Simply Music

A World Where Everyone Plays … Really!

As we continue to grow much is changing at Simply Music.  We recently launched Play-a-Story, Lyndel Kennedy’s wonderful piano improvisation program (for 4 to 6 year olds). In addition, we have just announced the pending launch of Simply Music Rhapsody, Lynn Kleiner’s remarkable early-childhood music program (from birth to 5 year olds).

These programs are far more than mere additions to what it is that Simply Music offers. They represent a much bigger opportunity and possibility.

For many years I have talked about how extraordinary and exciting it would be to offer a “whole of life” program. In other words, part of my commitment is to be able to offer any person, of any age, a developmentally appropriate program that powerfully contributes to their musical self-expression.

We have made and continue to make great strides towards this becoming a reality.

Of particular interest to me at the moment is the role of music in fetal development. Certainly, we are discovering and learning more and more about the impact that it can have on a child, when they are regularly exposed to music while they are developing in their mother’s womb.

Let me paint a picture of one scenario as I see it.  A woman learns that she is pregnant and either by having lessons with a Simply Music piano teacher or by using our Learn-at-Home program, within just a week or two she is playing complete, beautiful pieces of music. She is not merely playing pre-recorded music in the background, rather, she herself is sitting at the piano and lovingly playing directly to her child in utero.  She truly is able to begin prenatal, musical communication with her developing child. Extraordinary!

Moving forward, her child is born and immediately, mother and child can participate in a beautifully developed infant’s music program that includes the pieces that mother played throughout her pregnancy and that her newborn child has already become familiar with.

Over the next several years, mother and child continue to be immersed in their early childhood music program and all the while mother continues to play the pieces that she learned during her pregnancy. Her child hears, feels and moves to these pieces during classes, then hears, feels and moves to these familiar pieces when at home.

At around 4 or 5 years of age, her child is now included in the Play-a-Story Program where the child develops a beautiful, fear-free relationship with the piano with their own musicality, their imagination and creativity as well as their profound connection to music.

Now, at around 6 years old, the child begins the Simply Music Piano Program and is immediately playing the pieces that they heard when developing in the womb, played at home, in class and throughout their early childhood.

With such a vast, rich musical experience, we have clearly provided a foundation that maximizes the likelihood of that child acquiring and retaining music as a life-long companion. With this as a basis, I see this same child moving into adulthood, becoming a parent and playing out the exact same process as described above.

I find something very whole and complete with regard to the integrity of this entire scenario. It is clearly such a natural progression from one stage to the next. When I stop to think about it and imagine its implications, I get very excited about our future and what we can contribute. I think its fulfillment is a major step in our journey towards a world where everyone plays!

Neil Moore
 – Founder and Executive Director
 – Simply Music International

By Scott Jones

We’re thrilled to have launched Play-a-Story. A brand new piano and keyboard program for 4-6 year-olds that introduces them to the joy of musical storytelling.  The exuberant and passionate creator of this program is Lyndel Kennedy.  In this casual chat with Scott Jones she talks about the value of improvisation as the first taste of playing music.  Her love of working with kids and passion for music are infectious.

Talk Music Music Interview with Lyndel Kennedy

Find out more about Play-a-Story

The community of Simply Music Teachers is as varied as it is extensive.  Recently we’ve been able to draw from that fantastic resource to improve and enrich the program.  Some of our teachers have been able to use their performing, educational or teaching experience to help create new programs and materials.  Elizabeth Gaikwad has combined her extensive background and creative skills to produce the Songs for Children and Foundation Duets and Variations programs, which have proven very popular with students and teachers of Simply Music. Apart from that, she’s a much-loved teacher who’s also great fun to be around.  She spoke with Mel Karajas about her programs and her love of teaching and music.

Hear some highlights or read the full interview below

Can I ask you about your musical background?

I was one of the lucky girls – I was very blessed with a family in that my father was an amazing flautist that had a love of music all through his childhood, and continued playing flute. My mum has the voice of an angel and played the piano. We grew up, I have 2 elder brothers and they were and still are flautists.  One still plays the saxophone, guitar, piano, you name it, our house was mad with music coming out of it. I would have hated to be our neighbours, because from every window there was something musical coming out.

My father played a lot in musical comedy, so when I was at school, and if I was a very good girl on a Friday night and he was doing a show, and I got all my homework done, I was allowed to go to sit in the orchestra pit with him next to the oboe player and next to him, the flautist.  Hello Dolly, South Pacific, whatever the show was at the time I would sit there a foot away from the stage and listening right in the orchestra pit.  That was my introduction to live music and that was just like magic to me. If I was a very, very good girl I could go back on the Saturday night! Which you know I tried to be at all times because the wonder and the spectacle of it all was something I really loved.

