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.

Scales and Intervals Backwards and Forwards

Scales and Intervals . . . Backwards & Forwards Tutorial, Part I

As promised in my last blog post, here’s some prep material related to chord construction. This information should help you better understand the upcoming video series about reading and interpreting chord symbols (see my YouTube announcement at: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3ISGCw3c-4&t=14s).

In this post I’ll be defining some important terms and will provide you with supporting diagrams and audio clips. In part II, I’ll offer more detailed information about intervals and demonstrate the actual “chord building” process. 

Okay, lets get started by defining some terms. You might think of them (and the concepts they represent) as the “building blocks” we use to construct chords. Here are a few of the most important:

Pitch – A simple definition describes pitch as: “The location of a tone related to its highness or lowness of sound.” Pitch is a subjective experience. Think of a chirping bird and a roaring lion. Most people would agree that the bird’s chirping is higher pitched than the lion’s roaring.

Tone – A sound that is played or sung at a specific pitch. Tones are either played melodically – when one follows another in time – or harmonically – when tones sound together.

Interval(s) - The distance in pitch between two (or more) tones. Intervals are measured in two ways – generically and specifically. In part II, I’ll offer more detailed information about both ways of labeling intervals. In this tutorial we’ll be focusing on the half step (minor 2nd) and whole step (major 2nd). 

Half Step – The distance between two adjacent notes on a keyboard. Listen to the first five notes of Beethoven’s classic composition Für Elise - you’ll hear half steps moving backwards and forwards.

Whole Step – The distance of two half steps. According to Steven Laitz, author of The Complete Musician, whole steps, on a keyboard, “occur between any two keys separated by one intervening key.” Listen below to the example of whole steps moving forwards and backwards on the opening melody of the popular song: Linus and Lucy, composed by Vince Guaraldi.

Scale – Wikipedia offers a fairly straightforward definition: “A scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch.” Ascending scales are ordered by increasing pitch and descending scales are ordered by decreasing pitch. Here’s an example of a descending scale that most people are quite familiar with:

The opening melody (first eight notes) of Joy to the World is actually a C major scale played backwards!

To examine the half step and whole step pattern of the C major scale (see diagram 1a), let’s first reverse the direction of the melody and then convert its rhythm to a series of whole notes so that our focus is on the major scale’s interval pattern.   Insert diagram 1b  (C major scale with WWHWWWH pattern). 

This major scale is sometimes referred to as diatonic – which simply means: “Notes that are in the underlying key or scale.” What’s really cool about this whole step/half step interval pattern is that you can use it to construct a major scale in any one of the 12 keys – even if you don’t yet understand the concept of key signatures. 

Try this out for yourself if you’re curious. Start on any white or black note of the keyboard and follow the WWHWWWH step sequence as you move from left to right on a keyboard. If you follow the interval sequence correctly, you’ll play a major (diatonic) scale that’s named for the note you started on.

Chord – In my day-to-day instructing of students at Piano Plus Teaching Studio, I’ll often say something like: “It might seem obvious but . . . reading and interpreting chord symbols is based, first of all, on an understanding of what a chord is.” Most references describe a chord as being made up of two (usually three) or more distinct tones. Chords can be heard when the notes are played all at once (block) or when the notes are played in a more sequenced pattern (broken or arpeggiated).

Listen to the audio clip I recorded for the introduction of the song: Let it be, written by the Beatles. You’ll hear block chords (played in the right hand part).

When you listen to Adele’s song, Someone like you, you’ll hear broken chords in the song’s introduction. Here’s a short audio clip I recorded:

Although these last two examples highlighted the use of either a block or broken style of chord playing, it's often the case that both types get used within the same piece of music. Just listen closely and you'll hear.

Well, that’s all for now. As mentioned previously, I’ll be elaborating about intervals and demonstrate how chords are built in part II of this tutorial. In addition, we’ll explore some basic concepts of harmony. Got any questions or comments? Please feel free to leave your feedback below. Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned!