out suitable fingerings to make sure you hit all notes smoothly. Using the same notes as before won’t cut it because you’ve significantly increased the intervals.


For example, in the right hand you should be using 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 3 - 2 - 1 for the standard arpeggio (D - F - A - D - A - F - D).


To perform your new arpeggio without moving fingers over and under (D - A - D - F - D - A - D), you may just need to use a different finger to help bridge the bigger gap, such as 1 - 2 - 4 - 5 - 4 - 2 - 1. However, you mustn’t be closed to the idea that getting used to fingers moving underneath each other is a really useful tactic too and you’ll likely get an even smoother result if you practise this way (such as 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 1).



D major Piano Arpeggio
Two examples of fingerings for our new arpeggio


Play around with the arpeggios in all different keys and tones as some of them demand more and some less, and see if you can work an exciting new technique into your performing!


Watch below for a video recap! -





 

Jack Mitchell Smith is a piano teacher based in Congleton, Cheshire. Click here to find out more.


Weekly blogs are posted that may help you with your musical or piano journey. Click here to sign up to the mailing list so you never miss a post!


 
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There - I said it!


Have I hit upon a common problem amongst pianists? That you can play this bit well and that bit not so well, this bit excels and that bit struggles, this bit is a tight rhythm and that bit is unintentionally up and down? Maybe your accuracy of hitting some notes is great in some parts and sloppy in others?


The point is that playing piano well requires an enormous amount of dedication and practice, yet because what we learn sounds so good it becomes as much a hobby so that we sit down at the piano to practise and we end up just playing what we know because it sounds good!


The results?


  • What you already can play sounds fantastic and will increasingly sound fantastic.


  • Parts of it are being neglected because you’re now in the mindset of playing for pleasure!


So what happens when we play for pleasure?


Instant dopamine hit! We enjoy the music we hear, naturally, we enjoy playing (of course - that’s why we’re learning!) and most essentially, immediate satisfaction. You are the cause and creator of how good that sounded.


But as I’m sure you know from just about every aspect in life, dopamine is not and come and go thing. It’s addictive!


So until you tire yourself out the temptation is always there - and often succumbed to - to keep playing things you know or at the very least practise things that you think you’ll be able to do a reasonable justice to at your current level - even if it’s a piece you’ve never seen before!


Where discipline comes in is that it makes it essential for us to focus on the things that we are struggling with, but sometimes we just need somebody - such as me - to point out what you will no doubt refer to as quite obvious in retrospect, thus giving you a helping hand.


So prepare for a barrage of tips to help you discipline your piano practice and playing!



Piano Playing Discipline Practice


Use the Metronome for Discipline Playing Piano



Point number one is one I absolutely will not dwell on, just because I go on about it time and time again!


But I will make the point briefly just to reinforce the idea that when you practice, you should use a metronome for a good chunk of the time.


Unless you’re specifically practising your sight reading ability, I don’t recommend incorporating the metronome until you have a vague understanding and ability of playing the notes. What the metronome will then do is help you to tighten everything up, disciplining your sense of rhythm but also pulse, thus keeping the music together and disjointed.


If you find that certain transitions between bars or sections of music are a problem for you, these are ideal things to practise with a metronome as the constraints of a strict beat will really force you into keeping it together (although it does, I dare say, take practise! Nothing is quick, sadly!).


I should note that as a secondary point to this, slow practice is the best practice!


Slow practice will allow your hands to familiarise themselves with changing position and your fingers to familiarise themselves with (often awkward!) note playing, all within the constraints of a beat. This makes the whole thing easier to speed up.


Remember the old saying about not learning to run before you can walk?


It’s literally that!


Of course, practising slowly has it’s issues in that it means that we cover significantly less in the space of our usual practice session, so whilst I urge you to remember that the quality will always prevail, it brings me neatly onto my next point to ensure that your precious practice time won’t be wasted by continually treading over old ground…



Learn Out Of Order and Practice Individual Bits



This one’s an odd one to hear when first suggested, but the rise in students and teachers alike saying that this is the fundamental rule when it comes to learning pieces of music is astonishing.


First-page-itis, as I like to call it, is the common disease afflicting many poor pianists (professional as well, I’m sure) in which they learn a piece of music from the beginning to the end.


They still break it down into sections, of course, but in the course of learning they will do two things:


  • They will perfect a section and make it performance worthy before moving on;

  • They will regularly play their music from the beginning, adding on new sections that they have learnt / are learning.


The latter point obviously ensures that at least transitions are smooth, but by perfecting as you go and then continually reinforcing it by playing it over and over again, you develop First-page-itis: the remarkable ability to play the beginning of a piece (or the first page) spectacularly well and then never bringing the rest of the piece up to the same level.


Why not?