My parents took me to piano lessons, my first instrument, and then I started up on the oboe. I started up on the oboe mainly because the lady who I used to sit in between my father and her, the oboe player, was a very nice lady and I loved the sound of the instrument. It’s a fiendish type of instrument, anyone who’s played oboe or a double reed instrument will understand. So my two main instruments were oboe and piano. I went through all AMEB exams (it’s the Australian equivalent to standardised examinations) and continued right through high school playing music.  I’d pretty much burnt out of traditional music and traditional teaching of piano when I was about 15 or 16 and fortunately my parents were running a music shop that had attached to it a music studio where they would employ local teachers to teach the local school kids and other people who wanted lessons.

So in this old run-down house at the back of the music shop they had all their lessons in the afternoons, and one room was completely taken over by a man named Hal Carter, and he taught what was know as the Scheff method of organ playing and he had this great big Hammond organ there that could do everything except make a cappuccino basically. And he taught me the first steps of accompaniment and chords, and that for me has been the thing that has carried me musically ever since because it was just great fun, he’d arranged all this music from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s into organ style, one hand playing the melody and one hand playing chords and the feet pumping away on the bass notes.  Well, I sort of let go of the bass notes because I didn’t have anything at home to practice on that was like that, so I just played it all with chords and accompaniment.  So that’s where my accompaniment and duet playing started I suppose. With his fun way of presenting, that was a big, big milestone.

So I would say that my background of music is very varied.  My father played classical music.  We used to have this series of music where my mother would play the piano.  It was called Music Minus One.  There would be piano and flute, or piano and oboe, or piano and saxophone, so then we would always be playing duets and always playing together and that to me was the real treasure of family moments music-making together, that sort of round the piano playing something or singing something. So I was very lucky and I’m totally grateful to my family and my mother and father for providing that sort of atmosphere to grow up in.

I then went on to do a degree in music at the NSW conservatorium of music.  My major instrument was oboe and I studied there for 4 years. After that I was determined to get over to England one way or the other so I started teaching. I taught piano, I taught oboe, I taught clarinet, I taught recorder, I basically did anything I possibly could to earn enough money to get myself over to England.  Eventually I received a scholarship from the Australia Council to go to England and have lessons from Michael Winfield who was a really good oboe player there, and so I went over to England for about 18 months, to the cold of England, and had amazing experiences there in all sorts of different ways, not so much playing in orchestras because over there the competition rate is like a million fold to what it is in Australia.

So then coming back to Australia, mainly I was playing in wind ensembles, wind quintets and orchestras and I did a pit orchestra playing in different shows in Sydney.  I played in the orchestra for CATS for some time and then after all that I basically stopped playing for quite a long time.  I think I got pretty burnt out from the intensity of it all.

That’s fantastic, you’ve been busy!

Yes well it’s a bit like my whole life.

That’s great, so how did you get involved with SM and teaching then?

Well, after quite a few years of break doing other things like getting married and having children and working for my brother who ran a special events company, that was what I did for about 10 years. Then I had my second child and after that I decided I just didn’t want to go back into office work again so I stayed at home and was doing bits and pieces from home.

Then the son of one of the parents in my daughter’s playgroup had just started with Simply Music, and she said to me “You know, I’m sure you’d love Simply Music, you know you’ve got such a great background in music and it’s a fantastic method” so I jumped online and had a look at the website and thought this sounds too good to be true.  I talked it over with my husband and we thought it would be a good thing to at least look into.  So I sent an email to Neil – at this stage he was taking enquiries for new teachers – and sent it off and thought let’s see what happens and about 10 minutes later the phone rang and he said “Hi Elizabeth, it’s Neil Moore here”, and I said “WOW, that service is amazing!!!

And so that was in 2004 and I’ve been teaching since then, extremely happily.  I love the idea of teaching from home, which is something I do.  My studio is in the front room of my house so I skip up the hall to work very happily every day. No parking hassles, no office politics! All those things are out.

So how many students do you have?

At the moment I’ve got about 50 students, I’m teaching mainly private lessons as opposed to group lessons. I’ve got an amazing array of students, all of whom I love very dearly of course. I’ve got 5 year olds right through to 82 year olds. And the thing that I just love is that every student who walks through the door has a different, whole history behind them of needs as far as how to explain things.  They’ve all come for different reasons.  And the discovery for me is finding how to communicate with them and to connect with them so that the learning process is efficient as possible, so that they can get the tools they need to have a world where music is part of their whole being, which is something I think is absolutely imperative to a balanced personality and generally gives such a fantastic outlet for all sorts of emotions.  And basically it’s such a great way to communicate your emotions.

Now speaking of outlets you’ve created some new programs that are used within the Simply Music program, can you tell us a little bit about these?

I’ve been very lucky that Neil has given the green light for these projects and I’m very grateful to him for that. The first one, called Songs For Children, we’ve got 2 volumes of that, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.  There’s a bit of a long history on how the Songs for Children came about.  When I was studying at the Conservatorium I did a subject called Layered Analysis, which sounds all very technical and everything, but basically the thing it came down to is that any piece of music has a certain series of chords that will move through it. One of the assignments we had was to take a whole symphony of any composer and work out the chord sequences in it. You had to take every movement and bring it all the way down into this sort of big diagram. I did a Mozart symphony and it all came down to using just chords I IV & V.

