Mike's Music Mystery 2

I do intend to get back to Fundamentals of Music, but I can't resist trying to respond to some of Mike's questions. If, as Oliver Sacks says, we are born with an attraction to music, maybe we also resonate with the physical law of sound which involves the overtone series.

Since the idea of the overtone series can induce near-coma in anyone but a scientist, I'll try to give a simple example. Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra (or the theme to 2001 Space Odyssey, if that's more familiar) begins with the first notes of the overtone series.

A musical tone contains more than its fundamental sound. You can prove this by silently depressing, for instance, a C on your acoustic piano so that the damper remains up and the string can vibrate. Then strike the next C up, and it will cause the original C string to vibrate. If you strike the next G, the string again will vibrate. This is because of sympathetic sound and the overtone series.

I had a kind of mad organ teacher when I was a teenager. Those of you in Piano Club have probably heard how I wasn't allowed to breathe until my hands came off the keys, and how Mr. Lee's organ playing was punctuated by audible gasps as he followed his own rule. He would always ask me "Do you hear the overtones?" And actually I never did, but I tried to look as if I believed they were there, since he said they were.

I wrote Mike:

When I tried to take a nap this afternoon, all I could think about was whether the cuckoo sound is part of a major chord or a minor chord. Then I thought of the overtone series and decided that if we're as much a part of the natural world as I think we are, it must be a the top of a major chord. I have never completely understood the overtone series, but from what I understand it would go (1) Fundamental (2) Up a fifth (3) Up a fourth (4) Up a major third, etc. Without taking it any further, you would have, for example, C, up to G, up to C, up to E, which of course would describe a major chord. I think the next note in the series is an E-flat up nearly an octave and thus a minor chord. So the children are probably taking the chord root for granted when they sing nyah nyah-nyah nyah nyah on a minor third. I picture a string vibrating its full length (the fundamental), then from center to end (octave), but I'm not very clear on where it goes from there (where the nodes are). Maybe you know, since you play guitar. Now the part in your note about God I'm going to have to read several more times before I can begin to understand it, but even without fully getting it, I think it is just wonderful.

Mike's Music Mystery

(Mike Eppley wrote this fascinating response to the Cuckoo post and gave me permission to put it on Organic Piano 101. Besides playing the Big Literature on piano, Mike plays with a well-known blues group and has twelve YouTube videos under the name MrMikeyboards.)

What an interesting lesson; that cuckoo keeps popping in and out of my mind now! So, the riddle of the cuckoo clock (your current one) that perhaps you sometimes pose to your students, may be:

"Am I singing the bottom of a minor chord, or the top of a major chord?"

Among the many things I found myself wondering:Do children latch on to that minor 3rd interval partially because of its tension, the need to resolve to a root note if the minor 3rd is really used as the top (steps 5 & 3) of a major chord? Think of "Ring Around the Rosie," when you sing "ashes, ashes (we all fall down)." Ashes, ashes equals cuckoo, cuckoo, but instead of a minor-ish context, it's really used as the top of a major chord that wants to resolve to its root. Whereas, normally when we think of a minor 3rd interval, we think of it as the 1st & 3rd steps of a minor chord, with a sad or suspenseful sound.

(I always notice this interval in movies, the moment they want you to feel suspense. If you pay attention, you'll hear it all the time! Then, of course, you can curse me for drawing it to your attention, after which you'll never be able to ignore it again while watching many movies.)

I guess it all comes down to which note in between the notes of a minor 3rd interval are being implied. There are exactly 2 notes (in Western music, anyway) in between the defining notes of a minor 3rd. If you "hear" the lower of those 2 notes as part of a scale/sequence that also includes the cuckoo notes, then it implies steps 3, 4, & 5 of a major scale/chord. But if you "hear" the higher of the 2 notes situated between the cuckoo notes, then you've constructed the first 3 notes of a minor scale.

Perhaps this duality is what's so intriguing about the minor 3rd interval? It's the Jekyl & Hyde interval of our diatonic system. (Yes, other intervals have dual contexts as well, but with this interval, the 2 contexts seem so opposite, so different, to me.)