Two reasons - time in a practice session runs out (especially for long pieces such as sonatas) and devoting less and less time to a section the more you go on (partly time again, but also that mentality of light at the end of the tunnel gives you more of a ‘sprint’ mentality).


So how can we tackle this issue?


Well, as the heading suggested - learn out of order!


For example, if you have a theme and variations, you already know that the theme is likely going to be the easiest bit. The variations will almost certainly be harder, and often they progress logically in terms of their difficulty as the piece goes on (such as Handel’s ‘Harmonious Blacksmith). Therefore, it’s worth having a play through the theme so you have an idea of how that sounds (if you don’t already know), the skimming through the score and finding the bit that actually looks the hardest! Or, indeed, playing through the whole score and seeing which bit you have the most trouble with!


Each individual practice session can be allocated a different section and all of them will then progress together. Only when you feel you’ve got all of them at a fairly decent standard (but not perfect) do you want to think about stringing them together to make sure transitions are good (perfection is not strived for yet because it sort of locks them into individual performances, making transitions much harder or much less natural sounding).


Once you’ve got this, pinpoint the sections within the sections that need attention and devote practice sessions to them. It’s unlikely that you’re struggling to play the entirety of a section. You’ll find hesitation at certain bars, certain techniques, certain jumps etc. - so isolate them and focus on them, using the metronome if appropriate.


Now we’re starting to perfect the whole piece together so that none of it feels left out and your performance remains consistently fluid; prior to this you may have run the risk of a really strong theme and maybe a really strong first variation and then it starts to lose momentum. Not to say it wouldn’t be good, but on the whole your strength was applied to the beginning and there would be an imbalance.



Keep Exercises Disciplined



Whether you are practising your scales or doing some finger strengthening, you need to be disciplined.


If you take an exam and you play a scale using the wrong fingers entirely but it still sounds good and fluid, you actually won’t be marked down.


But does that mean you should learn the wrong fingers?


No!


Don’t settle for a that’ll do attitude with exercises, as learning scales etc. form the backbone of your technique and your understanding of theory, thus making you a better musician. So not worth skimping on!


You need to be in control of what you are doing at all times, being able to do a scale fluidly each time but with guesswork of the fingers, resulting in different fingerings each time, shouldn’t be your goal.


This is also the same for anything that relates to counting. Not just beat wise, such as learning exercises against the metronome, but in terms of how many times you wish to do something.


Learn when to put the brakes on and how to control.


Are you doing a one octave scale? Two? Three? Four?


If you say four and you do three, is that good enough?


Doesn’t matter how fabulous your three octave scale was, it’s not what you intended.


And why should this matter?


Because it’s showing either;



  • Lack of understanding from your mind. You’re not hearing the passing of or seeing / feeling the development of the full four octaves, or


  • You’re not in control of your hands, and they’re just doing what feels most natural to them at the time they want to.



Let’s say you’re performing a Leschetizky exercise by holding down all but one finger in a hand at a time and vamping the remaining finger, working through them. How many are you going to give each one? Four vamps on the thumb then move to finger 2 for 4, 3 for 4?


If you’re practising any type of exercise that involves a strong sense of rhythm (all of them, actually!), then keep the pulse going between each individual one. If you’re working between your left and right hand practising scales, don’t just randomly switch to the left hand. Keep the tempo and count as soon as your thumb in one hand finishes its scale on its root note “2 - 3 - 4” and begin your other hand’s scale in time.



In Conclusion



Discipline is a nightmare for pianists and musicians, but the results of it are absolutely staggering!


Consider the following:


How long would it take for you to learn a one page piece?

How long would it take for you to learn a ten page piece?


Many of us are intimidated by the thought of too long a piece of music and think it will take weeks of practising, but in reality if you chunk it out to ten individual pages, it becomes ten individual pieces (don’t be too literal - find suitable stopping points!). And that’s all I’m really encouraging you to do; look at music in sections and treat it all with the same TLC.


Even I have surprised myself in being only 2 pages off having learnt a Schubert Impromptu (about ten pages in length) in its first increment (i.e. not perfect, but I can play it with the odd bit of hesitation) in about a week and a half. I learnt the theme and first variation, then the last variation, then penultimate, then the one before that. So I have the second variation to cover and I’ll be ready to bring it together and perfect what needs perfecting, but the whole thing will be much more solid than if I had brought it together from the beginning and worked on perfection straight away (I’d still be on page one)…


…so I really am speaking from experience!


So you can trust me: discipline makes the pianist stronger as a performer and more productive in terms of learning and achieving!


 

Jack Mitchell Smith is a piano teacher based in Congleton, Cheshire. Click here to find out more.


Weekly blogs are posted that may help you with your musical or piano journey. Click here to sign up to the mailing list so you never miss a post!


 
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