Image details: Mendelssohn served by picapp.com

Neighboring Georgetown is building a nationally recognized mega-festival of the arts. The Georgetown Festival of the Arts is an exemplar of community involvement producing a highly educational, thoroughly interactive, fun place to be for all ages. Kids can explore an instrumental petting zoo, learn the history of the dulcimer, and play along during a performance. Art in the Park ran May 31-June 1, and featured two days of fine arts shows and sales in the lovely San Gabriel Park. Georgetown even has it’s own Festival Pyrotechnician.

This coming weekend, June 5-8 is all about Mendelssohn in Georgetown. Four jam-packed days with lectures, concerts, symposia and the gorgeous sounds of the gifted brother and sister composers during early nineteenth century Romantic. It is to die for. Handel, Haydn, and Schubert were featured in earlier festivals, and word is they were equally stunning.

Fortunately for all you Good Musicians, Southwestern University, one of the sponsoring organizations, and the primary Mendelssohn in Georgetown venue, added a world-renowned Mendelssohn scholar to their already stellar music faculty. Dr. J. Michael Cooper’s source-critical editions of works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel are examined, discussed, and performed in non-stop action this weekend.

Ellsworth Peterson is the powerhouse impresario, along with The Georgetown Symphony Society dynamos–Penny Plueckhahn, Florence Gould, Nancy Bryan, and Bob Horick. These folks have contributed to the quality and success of the annual event.

Austin Vocal Arts Ensemble, directed by Dr. Kenneth Shepard, sings Cooper edition motets and an anthem for a Cathedral Evensong Friday, June 6 at 8:30 p.m. in the Lois Perkins Chapel, located right in the middle of Southwestern University. On Sunday, June 8 at 4:00 p.m. in the Klett Center for the Performing Arts at Georgetown High School, Dr. Shephard will conduct the Mendelssohn Festival Orchestra, Chorus Austin, and the San Gabriel Chorale in the Cooper edition of St. Paul.

Along with an astounding line-up of performances–the Miro Quartet AND the Shanghai Quartet, together, guys–this is the festival to attend for musicology of the highest caliber, grab a chance to make music in workshops with the pros, and get to hang with the VIPs. Visit The Georgetown Festival of the Arts site, or contact them at 512-639-0433 or www.GtownFestival.org.

Image details: German Pianist And Composer Fanny Hensel served by picapp.com

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Image details: Girl playing piano served by picapp.com

Here are a couple of sites that will help you drill for those end-of-year theory finals. These sites are free.

The Music Theory Minute is a super guide to the fundamentals of music theory, demonstrated in one minute tutorials. Features video/voice-over clips of Dr. Jack modeling the lesson. You’ll hear what a diminished chord sounds like, as well as see how it is constructed.

Western Michigan University School of Music offers a no-frills theory site that contains two rhythmic training programs you can download: Diktus allows you to practice one- and two-part rhythmic dictation and sightreading, and InTactus is a rhythmic training program for measuring the performance of one- and two-part rhythm.

There’s even a flash-animated metronome, if you’ve misplaced yours.

Music Theory Online is the refereed, electronic journal of the Society for Music Theory, Inc., and a good resource for scholarly articles, criticism, research, and commentary–great for those end-of-term papers.

There are even music education video games for learning music, including ear training, for students of all ages.

Ricci Adam’s Musictheory.net is chock full of lessons, trainers, and utilities, including a staff generator (blank, piano, SATB, and custom) to print your own staff paper, a matrix generator, and a chord calculator.

Post from: The Good Musician

It’s happened too often that I had a brilliant tune while sitting in the bus, just to end up at home at my instrument, having forgotten how it went.

You may argue that if it didn’t stick, it wasn’t that brilliant, but the point is that even Mozart was known to have had a quill and some paper around him at all times.

Similarly, you should consider a capturing device for your musical inspirations. I personally use Moleskines for note-taking and as an agenda, but they have a product just right for musicians, the Music Moleskine.

I love them for their beautiful looks, the rubber band, and the silky pages make a grand setting fit for the wonderful music you’re about to create.

Of course, it only makes sense if you can read music. Otherwise, you could try an audio device like a dictaphone to record your tunes by humming them. The downside of this is it’s a bit awkward to do in public.

How do you write down your songs? Full score notation, chord names or tabs? Or do you have your own system?

Post from: The Good Musician

I had the honor of writing for one of b5media’s most prolific music blogs, Metal Martyr. The post I wrote describes some thoughts on the difficulties and challenges apsiring metal musicians face, and I think the tips are interesting to anyone, even if you hate metal to the death (which is a pity, because you should respect all genres).

Check out the post: How To Be A Metal Musician.

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What sets Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits apart from you? Well, he was lucky.

Most famous musicians were lucky somewhere down the road. But so was Britney, and I will not begin calling here a musician just yet. As a musician, Knopfler was a heroic master of the guitar, and played so well not only because he practiced for hours a day, but because he had a great intrinsic knowledge of musical theory.

Music theory and the entire science of music is often what most hobby musicians love to shun. But it is what may set you apart, what will increase your enjoyment of music and what will in the end empower you to be creative.

We’re talking scientific competence here, and there are a few key points you need to develop:

1. Music Theory: We’ve spoken about this many times, but I will wash, rinse, repeat – knowing your music theory is knowing what you’re playing. You may want to start here.

2. Music history: The origins and development of music are equally important. Know the roots of what you’re playing, know it’s historic context. Did you know that Beethoven’s 9th was one of the first symphonies ever to include a choir? It sparked a revolution. Wikipedia often helps.

3. Practice methodology:If you practice how to practice, you’ll practice better. Methodic and systematic practice will yield results faster, more efficiently, and will thus let you advance at a higher peace with ease. Stop wasting time doodling around and work on what you’re supposed to work.

4. Instrumental Physics: Learn enough about your instrument to be able to explain how it works to someone who knows little to nothing about music. A scientific understanding for what’s going on when you make or listen to music will make your approach to music as such much more diverse and deep. A good starting point is here.

You get the general idea. Everything that’s methodic, theoretical or subject-related is of relevance to your scientific competence of music. Build your knowledge and then take personal stance towards it.

Be critical: Question your instrument and your practice methods, confront your teacher and the local guitar shop.

Post from: The Good Musician

Do you know how to compose great music?

Composing, or creating music has always been something I found hardest. I was recently asked why composing isn’t my forte, and it made me think.

Basically, if you can attach a few sounds to each other in a sequence, you’ve got a composition.

So composing is easy, right? Well, the problem is that it might be great for you, but let’s be honest: You want other people to like your music as well.

The first and easiest stage of composing would be simple songwriting. Three chords, a simple melody everyone can sing along, and you’re practically set up.

The next step is orchestration. Which instruments do I need? Which instrument plays what? To answer this question, you need to understand the function of an instrument, it’s context within a band or orchestra, and just need to know “what works”. To know that, experience is key – unless you’ve played a thousand pieces over and over, you won’t really have a clear idea of what works.

Phew. Seems hard.

You see, even bands like Green Day, whose music is technically “simple”, have practiced and played thousands of pieces from various genres. Unless you know all old things, you can’t develop something really new.

And that’s my problem. I can’t really get creative, or be satisfied with what I have written because I know that it’s probably been done before or I just don’t like it myself – which leads us to step 3: Implementation of Theory.

To stick with our example of Green Day, even Billie Joe Armstrong probably has a quite complex understanding of music theory. While playing and finding out what “works” and what not is important, understanding what technically can or cannot work is the other.

There are chords that, in theory, will sound strange when played seuqentially. There are notes that can’t be played in a happy song. There are instruments that technically can’t play the chords or notes you’ve written.

So to make my long rant short, composing music is a two-way dilemma: It’s possible to compose, but the composer himself can never be happy with what he’s done, unless he continues to develop a deep knowledge about music itself. Theory first, practice later.

Post from: The Good Musician

A chord is the simultaneous resounding of multiple notes. Now that we know about Major and Minor scales, we can build chords, picking out the right notes from that scale.