An interesting way to think of notes, intervals, chords (that's all been occurring to me as a result of thinking about Mikie's cuckoo posting), is that a single note by itself has no context (at least a theoretical note, if you ignore timbre, etc.). It's like a "point" in mathematics (or in "flatland"); it has only one dimension. It has no context, nor relationship to anything else.

But when you add another note, you now have 2 dimensions, context, a relationship... meaning! Perhaps you could even say that you already have 3 dimensions, with only those 2 notes, because the 3rd dimension (a chord) is now implied. Maybe even parallel 3rd dimensions, since there's more than one interpretation, different types of chords/universes in which those 2 notes can live. Okay... I've gone into outer space here (I've gone cuckoo); my apologies! I'm just passing on the thoughts I've been having on the subject over the last couple of days. (I blame Mikie ;-) )

Composers can and do use these concepts all the time. They may start a piece with a single note, the future/context of which cannot be predicted by the listener until more notes are added. Then more meaning is divulged, new relationships abound, and a landscape is opened up to us. If I really wanted to go out there on a limb, I might say that we are all like notes in a musical composition. As we move through time, we build relationships to other notes. (Some might say the composer is God.)

If you've made it this far in this unrequested followup to Mikie's lesson, then I wish you a Happy New Year, as we move on in the master compositions of our lives!

(Note: Anjaline and I are currently on vacation in Arizona. Maybe the southwest is what's bringing out all this mysticism in me!)

Mike E.

The Musical Cuckoo

The cuckoo, which is said to lay its eggs in the nests of other birds, can hardly be considered a noble bird, but its call has been much used by composers for hundreds of years. The cuckoo clock near my piano has proved to be an instrument which not only helps keep time, but assists in teaching intervals, figured bass, and music history.

At first, I used the cuckoo clock to remind me when lessons were finished, since I would often forget the time once a lesson began. Then I noticed that my students were beginning to be more prompt, to arrive before the cuckoo chimed the hour.

When students began playing with the tick-tock of the clock, I wrote out a little exercise in three-four time, and the clock became a metronome. More advanced students would look pained and cast accusing glances at the clock until I stopped it, but younger students were only too happy to play at 60 or 120 beats per minute, matching the tick and the tock.

One early ear training exercise was to find the exact pitches of the cuckoo on the piano. They were B to G, a major third, until an unfortunate accident with the vacuum cleaner necessitated a new cuckoo, which chimes C to A, a minor third.

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) considered the minor third the first interval that children could sing in tune, which might account for the almost universal traditional Teasing Song which Béla Bartók (1881-1945) documented in his children’s pieces. American children probably know this tune as “Nyah, nyah-nyah nyah nyah.” Cuckoo pieces in music literature use both intervals.

Many students are unfamiliar with Roman numerals, and the numbers on the cuckoo clock are helpful when we begin talking about I, IV and V chords. Of course, the students will quickly point out that we do not have VIII, IX, X, XI, or XII chords.

The numbers on the clock may even encourage the students to learn the twelve major and twelve minor key signatures, since I to VI o’clock indicate the number of sharps in the major keys, going clockwise around the circle of fifths.

Many method books have cuckoo pieces, many of them in ¾ time. There is a Cuckoo in the Six Children’s Pieces (for piano, four hands) of Anton Arensky (1861-1906), and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals features a Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods (Le Coucou au Fond des Bois). Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony has a cuckoo, as well.

There is a Baroque cuckoo, Louis Daquin’s Le Coucou for organ or harpsichord.

Haydn’s Toy Symphony has a cuckoo (and there is an instrument , a short pipe with a single fingerhole, used for just this sound). Ottorino Respighi’s suite “Gli Ucelli” (The Birds) features the cuckoo in the last movement.

My favorite cuckoo in music, however, is found in the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in G, Op. 79. The cuckoo first appears when the left hand crosses over the right, but Beethoven’s cuckoo is not limited to two fixed notes. He sings all over the piano, in various keys, in bass clef, and finally in octaves.

Lesson Nine: Half Steps and Scales

From any key on the piano to the nearest key is a half step.

Because all the white keys of the piano are the same width, we get the impression that they are the same distance apart in sound, but this is not the case.

From C to D is a whole step because it skips the black key between.

From D to E is a whole step because it skips a black key.

