Guidelines for Playing Piano by Ear to Write Music!
Begin your sketches with a simple, basic idea: a sound you like, a group of pitches, and interesting harmony, an attractive rhythm, an idea for lyrics, and so on.
Next step: think out a number of possibilities for developing, expanding, exploiting, and contrasting your basic idea.
For example:
- A group of pitches can be played forward, backward, up side down, or with its order rearranged.
- You can keep the overall shape of a pitch group (the way it moves up and down), but change it by opening up or tightening the distance (interval) from one note to the next.
- The same pitch group can be varied by changing its speed, meter, or rhythm... or by changing its "color" through changes of instrumental register (high vs. low).
- A rhythmic idea, no matter how simple, can be stretched, tightened up, fragmented, or transformed into a a repeated figure.
- A rhythmic idea can be applied to different pitch groups, or used to give movement to your favorite chord progression.
- A harmony can be intensified by adding "color" tones (7th, 9th, added 6th, suspended tones, etc.); or softened by subtracting chord tones; or given a refreshed sound by the way you voice the harmony on the piano.
Try to keep a relaxed attitude toward your study of piano, and an open mind about new ideas that almost always turn up while you're experimenting with your sketches.
Above all, don't lock yourself into one way of thinking. After a certain point, a piece may have its own ideas about the way it should develop; don't try to force it into a cookie mold!
Let it grow and breathe.
posted by Ron Worthy @ 12:32 PM
