Report from Brazil Music Camp

Just returned from Brazil Camp, our third and final
music camp of the summer. While the other two were a
fun mix of very eclectic music classes and a lot of
jamming, Brazil Camp was serious business for very
serious musicians.

It was fun, don't get me wrong. But it was a serious
challenge. But people ask me, "Why Brazil Camp? What's
the deal with Brazilian music anyway?"

Many people associate Brazilian music with the Bossa
Nova. Certainly Bossa Nova is a big part of Brazilian
music, but it's only a part. Here's what make Brazilian
music so special to me.

Consider the music that was created and has developed
in the New World. The influences come from two primary
sources, Europe and Africa. A little after the time of
the discovery of the New World, European music was
beginning to become very rich in harmony (think
Bach/Beethoven/Mozart). But it was pretty anemic
rhythmically. The meters were mostly 4/4, 2/4, or 3/4,
and syncopation was almost non-existent.

Contrast that to the music of West Africa which there
were almost no tonal instruments to create harmony, but
whose rhythms were so glorious, they defied European
musicological examination.

As music developed in North America, it borrowed from
and modified the European models of harmony and even
adopted some of the simpler African rhythms. But to
this day, the rhythms of the music of the Americas are
pretty simple compared to those of Africa.

Except for Brazil.

Here in this music you have extremely challenging
rhythms side by side with some of the most
sophisticated jazz harmonies you've ever heard. The
result? Jazz with a Brazilian flavor. It's rich and
complex, yet from a listener's point of view, very
approachable. It's exciting, but not self absorbed or
over analytical. It's music you want to stay and listen
to or get up and dance to. But unless you're well
versed, don't try to play it.

Brazil Camp, however, was very forgiving to a newcomer
like me. I was either in class or practicing seven
hours a day, and I actually got a chance to be included
in spite of my limitations. And I was inspired to try
hard to "get it."

And some day I will get it. I've got plenty to work on.

Keep playing (it all comes back to that).


Robert

How to Accompany a Singer

Since the word got out that I taught a piano course for
accompanying singers at music camp, people have asked
me if I have a training program for that topic so that
people could learn at home. Surprise. I do not.

But as I went through the course over a period of seven
days, one thing became very clear. Almost every aspect
of piano accompaniment style relates either directly or
indirectly to just about every other aspect of playing
piano. (With one important exception which I'll reveal
in just a moment.)

For example, using the piano as an accompanying tool
will often incorporate elements of the blues, left hand
and right hand variations, the Circle of Fifths,
playing by ear, introductions, endings, power chords,
and various piano style.

Yet it's on the whole easier to use the piano to
accompany a singer than it is to play solo piano. And
this brings us to the important exception I mentioned a
second ago. When accompanying a singer, a piano player
does not play melodies. That's the singers' department.
Much like a guitar player, a piano accompanyist
"strums" chords. And that's something that can be done
with just one hand on a piano.

If you play guitar, imagine how much easier it would be
if you could make chords by using just one hand instead
of two. But that is indeed what it's like with the
piano.

Of course there is more to good piano accompaniment
than merely playing chords with one hand. But that's
the basis of it. So will I ever write a book about
accompaniment? That's yet to be answered. No immediate
plans. But I will continue to educate people on the
fundamentals of chord piano. And remember, the
techniques are all applicable in one way or another to
piano accompaniment as well as solo playing.

And I do plan on repeating the class again next summer at
Lark Camp. (www.larkcamp.com)


Robert

Letter from Summer Camp

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.

Music Camp was fun. The days went mostly like this.
Wake up...breakfast...take a one-hour class...take
another class...prepare to teach a class...teach the
class...lunch...break...accompany the vocal
class...teach another class...dinner...find people to
jam with...jam...off to bed by 1:30 (hopefully).

Repeat that routine for seven full days.

Notice there was a break in there. That was for a nap
sometimes. The rest of the time it was for playing
music.

After a week of that routine it was total exhaustion
for us, so we rented a little cottage in Mendocino
where we could recuperate for the weekend. So what did
I do on my "day off?" I went and took a 90 minute piano
lesson.

What is it about musicians? Are we all insane? All that
work, practice, study, rehearsing, learning. For what?
And the weird thing is, this insanity appears to be
universal. One thing that struck me when I was studying
anthropology in college is that all cultures have
music. Primitive, advanced, ancient, modern. Music is
one of the things that actually helps define what it
means to be a human.

