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PRACTICE TIPS #61: Sing Your Way Home . . .
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Brent Hugh
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May 20, 2001 22:32 PDT
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PRACTICE TIPS is an occasional email newsletter with practical
piano practice tips and ideas, by Brent Hugh
You are receiving PRACTICE TIPS because you subscribed to PRACTICE
TIPS at the Practice Tips Web Page or because you are a student of
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PRACTICE TIPS #61: Sing Your Way Home . . .
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No, Practice Tips is NOT dead. It's just been living up to its widely
advertised description "an OCCASIONAL email newsletter" . . .
Here is a very simple but very powerful practice tip:
Sing your phrases. Then, play and imitate with your piano playing what you
did with your singing.
A few observations about singing:
* Singing is a much more natural way for humans to make music than is
finger-wiggling (i.e., piano playing). So for most humans, it is far
easier and more natural to make a convincing musical interpretation by
singing. Much of the un-musical playing that is so often heard from
pianists would be solved if pianists would sing their music more.
* You'll find it's worthwhile to really learn how to sing phrases from
your music *on pitch*. If you think you know a certain phrase, yet find
that you cannot sing it accurately, that is a good sign that you are
relying on "finger-wiggling memory" as opposed to real musical
memory. You'll be surprised how much your memory and musical understanding
improves if you know the music well enough to sing it. (Of course, with
piano music, some adaptation is often necessary to make the melodies fit
within a person's vocal range. And OF COURSE we need finger memory,
too--it is the basis of memory at the keyboard. But it must be
supplemented with many other kinds of memory or it is very unreliable.)
* You learn a lot by playing the accompaniment of a passage at the piano
(omitting the melody) and simultaneously singing the melody. You will
start to feel where the melody "grates" against the accompaniment and where
it resolves. You will feel what the harmonic support does to the
melody. You will feel where the melody needs to reach a climax and where
it needs to breathe. In short, you will have a much better musical
understanding of the melody.
And now, on a complete different topic . . .
Piano Camps
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* MWSC's Piano Camp 2001 is fast approaching. Postmark deadline for
applications is Thursday, May 24th. The camp, held annually in historic
St. Joseph, Missouri, is for students currently in 6th-12th grade, is June
15-20, 2001.
I am MWSC Piano Camp director and will be teaching many of the classes,
masterclasses, and lessons. Please visit http://www.mwsc.edu/~pianocmp/
for more information.
* I received this notice just a few days ago and thought that many list
members might be interested:
We can still use two piano players at our jazz camp this summer. These
spots arise due to cancellations as we are usually sold out in this
category.
Jazz Vermont, the 5 1/2 day Band Camp for Grownups is now into its 17th
year.
We would give a 10% discount to anyone signing up from your list. For
details,
contact me or check out our website at
<http://www.jazzcamp.com>www.jazzcamp<http://www.jazzcamp.com>.com
Byron Siegal, Director
Jazz Vermont
<http://www.jazzcamp.com>www.jazzcamp<http://www.jazzcamp.com>.com
jazzve-@mediaone.net
Happy Practicing!
--Brent
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PRACTICE TIPS is by pianist, teacher, composer, and internet nerd
Brent Hugh. Brent knows about practicing mostly because he *does*
it, and in fact is toddling off to do some of it just about now . . .
Please remember that this tip is but a small itchy spot near the
elephant's right earlobe--it's not even close to the whole
elephant that is "how everyone in the whole world should practice
the piano".
Practice Tips Archives (updated about once a month):
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+++++++++++++++++ Brent Hugh / bhu-@mwsc.edu +++++++++++++++++
+ Missouri Western St College Dept of Music, St. Joseph, MO +
+ Piano Home Page : http://www.mwsc.edu/~bhugh +
+ Music IQ Songs : http://mp3.com/MusicIQ +
++ Music of the Human Genome : http://mp3.com/brent_d_hugh ++++
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