What do you want to know about PIANO or COMPOSING? Conservatory trained.
>>60508122
How do you achieve rhythmic independence in your hands to the point where you can syncopate and use anticipations spontaneously?
>>60508308
practice practice practice!
actually, start simply. try eighth notes in your LH and triplets in your right. nail it. reverse.
then 4 against 3.
then 5 against 4.
and 5 against 3.
be precise. work on it. reverse hands.
practice practice practice
>>60508122
What's the most technically challenging thing you've played? What was so difficult about it?
>>60508781
Prokofiev 3rd piano concerto. - Large spreads, big jumps, thick chords, high speed, bizarre chord clusters
Chopin etudes provide great challenges because each one deals with developing skills - from fast consecutive 8ves to fast thirds, all black keys. These i believe are among the most triumphant of all in the literature for marrying both SKILL and BEAUTY.
>>60508122
bump
>>60508122
How do you approach writing for instruments you don't play?
Did you start when you were a child? I'd like to start playing piano but I'm 18 and fear it's too late to become actually good, plus I don't really know how to go about it in a good way.
>>60509396
it's easier to write out their part in the key of the piece, then individually transpose the part later. also, i have a general knowledge of different insterments so things like bowings, tonguing, teabagging, etc. i am confident about.
>>60509451
yes. piano at 7. NO it's not too late. in fact, i had a piano student once who came to me and said "look, i'm 75 years old, never had time to learn but i have the time now!" and you know what she took lessons and progressed just fine!!!
>>60509893
bet ur real used to teabagging huh
Whack!
>>60509925
yeah, i really like some sweaty hairy balls on my nose.
How can I establish a tonal center without adhering to any diatonic scale?
>>60508122
So, there are standardized syntaxes for tonal music and atonal music. Do you know of any comprehensive attempts at creating such a syntax for quarter-tone music, or microtonal music in continuous pitch space, ex nihilo? Any works that exhibit this syntax? I haven't seen anything... satisfying yet. (The most rousing thing that I seen is an application 24-TET to better reconstitute the spectral content of some reference sound (tires screeching, bells sounding, w/e). But that just makes an orchestra a synthesizer, which is impressive, but it is not a grammar like species counterpoint productions are, it is just re-synthesis. Can't remember the author's name...)
>>60508887
I prefer Scriabin's etudes, though they focus on different techniques.
>>60511029
Not OP, but I can answer.
Are you talking free-atonality, or are we talking modality? If the latter, is there a particular mode you're looking to make work?
The first thing you need to accept is that modal and non-functional music is going to be inherently less stable than functional tonal music - that simply can't be avoided. That said, here are some tips and tricks for establishing a tonal centre outside of diatonicism.
First and foremost, you need to avoid harmonic pull to other tonal centres, so you don't want any V - I or vi - I movement to anywhere else. Repetition of the desired tonal centre is the other obvious one - just play it a lot. Similarly, you can emphasise the desired tonal centre by droning it, or through dynamics, tone, articulation, etc. You need to give the note priority on stronger beats within your melody, and frequently use it to begin and end phrases. You want to put it at the melodic peaks and troughs, or alternatively, it's relative leading-tone resolving to it at particularly tense sections of your melody (if we're talking modal music, and you're using a mode without the leading-tone, then another very unstable note such as the b2 or tritone). Do similar things for other stable chord-tones of the tonic.
One good tip is to never play the chords whose roots compete for tonic role (or if you must, then always play them in inversion - preferably second or third).
I recommend you look into pitch axis theory.
What are some good ways to begin to compose every day? How do you start a composition?
>>60512299
Not OP, but I can answer.
The two questions are answered by the same answer. Come up with an abstract technique or idea which you want to explore (generally, one related to whatever you are currently learning about/teaching yourself about), and explore it. Do so in as simple/abstract a way as you possibly can first, and only then start to develop the idea into a song.
Say you're learning about additive meter and polymeter. You come up with a question to ask yourself: "Hey, I wonder if you could use both at the same time, and if so, what that would sound like", so you write this:
http://i.imgur.com/o5fmJBA.png
(please ignore that it's written entirely in dotted notes for the moment, you wouldn't write it that way, it's just saving me time re-writing it for the next section)
That's 2+3+2+2+2+3 over 2+2+2+2+2+2+2 (though notated as 6+9+6+6+6+9 over 6+6+6+6+6+6+6).
Then you wonder if the polymeters can be on pulses of different values, rather than just different beats of the same pulse, so you write:
http://i.imgur.com/gl08XJh.png
That's 6+9+6+6+6+9 over 8+8+8+8+10
Then you decide that you want to give the bottom meter a more distinctive character, since it's simple boom-bap it overriding the interesting meter-structure of the top one. So you write this:
http://i.imgur.com/21cSHOR.png
That's 6+9+6+6+6+9 over 14+14+14
Then you figure that the clashing meters will sound clearer if you have one played by the drums, and one played by another instrument, so you stick some random chords down which sound nice in the rhythm of your top meter-sequence, and you keep the drums playing only the bottom one, filling out the part a little, now that both hands are free. You get this:
http://i.imgur.com/BybKUrx.png
You fill it out with a melody following the piano's meter-pattern, and a bass-line following the drum's meter-pattern, and you get this:
http://i.imgur.com/po172PY.png
Suddenly, you've got heaps of ideas on the page to work with and expand on.
>>60508122
Still around, Anon?