From E to F is only a half step.

From F to G is a whole step.

From G to A is a whole step.

From A to B is a whole step.

From B to the next C is only a half step.

If you play the eight notes one after the other, CDEFGABC, you will have played the most boring of the twelve major scales. You can create a major scale beginning on any note, as long as you keep the whole steps and the half steps in the order above (half step between the third and fourth note, half step between the seventh and eighth note.)

Only the C major scale will use just white keys. Every other major scale will need at least one black key, and what we call that key will depend upon musical spelling.

The rule for spelling a scale is that the notes must be named in alphabetical order without skipping or repeating a letter.

Now we come to the matter of flats and sharps. Flats are played a half-step below the letter name of the note involved (the flat sign looks like a lower case b with a pointed bottom). Sharps are played a half step above the letter name (the sharp sign looks like the pound sign on your telephone). A natural sign (looks like a sharp with a missing right arm and left leg) cancels a sharp or flat.

My father once made me a brooch which said "Always B Natural" (see drawing).

If we are discussing a G major scale, then, we will spell it GABCDE F-sharp (NOT G-flat) and end on G. This follows the spelling rule.

I once had a pilot student who said “I can fly over the pond (the Atlantic ocean to us laymen) without giving it a second thought, but a G major scale scares me to death.”

Try playing the G major scale to see if it scares you to death. Play it with an F natural instead of an F sharp and see if it doesn’t sound wrong to you.

One last note about sharps and flats: In music notation, the sharp or flat sign comes before the note it effects and must be either in the space or on the line of the note. However, when we are talking about a flat or sharp, we always say the note first and the flat or sharp afterward.

There are lots of different scales besides the major scale. If you are feeling adventurous, try this altered klezmer scale: D, E-flat, F-sharp, G, A, B-flat, C-sharp, D. It already sounds like music doesn’t it? But it is just a scale.

Guilt, Resistance and the Graceful Exit

I have suspected for a long time that my former students who still live nearby hide when they see me coming. I have even been in the same room with a talented piano dropout, and I swear that she managed to be behind a post or a friend or in another room the whole time I was there. Not a word of greeting after four years of one-to-one lessons.

When I did a kind of survey for a piano teachers’ magazine some years ago, I figured that I had taught close to two thousand students, not including my college piano classes or students who dropped out before six months. The average length of study was about 3.5 years; the longest was 14 years; the average drop-out age (which will come as no surprise to other teachers) was 12.

Since many of these potential pianists still live in my small town, you would think I would encounter them on the street or in the stores once in a while, but I don’t. I think the answer is guilt. They think they should have practiced more; they think they should have kept on with their lessons.

“Why did you let me quit piano?” is a complaint parents seem to hear frequently from their children. "Why didn't you MAKE me practice?" I have heard this one from my own brother and mother. "You made Mikie practice piano; why didn't you make me practice?" (Of course, I have to add that Les grew up to be a trombone virtuoso who practices and performs all the time.)

Granted, piano lessons are not for everyone, and I have more than once discussed with a student getting him or her off the hook when the lessons were the parent’s idea and the student really didn’t care for anything about it.

So I have come up with the idea of the graceful exit, something a friend once advised me when I thought the way to stop using a computer program was to turn the computer off. If a student lets me know he or she will be terminating piano lessons, I update their Repertoire list, write down what level they have achieved, and note any special accomplishments or abilities they have shown. I list the beginning and ending dates of their lessons and tell them they are welcome back at any time, whether to study or just visit.

Occasionally, a student given this kind of exit will come back to lessons, but whether or not this happens, I hope it does something to reduce what seems to be piano guilt.

Guilt is not our friend. It is a vain regret. I am really against guilt. The pianist Gary Graffman wrote a book called “I Really Should Be Practicing”, and I have said this to myself more times than I care to admit. Of course, the answer is to get over to the piano and start to work, but many times a former student would rather feel guilty than to practice. In this case, I suppose I must be a reminder of a failure, a kind of Jiminy Cricket (Pinocchio's conscience).

Another dismaying phenomenon in music is Resistance. Pianists hit walls of resistance just the way long-distance runners do. They don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Doubt rears its ugly head. They get discouraged. Very often, this will happen after a big surge in musical achievement.