Basically, you could pick any two notes out of the scale and you’d already have a chord if you play them at the same time.

Let’s go back to our major scale that we can apply anywhere (and is thus also called “relative scale”).

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do

The first chord I want to show you is a triad – three notes at once. Triads are the most common chord, so the terms are interchangeable. The major chord picks out the first note, then the first major third (the 3rd note of the scale) and the first major fifth (the 5th note of the scale).

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do

Our major triad: Do Mi So.

Yay. Our first chord.

Applied to real notes, again let’s pick C:

C D E F G A B C

A major C chord comprises the three notes C, E and G. Many people know how to strum some basic chords on the guitar, but they oftne don’t really know what they’re playing. When you strike a C-Major chord on the guitar (find a guitarist friend to show you), you’re essentially only pressing the three notes C, E and G (though you’re probably pressing the same note multiple times or in different octaves – but it’s still C, E, G).

Got that? Good.

Post from: The Good Musician

1. Sit in a circle with your friends and ask questions about how other people’s instrument works. It’s important to know your instrument yourself first, but knowing why a bigger drum sounds deeper can be as useful to a drummer as it is to the trumpet guy.
2. Stay simple: Try to keep the riffs and jam songs simple and clear. If in doubt, don’t play – less is more. If you think you can genuinely contribute, then play – and play hard .
3. Practice hacks: Include scales and chord progressions into your practice schedule. A good way to practice both is to play along to rock songs that have improvised solos.
4. Try themes: We once did a jam about colors. Each of us got a color (blue, red, yellow) and each one had to come up with a riff that he thinks fits the color. Pretty amazing (and unexpected) results.
5. Try styles: If you like hard rock, don’t jam hard rock, because hard rock is – well – really hard. It’s easier to start out with something like reggae or ska, because the more complex your genre is by nature, the harder it gets. Hard rock is like classical music on the electric guitar. You can’t really “jam” it (at first).
6. Keep the songs short: Time yourself to play the song and wrap it up within 4 minutes. The worst things most jam beginners do is stretch things over 10 minutes to half an hour. Just get in, play, get out. Keep things crisp and fresh.
7. Discussion: After a jam, find out what works and what doesn’t. Try to pin point areas of improvement and try criticizing each other – constructively.

Post from: The Good Musician

Let’s look at our scale again:

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do

It’s the major scale, because it begins with Do. Now, as we know, Do-Re is a second. Do-Mi therefore, is called a third. Followingly, the other intervals:

Do-Fa: Fourth
Do-So: Fifth
Do-La: Sixth
Do-Ti: Seventh
Do-Do: Octave

Try playing the intervals on your instrument, using the C-major key (Do is C, Re is D etc.).

All music is made up of intervals. As we know about major and minor seconds, there are variations of these for other intervals as well. But in a major scale, all intervals are major except the two minor seconds (Mi-Fa and Ti-Do).

In the next lesson, we’ll explore the Third.

Post from: The Good Musician

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
C D E F G A B C

Great. Now we also know that E-F and B-C are semitones, or minor seconds. This scale is the C-Major scale, and it is what you hear when just playing the white keys on a piano.

If we want D-Major, we just apply our major and minor seconds beginning with D.

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
D E F# G# A H C# D

Notice that because E-F is a semitone, but Re-Mi isn’t, we have to adjust the F to F-sharp (F#). Same goes for the G and the C.

Now comes the trick. A minor scale is actually not much different from a major scale. It just starts in a different place.

La Ti Do Re Mi Fa So La

It begins with La, and progresses the same way as we’d expect. This scale sounds “sad”, because the semitones come in a different place. A rule of thumb: The earlier the semitone, the “darker” or “sadder” a scale. If we apply Do = C we get:

La Ti Do Re Mi Fa So La
A B C D E F G A

This scale is the a-minor scale. It is actually the same as the C-Major, but it begins in a different place. This is important in terms of how you begin and end a song, and what chords you use to accompany it. More on that later.

Digest. Relax. Ask Questions.

Post from: The Good Musician