Wouldn't You'd Rather Play A Baby Grand?

Being able to play a musical instrument is a talent that many people wish they had. The piano is an elegant instrument and once you learn how to play it will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Although a grand piano is the dream of many people who do play, it is a large and cumbersome instrument. Unless you have a very large space you simply won’t be able to accommodate one in your home.

A perfect alternative is a baby grand piano. A baby grand piano has all of the same features as a grand piano but just on a smaller scale. Many people choose to purchase a baby grand piano for their child as they begin lessons. This is a wonderful motivator for the child as they feel proud to be playing such an impressive instrument. The child will continue to play the baby grand piano as they mature. With proper care and maintenance the piano will actually last the child their entire life.

Purchasing a baby grand piano can seem like a daunting task especially if you’ve never bought a piano before. It’s not difficult though and there are several avenues available when it comes to buying one.

Many baby grand pianos can be purchased used. People lose interest in playing or someone passes away and the piano sits quietly collecting dust.

Your local newspaper may be a good resource for finding a used baby grand piano. You’ll want to contact the person selling it and inquire about its condition and price. If you are impressed by what you hear over the phone you should schedule an appointment to view the piano.

If you do choose to purchase a used baby grand piano you’ll need to contact a piano mover. Piano movers are unique in that they are skilled in moving pianos without causing any damage to the instrument.

Baby grand pianos can also be purchased at many music stores. In this case you may even be able to specially order the color of the piano as well as the piano bench. Although black is still the most popular color in baby grand pianos many people like the beauty of a white piano as well. Another benefit of purchasing from a music store is that they will be able to arrange delivery of the piano for you.

It takes a good deal of time to learn how to play the piano. Investing in a quality instrument will showcase your talent. It also spurs you to practice more when you have the baby grand piano in your home just waiting to be heard.

How To Compose Music - Creative Ideas

Starting a composition is a difficult task. Getting your inspirations, thinking creatively, applying your creative thoughts to your music and supplementing your ideas with additional composition are all difficult tasks to accomplish.

For starters, your current state of mind will greatly affect the music you write – whether you feel angry, joyful or sad chances are your musical composition will in some way reflect this mood.

Different times of day and different seasons affect your composing as well as current affairs and any stress’s you might have.

The variety of factors that can influence your composition periods are immense and hopefully these few pointers will demonstrate some methods of breaking out of the psychological restraints placed on you.

• Colours – If you are looking to compose a piece of music based around a certain mood find a relevant colour that matches for instance orange gives the impression of energy and drive. Eventually you will learn to bias your mood to suit the composition you are aiming for.
• Character – it is well known for actors to really get inside the character they are portraying through their acting. Understanding key emotions and various behaviours help the actors ‘ live ‘ as their proposed character. If you are creating a theme for a character (think darth vaders theme tune) you need to be demonstrating and describing that character through sound. If you follow the same process as an actor would you will eventually unravel hidden details that will help refine your composition, make it more realist and detailed and allow for it to be much more creative and expressive.
• Nature – a lot of creativity and inspiration can be got by observing nature. From birds communicating through a song like speech to the rustle of leaves in a summer breeze. Trying to emulate nature is an excellent way to begin a sound-scope – or incorporating nature into a character theme for example to express an angelic quality, singing like the birds (fast trills on piccolo or glissandos on the violin)
• Memories – another great source to tap into is your memories. A lot of emotion will go into compositions that are personal in some way to yourself. Spend a few minutes reflecting on your past – try to imagine the memory in great detail – sounds, smells, colours the weather – anything that will give you a good image and story to compose about.

These are just a few sources for inspiration – use your imagination – it has never ending possibilities!

With so many possibilities to compose about and now that your creativity is running, the next area to discuss is music theory.
The last thing that you want to happen is to have all these wonderfully creative ideas for your composition but being held back by the lack of musical knowledge.

A rugby player could develop his passing techniques and his scrum techniques but if he doesn’t know the rules of the game he won’t be able to perform during a game.

Although music composition and as a whole is not bound by any rules you still need the knowledge of writing music – in the same way as a poet needs a knowledge of his language to write a poem.