I think such a wall of resistance is a period where we are assimilating new information. It is a time to review old repertoire, to listen to recordings of our favorite players, to go to the Wiki Public Domain website and download some new sheet music. I have hit this wall more times than I can say. My teacher, Mr. Sheldon, once said to me “You’ll be a good piano teacher, because you will never encounter a problem in a student which you have not had yourself.”

Lesson Eight: The Grand Staff

The brace --{--at the beginning of all piano music is probably the most important symbol to observe. It tells us that both hands are playing together. It creates a grand staff with five lines and four spaces in the treble, five lines and four spaces in the bass. Between these two staves are the B below middle C, middle C itself (always written on its own line), and the D above middle C.

Jazz players, who frequently read a single musical staff with chord symbols above it, sometimes complain at having to deal with a grand staff. Players of melodic or single staff instruments (virtually all instruments except keyboards and guitar) often say that they're fine on "right hand" but can't do "left hand".

The reason for the difficulty is that when the eyes are accustomed to scanning left to right the way you read a book, they sometimes have to be taught to look up and down so that they can see both parts of the grand staff. Last year some piano friends and I did an experiment on sight-reading. We all had two pages of written music and a pencil. The exercise was to draw a line on the score showing exactly where your eyes tracked the music. The quickest music sight-readers circled the brace, key signature, time signature, clef signs, then darted up and down, zig-zagging their gaze.

Sometimes I use a pencil to direct a student's eyes up and down.

The brace which creates the grand staff is important to advanced pianists as well as to beginners. In choral music, often there are four staves in addition to the piano part on a single page; the brace shows the pianist where to look. The same applies to piano duet music and conductors' scores. The brace always heads out the piano part.

Vocabulary

Brace: The { symbol which connects the treble (high) staff with the bass (low) staff.

Melody: The tune or easily recognizable part of a piece of music, always one note at a time.

(Diagram from A Workbook for Organic Piano Playing, copyright 1977 by Michaele Benedict)

Lesson Seven: The Beat Goes On, Part Two

When you are relaxed, your heart beats about 72 times a minute and you breathe about 18 times. This ratio of four beats to one breath is connected not only to CPR, but to music, poetry and dance. Musical rhythm is physical.

Take two pencils and drum while counting aloud: One, Two, Three, Four...over and over, without skipping or prolonging a beat. This is called beating “in four” or “in common time.” Then try beating left, right, left, right while counting One Two Three...over and over. If you do this correctly, you will see how uncommon beating “in three” really is. It will take four complete patterns before the first beat falls on the hand which began the exercise. The stresses or accents will shift as you go.

At the beginning of a piece of music, you will see two numerals, the time signature. The top number is the number of beats in a measure. The bottom number is read as a fraction and tells what kind of note gets one beat. This is the subject of a great deal of confusion in music reading.

We would be much better off if we gave various kinds of notes names like “breve” and “quaver” as the English do, but we are stuck with fractions. Just like the song in “Fiddler On the Roof”, it’s tradition, so you have to memorize the symbols.

A whole note is a round open circle with no stem.

A half note is a round open circle with a stem.

A quarter note is a black circle with a stem.

A whole rest or silence is a black bar hanging from the fourth line from the bottom on the staff. A half rest is a black bar usually sitting on the third line from the bottom.

A quarter rest is an M standing on its end.

If the duration of a note was as obvious as the pitch (highness or lowness) of a note were shown spatially, it would be easier to figure out how long to hold it. However, for various reasons a whole note may not take up four times as much space as a quarter note in your sheet music.

As for rests, some modern composers don’t bother with them and Braille music simply leaves a blank space when the beat is silent. However, anyone who has ever played with a school band or bell choir knows how important knowing about rests is. Unintended solos are no fun at all. In piano, though often one hand or the other is keeping the beat, we still need to be confident about interpreting the symbols for notes and rests.

In the 18^th century, during Beethoven’s lifetime, the inventor Johann Nepomuk Maelzel came up with a device he called a metronome to help musicians set the speed of a piece and to stick to the beat. Much music is still marked with M.M. (Maelzel’s Metronome) settings telling how many beats the music has per minute.