Reduced down, it was like you had a great big stock and it reduced down into this absolutely gorgeous gravy which is basically what this thing was. I think at that moment it was bit of a light bulb moment for me of “Wow, you can have this massively complex piece of music and it can all come back down to chords I IV & V”. Then when I started teaching Simply Music, the very first Foundation level 1, comes Jackson blues using chords I IV & V, Honey Dew, the essence of it is chords I IV & V, Amazing Grace I IV V, there was a moment where you think “yeah ok rightio!”

And the other thing that sorted of added into the conglomeration of the importance of I IV & V was that my daughter at that stage was about four or five and I was going up to her preschool every week with my ukulele under my arm and – you guessed it – I only knew 3 chords which were I IV & V. So I managed to sing along nursery rhymes for about an hour every week just using those 3 chords, and I thought “wait a minute, this is a teaching moment”.  And so then when in Simply Music you move into starting to teach the Accompaniment program we use the diagram of taking chords I IV & V into any key.  So I was using those nursery rhymes with my students saying you can use all these Nursery Rhymes in all different keys and scrounging round for resources to show them how that worked.

And so at that stage I rang Gordon and said “I’ve got an idea for a book that I think will be a great resource for teachers and a great resource for students to be able to learn chords I IV & V in the very first lesson, and then be able to apply it to 9 or 18 songs immediately you get those 3 chords, then instantly you can play all these other songs”.

The power of accompaniment is that you can use these chords and you’ve got the structure of the pieces. But then I wanted to show that you go through the accompaniment program, you add the 7^th chord and you add all these other beautiful dimensions of chords that can give really lovely colour and shade to the accompaniment process, so the last section of Songs for Children is exploring how all of those very simple tunes can have a whole variety of accompaniments to them which expand and give depth and make the whole process really enjoyable.

Then the other project I’ve been working on, and we have one book complete and the other will be due out midway through the year, is the Foundation Duets and Variations. When my students come for their lessons and they are first learning pieces or we are playing through their Playlist I quite often jump on the seat next to them and play along an accompaniment with them, and we’ve developed quite a few styles of playing along with them just to jolly along the Playlist and give an extra depth to the sound.  So along the way I’ve been playing these at the conferences we’ve had and some of the teachers have asked “How do you do that?  I’d love to be able to teach that to my students”. So the duets idea came out of trying to expand the original Foundation pieces so it’s set out in a format which is playing based, so if you’re not reading music they are still available to you.

They’ve got all the accompaniment chords to them so if you’re developing your accompaniments you can read the chords as to how they are used for the lower parts, and there’s also the full score so if you’re reading or if you want to line up with the rhythmic patterns and everything the full score is there, and it also comes with a whole set of CD’s with me explaining each of the projects and how they unfold for both the upper part and the lower part so you can learn them at home as well as in the lessons.  So there’s a fair amount of work in each one of them as far as how you can expand your playing. But the main thing I find really exciting about these books is it’s a starting point to see how from the pieces that you know and love, Dreams Come True, Night Storm, Chester Chills Out, all of these great songs that Neil’s produced for the Foundation program, that each one can be expanded out and developed into variations, and these are just some ways that we’ve done it.  It’s encouraging students to find their own variations of them as well. So it’s also just a little tool to be able to apply it to other songs.

It seems that a big part of your interest involves sharing music, what do think the value is of people making music together?

For me music is something that is so close to my heart. Being able to connect with people through music is something that is just so precious. Just recently Stevie Wonder came to Australia and I was really fortunate enough to go to one of his concerts, if you’ve ever sat in amongst 20/25,000 people and this guy’s on stage playing music like all the great songs and you don’t know anyone in that audience but somehow everyone feels connected and that connection is because music is so fundamental to our being that when it’s played with a common cause then everyone’s heart opens you feel this complete connection with people, and it can happen in Rock music it can happen in any kind of music.

Just the other day I was at a concert with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and there was an Italian violinist played and he did as one of his encores, a piece that was by Johann Sebastian Bach on the very last day of his life, written to his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, as his final offering of music. He played it and every single person in the audience had tears streaming down their face. At the end there was at least a 20 second silence where nobody wanted to break, no one wanted to breathe, we all wanted to remember that moment where we were all connected into one moment. And I think only music can do that. It just was a moment where everyone links, everyone’s heart opens, there was a connection between us which goes right through to our core, and for me if I can provide tools for students to experience any moments like that then I’ve done my job!

It sounds like your doing a fantastic job; I’ve got goose bumps already. Well you’ve talked about Stevie wonder and Johan Sebastian Bach, what about the music you love the most?