Some of the key areas you should know about and be constantly revising are:

• The Staff, Bar Lines, Clefs, Time Signatures.
• Note Values, Rests, Phrasing, Rhythm
• Articulation, Instrument Specific Techniques (pizz, con sord)
• Key Signatures, Circle of Fifths, Accidentals, Cadences
• Major, Minor, Diminished, Pentatonic, Diatonic Scales
• Modes
• Chords, Extensions, Inversions, Sequences, Arpeggios
• Instrument Ranges, Timbres of Each Instrument, Difficult Areas of an Instrument (The break on clarinet for instance or seventh position for trombones)

Of course it is not absolutely essential you know about all of this but it will mean that your creativity is weakened due to lack of a means to fully communicate.

Use music theory books – go through them and notate comments on the pages, take notes on to blank flash cards to memorize scales and extended chords, use past music theory exam papers to test and analyze your knowledge and then act on your weak areas, purchase a aural perception CD to recognize different cadences and the general sounds achieved from different combinations of notes and chords – there are many ways to learn all of this but find the way that you are comfortable with and stick to it.

Finally the last piece of advice in this article is to keep your composing active.

Aim to compose a short piece of music each day, maybe before you go to bed you can reflect on your day through a composition. Mix it up – compose for different orchestrations and different abilities.

Composing is challenging but by keeping active like this will greatly benefit you and your compositions – and you never know – you may accidentally stumble upon your masterpiece!

Mp3 And Its Advantages

Few things in my life do I use more often and enjoy than my mp3 music player. Well, maybe its not all that great, but I do really love the idea of mp3 music players. I’m so tired of CDs I could just scream. Sure, they’re way better than the different forms of music storage mediums that came before, but that’s not saying a whole lot. There’s nothing more frustrating than putting on your favorite CD only to hear it skip like crazy during the best songs.

Even taking extremely good care of my CDs, they still somehow get scratched all the time. Furthermore, just trying to keep all my CDs organized is a major hassle. I think I’ve spent many hours putting CDs away in different folds and organizing the different CD cases, and while this used to be kind of fun back when I was in high school and didn’t own many albums, now that I’ve got a large collection it is a total drag. For these reasons alone, I’ve been a big fan of mp3 music players since they first started hitting markets several years ago.

The first mp3 music players were ridiculously expensive, but I just had to have one. Maybe I’m just a technology junkie, or maybe I had just finally had enough of CDs. I do remember the first mp3 music players came out shortly after I’d had my main CD holding folder filled with 90% of the music I’d collected over the years stolen. I’m sure that also had something to do with my decision to make the plunge and get an mp3 music player. I’d already spent a small fortune rebuilding my CD collection, so I guess I figured why not spend another small fortune, get an mp3 music player, and never have to worry about stolen or scratched CDs again?

While I haven’t been worrying much about stolen or scratched CDs since then, I have been worrying about crappy mp3 music players a lot. The first one I bought was such a piece of garbage compared to the newer ones, its not even funny. Fortunately, the mp3 music player I have now is pretty sweet. It’s made by Panasonic, works with my car and has all sorts of neat little features.

Of course, now that the mp3 music players have gotten good, Apple just had to come out with something better. Their iPods are in fact pretty nice, but they of course have their own spiffy music format that doesn’t work with other mp3 music players. Isn’t that just so typically Apple?

Mp3 Digital Music

Mp3 digital music is one of the most popular forms for music to take these days. Digital music just seems to make sense, and is a natural step forward in the music world today. Everything else is digital these days, why wouldn’t our music be?

While music is still purchased in the form of CDs, it is very often converted into mp3 digital music for use on a computer or mp3 player. Indeed, sometimes it seems like CD players are all but obsolete now, and I almost never use mine anymore. However, it is nice to have music backed up on CDs, and I try to keep my CD collection current even if I’m not listening to them directly very much. I have a sort of inherent distrust of computers and all things purely digital, and I’m just waitng for my digital music players to explode one day.

Mp3 players have a lot of nice advantages to them over CDs. First of all, they are of course much smaller. Most mp3 players can easily fit into your pocket, unlike bulky CD players. Even the smallest portable CD player is enormous compared to the average mp3 player. Also, mp3 digital music can be stored on a hard drive of an mp3 player or computer, and so no CDs are needed. You can load up all the mp3 digital music you want on your computer, and never have to worry about losing or scratching any of it.

