3 New Musical Destinations at a New Location

There's plenty to be excited about this fall at Piano Plus! If you haven't already heard, the teaching studio has relocated to Pittsford, NY.  More exciting  than the move, though, is the news I have to share about three new musical activities that I’ll be offering students starting in October. Drumroll, please! . . . And here they are:

Piano Plus 1 - is a performance based activity that’s been designed to take your improvisation skills to the next level. During this activity's 10-week session, we'll select and prepare a piece of music that the student and pro collaborator perform (in-studio) during the month of December.

Piano Plus Tech Mini Project - is a composition based collaborative project that the student and I develop over the session's 10-week run. With the help of a computer application (e.g., Logic, Band-in-a-Box), we'll prepare and present our finished work in-studio during the month of December.

Musicianship Master Class/Jam - These “Open House” events - hosted by yours truly - will meet monthly (except for December) and will include a didactic topic followed by an “all instruments available” jam session. Musical friends of current students are encouraged to attend. Be sure to bring your instrument!  

Of course, music study at Piano Plus is just as much fun if your primary goal is to play for your own enjoyment. Learn to play the Blues, a Broadway tune or any other style in a friendly, personalized learning environment. 

Explore more of the website and feel free to contact me with any questions - I'm here to help!  

Please Note: During the month of October, I'm offering a FREE trial lesson for anyone who's interested in "getting started yesterday" with piano, improvisation, or composition. If you've got an instrument to practice with, you're ready! Contact me now to set up a time. 

Piano Plus cello recording session (Part 2)

Part 1

Last month, I introduced the readers of my blog to a recording project that two of my students participated in. This post continues the story by inviting you to listen in on part of the recording session (see video below) and to request your feedback.

A little background

Last fall, Justin (pictured below) expressed an interest in performing a piece I had just written for solo piano. Since we happened to be in the planning stages of a new project series (Piano Plus 1), I suggested that we pair the piano for this particular song with cello.

Clockwise from left: Me, Justin & Elise discussing "Trance" during our recording session.

This decision actually ended up serving a double benefit. First, Justin gained some valuable playing experience (this was his first time performing with another highly skilled musician in a professional recording studio). Second, the singing sound of the cello ended up being the perfect choice to showcase one of the main melodies of the song.

How'd it go? 

All in all, we were really happy with the results. We all learned something new and had a lot of fun in the process. Okay, so . . . end of story and on to the next project, right? Well, not quite.

Feedback from others

Turns out that many of the people who have listened to this song like to comment on how they imagine the music supporting a picture theme or soundtrack. These thoughts and opinions have tended to sound something like . . . "You know, this music reminds me of __________." . .  OR . .  "I could really hear this music going with __________."

Feedback from you?

Long story short - The feedback of others gave us the idea to scout for even more feedback! Seriously though, we're hoping that your thoughts and opinions might offer us some clues about selecting a visual theme to use for our new "extended" music project.

It all starts with listening

No need to decide about providing feedback at this point - we'd ask that you simply watch and listen to the short video below. You'll notice a series of questions on the screen that will (hopefully) prompt your powers of imagination.  Enjoy!

Our Goal

As you might have already guessed, our goal is to combine a series of photographs with the full-length audio recording from this session (about four and a half minutes in length). Obviously, we're most interested in selecting images that, in our opinion, best capture the essence of this original music.

If you'd like to Participate . . .

Great! If you're interested in sharing your thoughts about the video you just watched, we'd love to hear from you! Please complete the contact form on this page ("Request more Information") or leave your comments below. Thanks!

Our Thanks

Once again, we'd like to express our thanks to cellist Elise Hughey and sound engineer Marc Webster for all their help on this project. You guys rock!