Beethoven liked the metronome (the crafty Maelzel also invented ear trumpets to help the increasingly deaf composer.) We believe Schumann’s metronome was broken because of the unlikely tempi he indicated. The brilliant musicologist Charles Rosen said that there were only three metronome indications he took seriously in all music literature, and that all three were in Beethoven.

Vocabulary

Musical rhythm or meter: Notes and silences moving in time.

Beat: A unit of musical rhythm.

Heartbeat: The human heartbeat is about 72 beats per minute, an average rate in music.

Note values: The duration of the musical note, whole, half, quarter, etc.

Rests: Silences in music.

Metronome: An instrument of torture invented in the eighteenth century.

Breve: A double whole note in England. A single whole note is a semibreve.

Quaver: An eighth note in England.

Tempo (plural, tempi): The rate of speed in music, sometimes indicated by metronome marks but almost always with a supplementary Italian term which may also describe the mood of the piece.

Beethoven: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827.

Schumann: Robert Schumann,, 1810-1856.

Your Brain On Music

Daniel J. Levitin, in his book This Is Your Brain On Music, says "...although many people say that (early) music lessons didn't take, cognitive neuroscientists have found otherwise in their laboratories. Even just a small exposure to music lessons as a child creates neural circuits for music processing that are enhanced and more efficient than for those who lack training." Oliver Sacks' case studies have shown that these neural circuits, whether acquired in childhood or in adult life, are lifelong and permanent and that they stimulate parts of the brain which otherwise may just remain dormant.

Lesson Six: The Clef Signs

The clef signs are basic to reading music because they indicate the exact location on the five lines and four spaces of a particular note. Their practical use, however, has been obscured because the treble (high) sign has become an icon for the idea of music and the bass (low) clef sign is generally ignored as long as possible.

Pianists are fortunate that they have only two clef signs to observe. Cellists deal with three: A treble or G clef fixing the location of the G above middle C, a bass or F clef fixing the location of the F below middle C, and a third clef sign resembling a Gothic B which fixes middle C on the fourth line from the bottom (see cello score).

If you read music mostly by intervals (the distance between the notes), you will not fall into the trap of thinking bass clef is "left hand", a dangerous foreign territory. After all, we only have A-B-C-D-E-F-G, and then we start over. The notes are written on the lines and spaces. From any line to the nearest space up or down is a neighbor note or a second. If you know where one note is located on the music staff (the lines and spaces), it is not difficult to find the others.

Vocabulary

Clef sign: A symbol in written music showing the fixed location of a particular note.

Treble clef: Also called G clef, used for notes from about middle C and higher. The scroll of the sign curls around the line which indicates the G above middle C.

Bass clef: Also called F clef, used for notes from about middle C and lower. The two dots beside the symbol are on either side of the line which indicates the F below middle C.

Staff: The lines and spaces used in music notation.

Illustration from A Workbook for Organic Piano Playing copyright 1977 Michaele Benedict

Lesson Five: Five-Finger Games

Here is a set of five-finger games for you to use while practicing your grasping position at the piano. See Lesson Three or the virtual piano at http://play-piano.org/play_online_piano_piano.html if you need to remind yourself the names of the keys. The white keys are named A-B-C-D-E-F-G, and then we start over.

(Diagram from A Workbook for Organic Piano Playing, copyright Michaele Benedict, 1977.)

Comfort Ye

"Comfort ye my people." Every time I hear this aria, words by Isaiah, music by Handel, I get all teary-eyed. Johann Sebastian Bach, the grandfather of all musicians, said that the only purpose of music was to glorify the Creator or to recreate the human spirit. That is why we don't work the piano; we play it.

J.S. Bach, 1685-1750: In addition to composing thousands of major works, he is probably the inventor of the tempered tuning used in all keyboards today. He was the inventor of modern harmony and is even credited with beginning the use of the thumbs in keyboard playing.

G.F. Handel, an exact contemporary of Bach, is best known for composing the Hallelujah Chorus.

Lesson Four: Getting Physical

"Weight is our enemy."

When after years of piano lessons I finally found my True Teacher, Robert Sheldon, we spent an hour on this concept and I played exactly one note: D.