Well that would have to be up there, I’m very lucky to have an incredible husband who’s from India and I’ve traveled quite a lot in India, I’ve experienced music over there which will take you into another orbit all together. So Indian music plays a lot of role in our household. I’ve got a teenage daughter so she is into all of her teenage daughter type music.

You sound like you love that a lot too!

For me anything that’s got a bit of integrity – sometimes I’ll say to her “Oh you turn that off!” – head banging music I’m not so much into, but you know some of the best moments for me are sitting really quietly and experimenting on the keyboard, you know I love that. When I was learning traditionally I was a completely on the page type of person, you know I was never encouraged to improvise at all, my brothers were and are still jazz and blues players so they improvise and play very freely but for me it was something since I’ve been teaching Simply Music has been really unlocked as far as me starting to write my own piano pieces which I’m really enjoying expanding a little repertoire of pieces that I’ve composed.

So that is something that is very dear to my heart. It’s a bit like an artist, when you put your painting on the wall and someone comes in to critique it, you do get very precious about it in a way, but if it’s part of what you’ve done and whatever you offer up, if it means something to you, then I think the most important thing is you feel sort of strong, and that was the best expression that you could put out there, and hopefully other people enjoy it and connect with it.

There’s a very interesting movie that came out in Sydney last year called Mrs. Carey’s Concert, it was an Australian produced film, actually in a local school from here.  They have a concert every second year.  It’s about 1400 kids and it’s massive and every single girl has to perform.  So they allowed this camera crew to come into record the process and there was one moment in that movie that really sums up a really important thing about music.  There was a young violinist who was playing a Bruch violin concerto.  She was a very quiet girl, very emotionally mature and had gone through a lot of trauma in her life, and when she played this music you could just feel her soul soaring you know it was one of those beautiful moments.

There was a part of the movie where one of her teachers wanted her to explain to the orchestra who was playing alongside of her what she was feeling at that time and what she was imagining in the music so that they could go there with her, and she was really put out by the teacher wanting her to express it in words and there was a little off cut with her with the camera and she said “The thing with music is that you can communicate things that words cannot express”.  And for me that is exactly the thing about composition, about improvisation, about performance – that there are some things that you can not say in words that if you’re in the zone and you are performing and you connect with the audience beyond words straight to their soul or straight to their spirit or whatever, it is that place inside that you know you go when you want to know more about yourself, then that’s what the whole premise I think Simply Music is based on is that we are giving our students the basic tools to be able to have music as a companion in their lives in whatever form that takes, weather it’s a greater appreciation of listening to music or a greater appreciation of playing music or playing it together with other people or just experimenting with sound in the privacy of your own home, and you just love that, that you’ve got tools to do that with. For me that is what it’s all about – giving that connection and the tools to work with to really find yourself in music.

For me when I’m teaching or when I’m playing if I’m somehow making a difference in someone’s life, if I’m creating an environment where people can enjoy music together, if I’m listening to music and can go into a place where nothing else can take me, then that’s the journey for me. I hope I can take my students along that journey with me, so they can find that really deep appreciation of music and just have it as something that is not separate from their lives – have it as something they can merge into.

By Mark S. Meritt

How many things can you think of that have nasty side effects? Medicines. Technologies. Political policies. Even just things we’ve said or done to people we know.

How many times have you been thrust into a role or responsibility you weren’t ready for? How many times haveyou expected someone else to do something they weren’t ready for? Did things go as intended or not quite work out?

Sometimes, it takes a while to notice some negative side effects. Other times, we regret immediately that we took some step and wish we could take it back, because we realize that more bad than good will come of it.

Negative side effects happen when we act against the way things work. Take the time to understand how things work, take the time to know something, and the chances of negative side effects are minimized.

It’s a life lesson that most of us could learn better — and it’s a lesson that has everything to do with learning itself.

Adults can test their knowledge on television against fifth graders and lose. Does it mean that those fifth graders are particularly smart? Or is because those fifth graders haven’t yet had the time to forget so much of what they were “taught”? Probably a little of both.

Either way, there is no doubt that much of what passes for education is really just shoving information in, testing to make sure it’s there, and then not worrying about whether it sticks around for any meaningful amount of time after the test. No wonder we all forget so much of what we’ve ever “leaned.” We were taught in ways that go against how our minds actually work.

This also happens to be one of the common traits of traditional piano lessons.

When we go slowly, though, when we make things relevant and real, then we can really learn something, learn it so that it sticks with us. Only if it sticks with us can we really say that we learned it, after all. And when we take it at an appropriate pace, we can learn well and deeply enough to minimize negative side effects.

In piano lessons, this can take many forms.

Practice a song slowly, controlling the events. Use the practice pad to deeply learn the visual pattern first, adding the touch of moving keys and the sound of notes only later. Speak your instructions out loud until the motions have become comfortable. Each next layer of learning is easier when you go slowly and deliberately through each layer that comes before — until suddenly the whole song can be played smoothly and evenly at “normal” speed. Any other approach means spending more time and effort reaching that destination — or maybe never reaching it at all.