One of the most popular portable digital music players today is Apple’s iPod, and since it’s made by Apple it just has to be different. Therefore it does not use the mp3 digital music files other players use, and instead uses its own spiffy Apple format exclusive to iPods. As an owner of both an mp3 player and an iPod, this fact continuously frustrates me, as it is nothing short of a pain in the ass to transfer music from one player to the other.

Mp3 digital music is also of a fairly small file size, which is handy. My laptop has a 120 GB hard drive on it, and I can fit my entire music collection on it in the mp3 digital music format without making a dent in the overall space available. The mp3 digital music format poses some serious threats to the music industry, as it is so easy to share and pass around.

Green Day Originals

Many of today’s garage bands want to get Green Day sheet music in order to perform covers of the popular songs. Of course, many of us like to hear a band play original music but the occasion cover song is welcomed every so often. Other audience members are really just interested in hearing the Green Day songs rather than the originals.

As long as people come to see the shows, it really doesn’t matter. The band figures that people like things that are familiar. Using Green Day sheet music to learn the tunes that are heard on the radio is a great way to get the audience’s attention. The listeners will be more likely to listen to the originals a little better if the hear a familiar tune first.

If you are going to do cover music, why not choose a band that has achieved great success? Green Day has been making great tunes for over a decade and the band is gaining popularity. You will be able to tell this when you look for Green Day sheet music on the Web.

I was doing a little research for our band and I found musicnotes.com. The band I play bass for is not really a cover band but we just couldn’t find an audience. We figured that we would choose a popular group that still has a little edge for our cover songs. We settled on Green Day in a minute.

Anyone who has ever been in a music group knows that we never agree on anything. Choosing this band was a no-brainer and there is a lot of Green Day sheet music available through musicnotes.com for free. This is another great thing about the generous music group.

I found a couple songs from the Dookie CD that was released a long time ago. I decided to choose one or two songs from the list of Green Day sheet music for us to learn. Next, I found some great tunes from the Warning album. I downloaded all of these. Some of the songs brought back great memories, too.

The most choices in Green Day sheet music on musicnotes.com come from American Idiot. I had a hard time choosing which songs to download from this list because I like them all. I decided to download all of the songs available from American Idiot for the band.

All is not peaceful at the home front. Now we are arguing about which songs we are going to cover for our next gig. Maybe I downloaded too much Green Day sheet music.

Schumann's Troubled Life

(born June 8,1810- died July 29,1856)

Robert Schumann was the fifth and youngest child of a bookseller. As a boy he liked reading the books in his father’s shop. He began to compose by seven. At school he was extremely good at music and literature. He passed his school-leaving examination with flying colours.By the time Schumann entered the University to study Law he was not only interested in music and literature, but also in women and drinking.

However when Schumann was in his teens, his father died and his sister committed suicide. These events left a deep impact on the young musician. Young Schumann studied law at Leipzig while simultaneously continuing his music studies. One of his music teachers was Friedrich Wieck. Wieck’s daughter Clara showed a great talent at the piano while she was only 9 years old.Young Robert fell in love with the charming Clara.

Further tragedy however lay in store for Schumann. A mishap damaged one of his hands and this meant the end of his career as a concert pianist. Some theories blame a device he used to strengthen his fingers, but other accounts lay the blame on mercury poisoning – a side effect of his treatment for syphilis.This injury meant the end of his career as a concert pianist.

Clara’s parents did not want her to marry him and her father did everything he could to stop the marriage. One possible reason was that he may have known that Schumann had syphilis. In the end, after court intervention, they were married in 1840. This happened shortly before Clara’s 21st birthday. The couple had three daughters.

Schumann suffered from maniac depression. When he was depressed he hardly wrote anything, but 1840 was a happy year for him and he wrote lots of songs as well as orchestral music. In 1841 he wrote four symphonies. In 1842, the couple went on a concert tour together and in 1844 they toured Russia and played to the Tsar. By August he had a complete nervous breakdown. It took him some time to recover.

By now he was good at writing all kinds of music. He wrote music for the famous play Faust by Goethe. He wrote one opera,Genoveva in 1849. His fame spread slowly. In 1850 he became musical director atDusseldorf.
Schumann had often thought of trying to kill himself. On 27 February 1854 he threw himself into the river Rhine. He was taken to an asulum where he spent the last two years of his life. He died on 29 July 1856.