Mr. Sheldon was not talking about dieting. His point was that it is the speed with which the piano key descends which produces loudness or softness. If the key goes down slowly, the resulting sound is soft. If rapidly, the sound is loud.

Most piano teachers teach the way they were taught, and Mr. Sheldon was carrying on the lessons of his own teacher, the great Egon Petri (see http://www.pianoeu.com/petri.html.) Weight on the keys is largely expended after the key has reached bottom or keybed. Petri and Sheldon spoke of "taking" the key, rather than pushing or striking the key. Applying weight or force to the key produces very little besides a percussive sound.

What this means for you is that you use a grasping motion on the keys. This may sound simple, but it is so different from most piano methods that a description of it on line put me in touch with a teacher in Finland who proved to have the same second-generation Petri lessons I had.

Your position at the piano should be comfortable and far enough away from the keyboard that you have a straight line from your elbow to the knuckles of your hand. You need to adjust this position to accommodate the sheet music you are looking at, your own height, and the height of the bench you are using. The part of the finger which takes the key is the fleshy pad where your fingerprint resides, not the tips of your fingers.

Vocabulary, Lessons Three and Four

Interval: The distance between notes or keys

Do-re-me-fa-so: Note names used in some cultures. In "fixed do", Do is always C. In "Movable Do", the tonic or beginning of any scale is called Do.

Percussive: A struck sound, like a drum.

Keybed: The wooden platform below each piano key.

Lesson Three: Twelve Tones

“This is an ancient way of teaching, using the simplest language and the situations of everyday life. This means the student should teach himself.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

There are twelve tones in music. We will start with five tones on the white keys of the piano, since the black keys (and even some of the white keys) have more than one name. a bit like the characters in a Russian novel.

Notice that the black keys are arranged in groups of two and three. The key directly to the left of the two black keys is C. Although the way music is written is the same throughout much of the world, the keys you play and the notes you read on the page may have different names in different countries: Instead of C,D,E,F,G they may be called Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So, for instance. The advantage of thinking of these five notes as the first, second, third, fourth and fifth degrees of a scale is that it gives us a sense of distance between the notes.

Reading by pattern or interval is the quickest and most accurate way to read music, and it involves more right-brain activity than the old way of thinking letters. Reading patterns also is more likely to produce real phrases than note-note-note playing by letters. However, we need the letters for points of reference so we don’t have to say “the white key to the left of the set of two black keys” every time we mean C.

So put the thumb of your right hand on C, and the adjacent fingers of the right hand on the neighboring keys. If you are still using the virtual keyboard, you will have to use your imagination, since the keys on your monitor will be too small to fit under your fingers.

Play the 1-2-3-4-5 pattern you sang in lesson one and listen carefully to each sound. The fingers of the right hand are numbered 1-2-3-4-5. Now put the little finger of the left hand on the C and play the same pattern. The notes you play will still be C-D-E-F-G, but the finger numbers are mirrors of the right hand finger numbers. The left thumb is finger one, so you will be playing the pattern with fingers 5-4-3-2-1 of the left hand.

If you are feeling bold, you can play “I Know Where I’m Going” , temporarily substituting finger numbers for notes. Don’t forget the rests. And if you want to play along with the cuckoo in the video, the notes he is chirping are C and A.

Lesson Two: The Beat Goes On

Rhythm, phrasing, expression

For lesson two, you need to know how to take your pulse or have access to a clock or timer which ticks.

Try to tap your foot in rhythm to either the ticking clock or to your pulse.

Each tap will be a beat (like a heartbeat).

Then count out loud as you tap:

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

Once you have that down, try counting skipping the second beat:

One () three, four.

One () three, four.

The skipped beats are called rests in music.

Now chant, in time to your tapping foot:

I know where I’m going (rest) (rest)

I know who’s gone with me (rest) (rest)

I know who I love (rest) (rest) (rest)

Who knows who I’ll marry? (rest) (rest)

Each line is a musical phrase.

If you are able to sing your 1-2-3-4-5 from Lesson One, you can add the melody to these words.

