Blog
By Nathan Straub
Have you ever wondered how music evolved into its current state? How did power chords, symphonies, rock concerts, Michael Jackson, and operas all come to be? This week, I will be covering three musical eras that answer a small part of these questions. These are known as the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic musical periods.
That's why our teachers have taken a moment to answer some questions in between their busy teaching schedules. Read on to learn more about our amazing piano teacher Justin Hansen!
By Kate MacKenzie
One of my favorite composers was an Italian mastermind of the Baroque era, Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). His beautiful treatment of melodies paired with appeasing Alberti bass and harmonic structure have made him an important figure of music history. Sure, most people fall in love with perhaps his most famous piece, The Four Seasons, but for me it was his Bassoon Concerto in A Minor that started my deep admiration for his music.
By William Muñoz
When I started learning the trumpet one of my goals was to eventually be good enough to play salsa music. After all, growing up in Puerto Rico, that is one of the most popular styles of music and I thought it would be awesome to be in a salsa band. My first trumpet teacher played in many salsa bands, some of which he also directed, additionally, he also performed with the Puerto Rico Symphony and Puerto Rico Philharmonic among other ensembles. I remember that after a few lessons he asked: “why do you want to play the trumpet?” to which I replied: “I want to play salsa.” He then responded: “Well, I am going to teach you how to be a trumpet player, more importantly, I will teach you to be a good musician.”
By John Hart
This skill is essential for music students who want to learn to play music genres such as blues, country, folk, hip, jazz, pop, soul, and gospel music. Instruments such as piano and guitar are commonly used as the musical backbone of these styles because they can sound more than one note at a time. Though sight-reading written notation is an important skill to acquire for any instrument, it is not required for reading chord charts. This skill doesn’t usually take long to learn and gives the budding musician the satisfaction of producing music that is pleasing to the ear within weeks versus the years that it takes to learn to sight-read proficiently.
By Justin R. Hansen
In the 90’s and the turn of the century, it seemed that any person you met knew whether they were left- or right-brained. They either felt that they strongly exhibited the traits of one half or they had taken a “test” to help them figure it out; just for fun, here’s a good one: http://testyourself.psychtests.com/bin/transfer
By Esther Joh
While in modern times standardization has affected the craft of piano building, in the 18th century instruments were still personal works of art. Therefore, pianos differed from town to town and from builder to builder. Although within geographical area craftsmen did influence one another, the distance between two cities as far apart as London and Vienna resulted in the establishing of two distinct schools of piano building: the Viennese and the English. Viennese made by Stein from the early 1770, developed by Anton Walter, who built Mozart's own piano in the early 1780s. English were developed through Backers, a Dutch-born harpsichord maker resident in London, and John Broadwood.
By Connor Ritchie
The guitar is a unique template for delivering music and has a resounding role in the canon of popular and classical music. This is common knowledge. However, how do we know that the guitar will stay relevant and stand the test of time? Even though it is one of the few polyphonic (multiple musical voices occurring simultaneously) solo instruments, it simply does not have the same level of command of many different voices that the piano does. So why is the guitar revered at all, if this is the case? There are many arguments to counter this question, but there is one that often does not get considered – the classical guitar is a master at manipulating tone color. The location and delivery of the stroke of a finger has such a large effect on the overall sound of the guitar that a player can immediately evoke a completely fresh and new atmosphere from just one shift of the hand.
By Kate MacKenzie
You never know what doors will open for you as a musician. I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel worldwide with my bassoon as early as middle school. It is amazing how music can cross all language and cultural divides; it allows us to share a fundamental human experience with all sorts of people. This has been such a special perk of being a musician that I did not expect as a child when I first began music lessons.