The popularity ofSchumann’s piano music is an indicator of his talent. Although Schumann could no longer play as a concert pianist because of his mishap, his wife Clara played his pieces and helped them to become famous. Many of his piano works are collections of short pieces, each with a title e.g. Papillons (Butterflies), Davidsbündlertänze, Carnaval. In Carnaval the two sides of Schumann’s personality are represented by Florestan and Eusebius. Schumann's manic depression (the happy and the tragic moods that he had) can be heard side by side in his music. Other piano works include Scenes from Childhood, Kreisleriana and the popular Album for the Young which has some quite easy pieces like Soldier’s March and the famous Träumerei (Dreaming). There are also longer works for piano: 3 sonatas, a Toccata and a Phantasie.

His chamber music includes string quartets and a famous piano quintet.

From Hindustani To Vedas

Hudustani classical music and traditional dance abounds in India. Travelers to the country enjoy it for the sake its beauty, never realizing that the music and dance is steeped in history, each movement conveying a message. Often worship rituals involve dances created hundreds of years ago. Each step, gesture and musical note brings with it a meaning, however subtle. The dances or India are an art.

Rajasthan is one of the most richly rewarding regions for folk dances, devotional songs and music. Professional tribal performers in brilliantly colored costumes entertain visitors and residents throughout the area. Their performances include fire dances, dramas on mock horses and cymbal and drum dances. All this is accompanied by haunting ballads and handcrafted instruments.

Originating from the chanted hymns of the sacred Vedas, music evolved to express the seasonal cycles and the rhythm of agricultural work, became interlinked with dance forms to celebrate the harvest, greet a particular season or worship a specific god.Originally, these dances were performed in Hindu and Jain temples. In time, however, temple leaders began to consider the dances too suggestive and the ritual dancing was banned within the temples. Today, you can only find these traditional dances performed in temples at three events each year.

The Khajurako Dance Festival is held in March. December sees two festivals, the Konark Dance Festival and the Mamallapuram Dance Festival. Visitors to India at these times will enjoy a rare treat by attending one of these festivals.Two forms of dance worship bear mentioning, Kathakali and Odissi.

Kathakali of Kerala is a male-only dance form. The performers wear colorful costumes and the dances are full of intense drama. Odissi is Orissa's ancient dance form. The performers act out ancient myths in extravagant costumes, accompanied by musicians and singers. These dances can often be seen during the Konark Dance Festival in November.

Clarinet Music

The clarinet has a distinct sound that brings a mellow tone. Mainly used in the classical and jazz genres, clarinet music is as popular today as it ever was. School children who learn the recorder often progress to the clarinet. There are different types of the instrument with their own pitch, including soprano, bass and alto.

It is in the woodwind family and has the widest pitch range of that group. Professional musicians use clarinets made from African hardwoods. These tend to be expensive but cheaper plastic resin ones are available too, so parents don't have to worry about it being an expensive hobby. The instrument uses a single reed, traditionally made from a type of grass but most shops will sell reeds from synthetic materials, again bringing down the price.

An orchestra normally contains two or three clarinetists and there has been a lot of clarinet music written as orchestral pieces or as chamber music. It is also favored as a solo instrument, featured in clarinet concertos by Mozart and Carl von Weber. American composer Aaron Copland has also composed for the clarinet. There are plenty of examples of 20th century clarinet music by leading composers, including Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen. Popular formats for the clarinet include the Clarinet Quintet, made up of a clarinet and a string quartet. The Wind Quintet consists of clarinet, oboe, flute, bassoon and horn.

The clarinet has also played a big part in the development of jazz. Early jazz featured the virtuosity of players such as Sidney Bechet and clarinet music is an integral part of New Orleans jazz bands. The Dixieland sound was very popular but was overshadowed when bebop and free jazz dominated the airwaves. It came back however and remains popular with the public, if not the critics.

It enjoyed a big revival in the 1950s and early 1960s in the UK with a British brand of Dixieland records enjoying chart success. The movement, known as Trad Jazz, was led by Acker Bilk and his band and they had a number one hit with Stranger On the Shore. With his trademark bowler hat and black and white striped waistcoat, Acker Bilk made clarinet music fashionable again.

Another period of great success for the instrument was in the big band era of the 1930s and 1940s. Swing music swept across the dance halls of America to the sound of clarinetists Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Woody Herman. The film director Woody Allen took his name from Herman and has his own jazz band, helping to popularize clarinet music once more.