Learn each piece solidly without adding too many more pieces too quickly. Through this, you’ll build a repertoire of dozens and eventually hundreds of songs that you can play from memory any time you sit down at any keyboard instrument. Any other approach means not giving enough time to each of your pieces, leaving you with a repertoire full of holes — or maybe leaving you with something that couldn’t even be called a repertoire at all.

Learn to play before learning reading, theory and other more advanced material. Not because we don’t value reading and advanced material but because we value them so much that we want you to learn them as well as possible. Humans were speaking for hundreds of thousands of years before writing was invented. Spoken language itself is just a variation on the kinds of audible communication that mammals and other animals have been doing for millions of years. These are the very roots of the musicality that’s inside each one of us. Whether music or Chinese or math or anything else people do that can be translated into abstract symbols, you’ll always go farther faster in mastering the symbols if you first master the reality that the symbols represent. That’s just how our brains work.

It feels good to run. It feels good to soar. That’s what we’re all after. And walking first, much less crawling, can feel like a drag. But did it ever occur to you that the reason that relatively few people seem to soar in their lives is that most people don’t bother to take things one step at a time? When a person is frustrated about feeling less than special, maybe that frustration is just a negative side effect of that person’s not having bothered to do what every person is entirely capable of — crawling before they walk, walking before they run, and running before they soar. Maybe that person was educated in a way that failed to teach that lesson. But the only way out is one step at a time.

You can speed things up before you’re really ready to, and you might get a somewhat good feeling along with that. Play that song fast. Pile extra pieces into your repertoire. Read before you’ve mastered playing first. Take that new medicine. Use that new technology. But when you compare any of these things to how they go after you’ve confidently walked those territories first, there’s simply no comparison. Walking well will get you to running well faster every time compared to trying to run too soon. Running too soon just ensures that you’ll trip yourself up — sometimes literally.

This is what we mean when we say that Simply Music isn’t just helping you learn great sounding songs, and it isn’t just helping you learn how to build a repertoire, and it isn’t just helping you learn to become a self-generating musician. It’s helping you learn a way of learning that is applicable in most any area of most everyone’s lives.

Imagine what would happen if you walked before you ran at each step of your piano practice. You would be a very different piano player.

Imagine what would happen if each person walked before they ran at each step of every thing they did. It would be a very different world.

And in both cases, the difference would be so much for the better, we can hardly even imagine it.

So walk before you run.

By Ray Nelson

If your feet aren’t tapping and your jaw hasn’t dropped when you hear Peter Amstalden play a rag, you just weren’t listening.  To hear this self-effacing fourteen-year-old play is as inspiring as it is to hear him speak about his experience as a music student.  It may not have hurt to have had a dad who teaches Simply Music, but the main reason Peter has gone as far as he has is his great attitude and plain old hard work.

Peter and his father Ernest chatted with Ray Nelson.  Listen to the conversation below, and make sure you watch the video of one of his performances at age thirteen.

Four Chord Songs

by Gordon Harvey

I remember hiring a car on a holiday a few years ago.  We could only tune the radio to one station, playing popular music, and as the songs cycled by, I started to realise that maybe a  third of them featured the same four chords, nearly always for the same length each.  It amazed me that that simple progression could inspire such quantity and variety of melodies. So, even if you’ve hardly touched a keyboard before, it mightn’t be beyond the imagination to learn those four chords and give yourself the chance to play the accompaniment to a huge list of songs.

Below is a by no means exhaustive list, compiled with the help, amongst others, of the  amazing Axis of Awesome (includes a mild language warning):

Nelly – Just a Dream

Alphaville – Forever Young

Blink 182 – Dammit

The Last Goodnight – Pictures of You

James blunt – Beautiful

Waltzing Matilda

Beyonce – If I Were a Boy

Pink – U and Ur Hand

The Calling – Wherever you Go

Jason Mraz – I’m Yours

Marcy Playground – Sex and Candy

Mika – Happy Ending

Alex Lloyd – Amazing

Five for Fighting – Superman

Maroon 5 – She Will be Loved

Alicia Keys – No One

U2 – With or Without You

Auld Lang Syne

Kelly Clarkson – Behind These Hazel Eyes

Crowded House – Fall at your Feet

Casey Chambers – Not Pretty Enough

Richard Marx – Right Here Waiting

The Beatles – Let it Be

Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Under the Bridge

Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Otherside

Daryl Brathwaite – The Horses

Amiel – Lovesong

Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’

Men at Work – Down Under

A-Ha – Take On Me

Rihanna – Take a Bow

Green Day – When I Come Around

Eagle Eye Cherry – Save Tonight

Toto – Africa

Elton John – Can you Feel the Love

The Offspring – Self Esteem

The Offspring – You’re Gonna Go Far Kid

Andrea Bocelli – Time To Say Goodbye

Lady Gaga – Poker Face

Lady Gaga – Paparazzi

Elvis Presley – Always On My Mind

Aqua – Barbie Girl

The Fray – You Found Me

30h!3 – Don’t Trust Me

MGMT – Kids

Tim Minchin – Canvas Bags

Natalie Imbruglia – Torn

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – Over the Rainbow

Lighthouse Family – High

Missy Higgins – Scar

Jordin Sparks – Tattoo

Black Eyed Peas – Where is the Love?

