Young Composer and Collaborators Help Listeners De-Stress

I always enjoy sharing good news and stories about the progress of my students. In this post, I’d like to recognize Matthew Metlitsky - a 9th-grade student who, along with me, composed and recorded a piece of music during our pandemic. 

Prior to our project’s beginning, Matthew had been keeping busy studying and practicing composition techniques while enrolled in the Music Makers program here at the studio. Among other skills, he learned how to write melodies, build chord progressions, and communicate his original ideas with other musicians. 

To help Matthew exercise some of his newly acquired skills, I suggested that we work on a project together - one that would offer him an opportunity to write for a real-world audience. I was happy when he accepted my invitation. 

When we began generating musical ideas, I noticed that Matthew was tending toward a more upbeat sound. Because we had already talked about applying our musical themes to a particular concept or cause, we thought that helping people relieve stress - in particular, stress brought on by COVID - would be a good idea. 

To help reinforce the piece’s optimistic mood, we decided to add a flute part to the solo piano arrangement. Luckily, my friend Sean Bailey - an excellent clarinetist and woodwind doubler - agreed to help out. 

Our recording, like so many others that were captured during the pandemic, took place remotely. Despite the distance between us (Rochester, NY and Philadelphia, PA), we felt good about how the separate performances synced up and how the instruments blended together. 

Since one of our initial goals was to share this music, we’re inviting you now to enjoy the sounds of A Sunny Day. Click on the audio player below to listen to A Sunny Day. If you like what you hear, please share this blog page with others. We’d love it if you joined us in helping others de-stress!

Kudos to Matthew and Sean - two collaborators who helped bring this project into being. Despite some minor frustrations during the composing and recording stages (to be expected), we had a lot of fun making this music. Thanks, guys!

To learn more about Sean Bailey and his music, click here: http://www.upbeatmusician.com/about.html

Getting Started With Improvisation; Part I - Listen and Play

I was recently reflecting on some of the different ways of getting started with music improvisation and thought about an approach that I use quite often. I’ll invite students to simply embellish notes and vary existing melodies. This way of getting started works so well, I believe, because students generally perceive it as non-threatening. I’ve found this to be especially true when I encourage students to “start off by making small changes.” That suggestion, along with a quick demonstration, seems to help students overcome initial fears like feeling lost or not knowing what to do.

This is the way it began with my student Alex when he first started improvising. If we happened to be working on a piece he was already familiar with - say, a well known classical music excerpt, folk tune or movie theme, I’d challenge him to “play all the same notes but change only the rhythm” as a way of inviting his own ideas into the music.

Last October, I noticed Alex’s improvement with his improvisations during an Open House music event. The duet piece we shared with our audience was one that he actually performed with a larger group of professional musicians just a few months before. October’s performance was different though. While he embellished and varied the same music, the quality of those embellishments and variations was noticeably better, especially during his solo.

If you’re curious to hear the piece that Alex and I performed, I’ve included an edited studio version of it here:

For those of you who already play piano, I’ve also included a free “easier” piano solo version of Spy To Spy. View the composition below and download in PDF format here.

You’ll notice that the music includes a written piano solo with chord symbol notation. If you’re not yet familiar with how to read and interpret this harmonic map, you can still have fun playing the solo. Just do what my other students do . . . embellish and vary! Try not to let thoughts about making mistakes stop you from experimenting and making your own music.

Stay tuned! In part II of this post, I’ll be demonstrating some more ways of getting started with improvisation.