Back in January I had a great time doing a short tour (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth) with Samantha Coates (of Blitz Books fame) and Abe Cytrynowski (the inventor of the fabulous ScaleCard system). In Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth we just did a long morning session at one of the larger retailers in each city, but in Sydney Samantha hired the Music Workshop at the Sydney Conservatorium and we did a full day event, along with amazing catering and an events team that worked like clockwork. The day ended with an energetic panel discussion. We took questions from the more than 100 teachers present, and did our best to cover everything in the 45 minutes scheduled for the panel. Despite our best efforts there were still questions left unanswered, and we collectively promised we would address each question at http://www.blitzbooks.com.au but as it turns out many of the questions aren’t really appropriate for Sam’s theory/sight-reading/note-reading/general knowledge oriented website. So here I
P Plate Update: meeting with examiners.
P Plate Piano (and its various launch and discussion events) have kept me outrageously busy of late, and I’m ashamed to note that it’s been close to a month since I last posted anything to this blog – a record time without new contributions. All the more shameful as I’ve set myself the task of discussing a scale every week, and that’s looking a bit like a failed New Year’s Resolution at present. But back to the topic of today’s post: an update on P Plate Piano. The website is increasingly functional, and the forum for teachers has been up and running for a week or so. Not many posts as of yet, but 19 members, which (by Australian piano teaching demographic standards) is not a bad start! The last two weekends of February saw me tearing around southern Victoria doing my final launches for teachers in that state. Ballarat, Bendigo, Traralgon (I had to look that one up on
Scale of the Day: Major-Harmonic
This week let’s look at what I regard as being a kind of reverse of the mystery scale from the previous scale-of-the-day post. Just as in our ‘mystery scale’ this is a major scale with a change made to only one note, but whereas last time we raised the 5th, this time we are lowering the 6th: same pitch, different degree, and very different end result. Here it is on C: It’s called Major-Harmonic in a fairly obvious way, the tail of the harmonic has been attached to the head and torso of the major pattern, and here’s our hybrid. Being, to our diatonic ears, a hybrid, one might unthinkingly assume that this scale is a curiosity, rather than descriptive of real life music-making. But take a listen to the chords this pattern makes: The most significant change from the major scale triads is the chord IV is now chord iv – yep, it’s minor. [And along with that we have
Mozzie
This piece might be my most performed piano piece to date. It has been on the Australian Music Examination Board piano syllabus since 2000, and the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music have included it in their Grade 2 Piano exam publication for 2009-10. As a result, there are YouTube performances a-plenty. Meantime quite a few people have discovered this blog while searching for information about Mozzie. So, for the curious, or those seeking some background on the piece, here is the tale of Mozzie. Back at the end of 1995 I had finally (yet suddenly) made the decision to write educational piano music in earnest, and set myself the challenge of writing just one really good piece of educational piano music before the end of the night (midnight, November 27). I’d been out to dinner with my family as it was my parents’ wedding anniversary, so I set myself this challenge at about quarter to eleven at
P Plate Piano website is live!
One of the most exciting aspects of creating the P Plate Piano series with the Australian Music Examination Board has been their corporate commitment to the project. So many times in business (let alone the print music business) lateral thinking is simply not part of the equation, so it has been a joy to be involved in a project that really is designed for the 21st century. So this is the first examination board-produced repertoire series ever to have its very own website, and that website has just gone ‘live’ at http://www.pplatepiano.com.au Still not live are the online student journal, the teachers forum and some other bells and whistles, but this website does have some nice features already, including some short videos we made at the end of last year. And I’ll be reporting on when new features are added as the year goes on. I’m still very much involved with the project, with launch events still running til the
Happy I’m a Hippo
I can’t believe it’s been nearly three months since I last wrote about a children’s book. Children’s books are a major preoccupation of mine, and I certainly have a backlog of great books to discuss. But one of the books that I’m being asked to read on a daily basis at the moment is the delightful Happy I’m A Hippo written by Richard Edwards with illustrations by Carol Liddiment, and published by Alison Green Books. While my now nearly 35 month old son has mostly been taken by books with one or two lines of text per page, this book has been a huge hit even with its copious text, detailed plot developments and pauses in the story for the hippo to sing. This is the story of a hippo who doesn’t want to be a hippo, so she tries her best to be a monkey, an eagle and a meerkat (each attempt is a notable failure) before a young
Links to Vodcasts……
My blog has featured my ideas in written format, venturing as far as to include some scored examples – so I am hardly pushing the envelope of the available technology. I’d love to change the status quo, but for now I’ll just include some links to vodcasts that have just gone up on YouTube with me discussing teaching ideas for three pieces in the P Plate Piano series (and hopefully this style of link isn’t too irritating to click through on). From P Plate Piano Book One, a discussion of the fabulous Jane Sebba piece Quick as a flash: http://tinyurl.com/yjboyp8 And from P Plate Piano Book Two an exploration of Daniel Türk’s Presto: http://tinyurl.com/y8jzpzx And from P Plate Piano Book Three an explanation of the stunning little Too tired for anything from the fabulous 2 volume series, Seventy Keyboard Adventures with the Little Monster published by Breitkopf Hartel: http://tinyurl.com/yjy4sx4 There will be a dedicated P Plate Piano website, which is truly
Scale of the Day #5: A Mystery Scale
Before you read another word try playing this week’s scale-of-the-day through on your instrument: Written on C it’s clear that this is the major scale with a single note adjusted a semitone higher. It’s that it’s the 5th degree that has been adjusted that leads to the tonic chord having an augmented quality. I’m not sure how I would go about composing with this scale, or how I would create a sense of genuine C tonality. Our western ears are attuned to the perfect 5th defining harmonic spaces, so this scale is challenging simply because that 5th degree does not create that expected consonance. But even more challenging is the fact that the 5th is augmented. When we hear these two pitches out of context we assume (and believe deeply) that we are hearing a minor 6th, and we further project into this harmonic outline either a 2nd inversion of a minor chord or a 1st inversion of a major one.
Scale of the Day #4: The Phrygian Mode
This week we’re looking at one of the modes of the major scale, and as all the modes of the major scale have a long tradition of being named in western music theory we won’t need to get worried about what it ‘ought’ to be called – that flag was planted long ago. While the Phrygian mode and last week’s scale both have the 2nd and 7th flattened they end up sounding nothing alike, and that’s because the Phrygian mode has another two notes flattened (the 3rd and the 6th), while last week’s scale had one note raised (the 4th), with the result that three notes in the pattern are not shared. The Phrygian mode is actually only one note different to the natural minor scale, but that flattened 2nd has such an unexpected aspect to it that we tend to hear it as vastly different from the familiar natural minor pattern. Here is the Phrygian mode starting on C:
Anita Milne is my mother
It’s time to write a piece about my mum. Mums are self-evidently worth writing about, but in my case I am further motivated to do so knowing that about 10 people have discovered my blog in the past seven days because they were wanting to know more about my mum, Anita. A brief history: Anita was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1943 and started piano lessons at the age of nine. She progressed rapidly, and was teaching the piano herself by the time she was in her late teens, as well as working as an accompanist and organist. She married Richard Milne (born in Prosperpine, QLD, and working in Christchurch at the time) in 1963. I was born when Anita was nearly 24 and living in Wahroonga, Sydney, and I grew up listening to her piano lessons (as a baby) and hearing her students practice (as I became older). When she was 27 our whole family moved to the
Elissa Milne 