Gregory Brothers – Double Rainbow

Train – Hey Soul Sister

Akon – Don’t Matter

Akon – Beautiful

John Denver – Country Roads

Jimmy Eat World – Hear You Me

Hayley Westenra – Heaven

Jack Johnson – Taylor

Smashing Pumpkins – Bullet with Butterfly Wings

Joan Osborne – One of Us

Avril Lavigne – Complicated

One Republic – Apologize

Eminem – Love the Way You Lie

Feargal Sharkey – A Good Heart

Thirsty Merc – Twenty Good Reasons

Bob Marley – No Woman No Cry

In some of the above cases the song may have sections that include other chords, but I’m sure you have a sense of how much these chords allow you to do.
One thing to know about before you begin is called ‘key’.  A chord progression can start anywhere on the piano.  From different starting places it will sound higher or lower, but still be recognisably the same progression.  It’s a bit like having different colours of the same model of car.  I’ll talk about two keys – a very simple one and the one Axis of Awesome use, and then we’ll look at finding the chord progression in any key.

First key

For the first key, I’ll assume you’ve had just a handful of Simply Music lessons.  One of the very first songs you’ll have learned, and the very first accompaniment project, is a song called Honey Dew, which uses the chords C, Am, F, and G.  That’s another very popular chord progression.  These are all the chords we’ll use for this project, just in a different order.  Change it to C, G, Am, F and you’re done!

Second key

This key starts on E major.  If you’ve started the Simply Music Accompaniment Program, you’ll know this is a triangle shape (white on the bottom, black in the middle, white on top).  Next is B major, a curve shape (white, black, black).  Next is C minor, a triangle, and last is G major, a straight line on white keys.

Any key

A particular 4-chord song might be in any key, that is it might have any major chord as its “I”.  If you want to play the song in any key, you need to know a little more.  The progression is referred to as I, V, VI, IV.  Thinking of my earlier analogy of car colours, if C, G, Am, F is “Red Mini Cooper” and E, B, C#m, A is “Blue Mini Cooper”, then I, V, VI, IV is “Any Mini Cooper”.  You need to know how to find the I, V, VI, and IV chords from any starting note.  A Simply Music student who has learned about I, IV, V is nearly there – the only chord they don’t know is VI.  The easy way to do this is, from the V, bring your bottom note up by a whole step.  This note is the VI.  From that note you simply build a minor chord.  As a Simply Music student, you should know how to make a minor chord, but if you haven’t learned that yet, it’s easy too.  Make a major chord then move the middle note down a half step.

Although it’s all pretty straightforward, you might as well use your learning tools to simplify things as much as possible.  Using the chord shapes might help you memorise the sequence visually.  So, starting from D, the chords will be D, A, Bm, G and the shapes will be triangle, triangle, curve, straight line.  These shapes are not intended to tell you every detail, just to serve as reminders of what you’ve already worked out.
The great thing about this skill (called transposing) is you can change the chords to fit your vocal range.  And while you’re at it, why not come up with a melody of your own?  Unlike Axis of Awesome, you needn’t wait 40 years to write a hit song!
You’ll find that some of the choices on the home page of our sheet music service will be four-chord songs.  There’ll be lots more if you do a search.

By Chase Moore

Today I want to talk about some of the benefits of using digital software for composing music. First off, I would like to acknowledge that I began sequencing music on my father’s old “Ensoniq SQ-2″ keyboard. I learned the keyboard in and out, and taught myself how to do basic sequence recording. I began using the stock sounds that came with the board. I was recording basic 4 or 8 bar loops, usually layered with drums, bass and a few other various sounds such as piano, strings, etc. It was a great beginning, but the keyboard was huge and weighed a ton.

The next gear I began using was an Akai MPC 2000XL Drum Machine/MIDI sequencer and a Yamaha Motif keyboard. I learned many tricks of my trade with this equipment. Not only did I learn how to fully record and arrange a song, I also learned sampling and began creating and layering my own sounds. While I learned an immense amount by using this equipment, the recording progress was a little more complicated than I desired. I would initially sync my MPC and keyboard. Once I’d finished the composing aspect of the song, I would then have to individually record each sound of the song into a computer program. Once this was completed, I would have to re-sequence the song in the computer program and then re-adjust all of the levels, and basically have to re-mix the beat that I’d just spent hours making.