1-1-2-3-1-1 (rest two beats)

3-3-4-3-3-2- (rest two beats)

5-5-5-5-1- (rest three beats)

2-3-4-3-3-2 (rest two beats and repeat)

What is the mood of the lyric? If it seems happy to you, you may speak or sing it faster (if you’re still singing with your pulse, your pulse will speed up.) If you’re singing with the clock, you may have to step away so that the clock doesn’t slow you down to its speed or tempo.

If the lyric seems sad, you might want to speak or sing it more slowly.

Rhythm in music is more physical than mental, which is why you need to teach yourself to tap your foot in time with the beat or on the beat. All rhythm in music is beats, whether extended (as lasting more than one beat), divided (more than one sound to a beat) or silent.

For Lesson 3, you will need a keyboard. A toy piano or electronic keyboard will do, or you can start out with the virtual keyboard at http://play-piano.org/play_online_piano_piano.html. For now, please ignore the letters and just experiment with high notes (to your right) and low notes (to your left).

Vocabulary, Lesson Two:

Rhythm: Musical time

Beat: A unit of musical time

Rest: A silence in musical time

Phrase: A musical idea

Lyric: The words to a song.

Tempo: The rate of musical time (fast or slow)

Oliver Sachs and me

Oliver Sachs, in his book Musicophilia, says that the love of music is universal among human beings, that "it lies so deep in human nature that one must think of it as innate". Citing "biophilia" or the love of living things, Sachs says "Perhaps musicophilia is a form of biophilia, since music itself feels almost like a living thing."

I have always thought of music as a living, organic entity common to all of us. I have taught thousands of piano students and have never encountered one who could not learn to play, though I have encountered many who THOUGHT they could not play (or sing, or write, or draw), no matter what difficulty they had to overcome. Dyslexia, for instance, makes reading music harder but not impossible.

The psychological, emotional and even physical benefits of playing an instrument are well documented, so I won't dwell on them. But I will tell you a bit about myself: I am a member of Music Teachers National Association and of California Association of Professional Music Teachers, with state and national certification. I have a California credential in piano. I am an emerita of Skyline College's music department and still play with a community orchestra and chorus.

Organic Piano

Lesson One: Listening and Pitch

“I wish I could play the piano.”

I’ve heard this a thousand times.

I am here to grant your wish. We will start at the very beginning, and we’ll go as far as we can. I believe that everyone has music inside them. Making music is very different from just listening to music, though of course you listen to the music you make.

So the first thing to do is to listen: Listen to the doorbell, your car horn, sounds in nature. Listen to the pitches of a telephone number on your phone. The numbers go by very rapidly if you are phoning someone, but there are only three different sounds, four if you count the dial tone. Can you sing the sound of the dial tone? This is called matching the pitch. Pitch is the highness or lowness of the sound. Some people say they are tone-deaf, but in the many years I have taught piano I have never found anyone who was tone deaf.

A foghorn usually has a low pitch. Most bird sounds involve high pitches. Sirens move up and down from pitch to pitch. As a train moves away from you, the pitch of its horn will seem to grow lower.

Can you sing a tune? (You don’t have to do it out loud.)

You may have a musical gift, or you may have an ear which yearns to be educated. One way to find out is to listen and try to imitate.

If you can sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, you can do the first exercise. You won’t need a keyboard until Lesson 2, and then I’ll give you a link to a virtual keyboard to start with. If you are a monotone, we will teach your ear as we go along. If you can already sing, notice the following:

“Row, row, row your boat

Gently down the stream”

This tune uses five different sounds. The first three sounds are the same. You might think of them as Sound One.

“your” uses a higher sound, Sound Two.

“boat” uses a higher sound, Sound Three.

So if we use numbers for the first part of the song, they would be

1-1-1-2-3

3-2-3-4-5.

Now, if you are able, sing 1-2-3-4-5.

This is a pentachord and it is the basis for so much music that once you learn it, you can learn to read and play music on the piano or any other instrument. And that is where we’re headed.

Vocabulary, Lesson One:

Pitch: The highness or lowness of sound, caused by the rate of vibration.

Tone-deaf: Unable to differentiate different pitches

Keyboard: the black and white keys of a piano, electronic keyboard, organ, etc. Monotone: same as tone-deaf

Pentachord.: five consecutive notes, the first five notes of a scale