This was the first time that I’d combined analog hardware with digital software. Many hours went in to tracking all of my beats and songs. Around this time, computer software for sequencing began to boom. Once I learned that you could record, arrange & mix all in a computer program, I instantly made the switch. For me, the biggest difference I noticed right away was time efficiency. Instead of recording each sound in individually, I could now do this simultaneously. When it came to editing certain notes, the process was now seamless. For example, on my old keyboard, if I played something incorrectly, I would have to re-record the whole phrase. With computer software, I could see each note that I played on the screen, and with a few mouse clicks, it could be instantly adjusted.

We are living in a technological age and time is of the essence. Things just move at a faster pace these days. I learned a great deal by using old equipment and thoroughly learned to understand the process of sequencing music. However, things that would have taken me an hour then, now only take me 15 minutes. The output ratio increases drastically with using software. I’ve heard arguments in the past about software that it doesn’t sound as good as the old keyboards. I agree that typically a stock sound with nothing added to it in a program may not sound as warm or as full as on a keyboard. But in all of the main software programs, such as Logic, Pro Tools, Reason, Ableton Live, etc, they come with a plethora of effects, as well as additional sounds that you can purchase. With the right ear, equipment and training, you can achieve whatever sound you are hearing in your head becoming a reality.

In my next installment, I’m going to compare and contrast a few of the popular softwares and include some audio snippets of some music composed in each program. So until then, I appreciate you and see you next time!

Chase Moore

By Gordon Harvey

Here are three more apps to add to the ever-growing list of innovative music resources in the post-PC universe.

Bebot

Normalware

iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch

$1.99

Bebot is your friendly robotic creative companion, with a lot of power in his circuits.  Boot him up and you’re greeted with a cheery robot who responds to your touch with a little visual animation and a big synthesizer sound.

You can generate up to four notes at a time.  The location of each finger vertically and horizontally will affect both pitch and tone, allowing sounds that vary from gutsy growls to eery howls.  There is an amazing wealth of editing options, including controls like synth modes, sub-oscillator, timbre, pulse width and other sound generation choices, plus effects like echo, overdrive and chorus.  You can snap notes to various scale and chord grids, or leave it to your fingers to glissando across the frequency spectrum.

Your settings can be saved for later use, which lends Bebot to performance use, and the quality of the sounds is genuinely pro-level. It’s incredible to think that what we can get for $1.99 would have been worth hundreds or more in the early days of the synthesiser, if it were even possible to build it.  On top of that is the easy and fun interface. Walking to my kids’ school today, I made a composition using its loop settings.  It’s that easy.

Bloom

Opal/Generative Music

iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch

$3.99 US, $1.99 Aus

If you’ve followed the career of Brian Eno, you won’t be surprised by this innovation.  Between being the weird synthesiser guy in the original Roxy Music, calling himself “the world’s only professional non-musician” to becoming a highly sought-after producer, Eno has consistently explored the boundaries of creativity, with a special interest in atmospheric sound – it was he who coined the term “ambient music”.

One of my favourite Eno phases was his experimentation with very long tape loops, where sounds repeated very slowly, deteriorating with each repeat, layering over each other, creating rich and mysterious soundscapes.  Bloom is a much more convenient digital version which also adds a visual component.

On launching Bloom, a soft drone begins, creating a tonal canvas upon which you make notes by tapping the screen, which responds with dots that expand, fade and reappear with the cycle of your notes.  Your musical artwork develops in complexity as you add notes.  The effect is gentle and immersive.

You can either create your own compositions or set it to self-generate. You can alter some settings, like colour themes or ‘moods’, the length of the repeat and the sound.  However, these variables are too limited to make it much of a tool for serious musicians.  Is best used as a generator of relaxing soundscapes.  My seven-year-old sets it to Listen mode to help her get to sleep.

The pleasingly named Generative Music also offers Trope and Air, similar apps, which provide more creative options, although I can see with even these that there is so much more that could be done.  If these apps had some of the control choices of Bebot, they could be uniquely creative composing tools upon which you could spend hours.

iReal b

Technimo

iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire, Mac

$7.49 US, $8.49 Aus

For musicians working with lead sheets, practice tools don’t get much handier than this.  iReal b boasts some really worthwhile features.  At its most basic level, it’s a substitute for books of lead sheets like the Real Book that the app’s name draws reference to.  It’s also a substitute for a play-along CD, but with many more capabilities.

The app comes with a library of lead sheets ready to use.  Rather than actual songs, they are generic pieces in various common styles, mostly in the jazz genre.  These are useful for getting to know common chord progressions and styles.  After choosing a piece, you can have a digital band play for you to play along with.  The band can play in three different styles.  You can change the key and adjust the tempo to suit your needs.  You can also turn down an instrument in the band so you can, for example, remove the piano to play the chords yourself.  So it can be a practice tool for working on the chords, melody or improvisation.  You can isolate and loop a section if it needs extra practice.

You can also edit the song, adding lyrics, changing chords, rearranging, doing almost anything other than writing a melody, allowing a generic piece to be the springboard for a new composition.  You can even write a new chart from scratch.  You can print your piece or export it as an audio file, or a MIDI file, allowing you to open it in a composition or notation program for further editing.

If the selection of songs in the library isn’t enough, there is a large and active user community offering lead sheets you can download.  As well, if the three playback styles don’t suit you, in-app purchases allow you to expand your choices dramatically.  You can also pay to unlock guitar and piano chord diagrams.

It would be wonderful if the lead sheets also included the tune of the songs where there is one.  I also can’t vouch for the legality of songs provided through the iReal b community.  However, even with these limitations, this well-designed app is thoroughly useful.

‘Tis the season to drag out the carols and traditional songs.  But do we mindlessly mouth the well-worn words of all those all-too-familiar Christmas standards?  We asked the Simply Music staff to tell us about their favorite seasonal songs, and discovered a treasure trove of unexplored gems.

As a starter, we note that a few years ago the BBC conducted a poll to determine the best Christmas carol.  The winner was In the Bleak Midwinter by Harold Darke (on iTunes).  Let’s see how others’ opinions diverge from this:

Stacie explains, “My favorite Christmas song is one that is not well known and has a funny name. It is called Ding-a-Ling the Christmas Bell by country singer Lynn Anderson from the early 1970s. It is about a bell that rings off key and ends up saving Christmas. I like it because it is not over-played like most Christmas songs on the radio, it has a nice lesson about acceptance, and every time I hear it, it brings a tear to my eye and I am flooded with happy childhood memories of decorating the Christmas tree and opening presents with my family”.

Samantha‘s favorite seasonal song is O Holy Night, especially when performed by Nat King Cole. 

As a country and bluegrass performer, Gretta goes for anything with a twang in it:
Christmas Time’s a Comin’ –  Ricky Skaggs, Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas — Little Big Town, Merry Christmas Baby — Elvis Presley & Gretchen Wilson and The Friendly Beasts — Garth Brooks

Mel has very eclectic tastes, including  Deck the Halls by online music pioneers Pomplamoose (and sales benefit the Richmond Book Drive) and the unusual reinterpretation of The Twelve Days of Christmas from Straight No Chaser.

Gordon says:

“The Pogues’ ‘A Fairytale of New York’ is very confronting Christmas fare, but what an uplifting tune!

How to Make Gravy:  This humble ballad from Aussie bard Paul Kelly has all the elements of a great story: tragedy, hope and redemption.  Just the thing to bring you back to those Christmas values of family and forgiveness.

And we all need to get funky at Christmas.  For that, you can’t can’t go past James Brown delivering Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto“.

Here’s Robin’s choice:

“I always watched the Peanuts holiday specials as a child.  I really related to the piano music and Schroeder, the child prodigy!  
My other favorite Christmas music is from Raymond Briggs, “The Snowman.”  I find the beautifully animated story, told only with music, to be so moving and the music is simply gorgeous.
Finally, as a child, I loved the Christmas Carol:  It Came Upon a MIdnight Clear.  The Christmas story is told so beautifully and it always filled me with so much joy and emotion.

Jy gives us a few verses of ‘My Dreidl’:

“I have a little dreidl, I made it out of clay

And when it’s dry and ready, then dreidl I shall play

Oh dreidl, dreidl, dreidl, I made it out of clay…

I have a little dreidl, I made it out of straw

It went eighty miles an hour, and broke the speeding law

Oh dreidl, dreidl, dreidl…

I have a little dreidl, I made it out of bread

I never really spun it, I ate it up instead

Oh dreidl, dreidl, dreidl…

I have a little dreidl, I made it in my mind

Imaginary dreidl, it’s the hardest one to find

Oh dreidl, dreidl, dreidl…

I have a little dreidl, I keep it on the shelf

If you want to sing more verses, you can make them up yourself!

Growing up in a big Jewish family with a lot of music and a lot of noise, I loved this one because everyone made up new verses and it was always really funny.  Watching old and young so seriously working to create hilarious verses — each one outdoing the next, without knocking over the 15 or so fully-lit menorahs (candelabras) was quite the holiday adventure!”

Mary K‘s Christmas is nicely noisy:

“Our family favorite, hands down is Handel’s Unto Us A Child Is Born.  It has been a long standing tradition on Christmas morning to blast the kids out of bed by playing this about as loud as our speakers could handle.  Paul and I would get up early and finish any last minute Christmas ‘choirs’ while listening to Handel’s Messiah. Then when we just couldn’t wait any longer Paul would put this piece on at ear piercing volume and the kids knew it was time to get up.  Once when the kids were about 7 and 5 Scott found the tape in the car and insisted we play it.  Of course to keep with tradition it had to be at full volume.  Imagine the sight, it is 100 degrees outside, we have all of the windows rolled down and we are signing at the top of our lungs Unto Us A Child Is Born in the middle of July.  Even now with adult children we always start Christmas morning with this piece loud enough that all of the neighbors know the Ferreters are opening gifts.

Warning:  This song is to be played very loud for maximum enjoyment!”

Leave a comment telling us your favorites!