And that point was emphasized at this camp inasmuch as
you could find classes in Irish music, Middle Eastern,
South American, Mexican, Balkan, African, Hawaiian,
French, Galician. You could learn to play marimba,
kalimba, hurdy gurdy, oud, bombast, ukulele, slack key
guitar, swing guitar, gypsy jazz guitar, piano,
accordion, fiddle, pandeiro, and every kind of bag pipe
imaginable. Plus you could learn all kinds of dances
from contra and square dance to hula and cajun, to
jitterbug and tango, to English country dances done to
bag pipes at 4 am.

Is that work or is that play? Is that a vacation or is
it professional development? Is it rational or is it
insanity? I don't know. But I'll tell you what it was.
Fun.

This one was called Lark Camp. But there must be
hundreds of music camps for adults around the country
every summer. You might want to check one out this year
or next.


Robert

About Playing by Ear

Some things can't be taught. You're born with an ability, or you're not. They say perfect pitch is one of those things. Can you hear a musical tone and instantly identify the note? Only a very small percentage of our population can do it. They can't explain how they do it, they can't teach it. They can
can only do it.

Playing music by ear was once thought to be unteachable
(or unlearnable depending on your reference point). In
fact many people are still convinced that playing by
ear is an inherant trait. Ask an "ear" player how they
do it, and they're likely to tell you, "I don't know, I
just do it."

Well I'm here to tell you that not only can anyone
learn to play by ear, it's actually quite easy once you
know a basic thing or two about chord playing. And most
of it is intuitive. Let me show you.

Start with the note C on the piano, and try to play
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat." Just experiment. Trial and
error. Make a mistake, hear it, and correct it. That's
all it is. Start on an E note and play "Mary Had a
Little Lamb." Start on C and play "Frere Jacques."

Some melodies are more challenging than others, so if
you're doing this exercise on your own, be prepared for
inconsistent results. But any melody is ultimately
learnable, using this trial and error method.

This little exercise is exactly what I try to do in the
first few minutes of my How to Play Piano by Ear
workshop. I will choose a student, put him/her at the
piano, give them a starting note, name a tune, and ask
them to do the rest.

And in the course of 25 plus years, I've only had a
handful of students (about three, actually) who could
not pass this simple test. It was easier for some
people than it was for others. But virtually everybody
got it.

Interesting side note. Guess who struggled the most.
Total beginners? No. It was those with years of
traditional classical piano studies that seemed to have
the hardest time with this.

Why? I don't know. But most of them, when I asked,
revealed to me that during their years of study they
were never encouraged by their teachers to play any
music that wasn't actually written down in music
notation format. They never tried to play by ear. They
were never allowed to.

The story does have a happy ending, however. Once they
were given "permission" to touch the piano on their
own, the classical veterans got comfortable with the
idea, and started to pick things up very quickly.

So that's a start to playing by ear. Chances are you've
done it already to some extent. If not, you should give
it a try. The next faze of the process is learning to
add the correct chords to the melodies you play.

Some people believe there is some magic formula that
has the song's melody dictate what the chords should
be. But that's not how it works at all. There is a
method for learning to add chords to a melody, and it's
not that difficult. But perhaps we'll leave that for
another time.

In the meantime, why not give the musical side of your
brain a challenge, and try learning a few tunes on your
own by ear. Here's a help. I can't tell you what the
starting note is for every song. But it's likely to be
either C, E, or G, and that will make it so that the
rest of the notes will be primarily white keys on your
piano. Go ahead, and give it a try.

[photo credit midiman]

Spilling the Beans, Part Two - More on Music Reading

Last time we talked a bit about some of the secrets
that go into our Instant Piano seminars, and why the
method is effective. One such secret is the fact that
our method reduces the emphasis on note reading. And
that, I believe, requires some further clarification.
Namely:

1) There is nothing wrong with knowing how to read
music.
2) Knowing how to read music will enhance your
musicianship at almost every level.
3) Reading music can be a shortcut to learning.
4) But there is a steep learning curve.
5) And it can also be a crutch.

I believe that for popular music of all kinds, learning
to play by ear is superior to note reading. And the
worst part is that using your note reading skills, if
you have them, can suppress the development of your
ear.

Look at it this way. As a piano player (or as a
potential piano player) what's more important to you?
Creating beautiful music? Or demonstrating your reading
skills? They aren't the same skill, especially the
farther you get away from classical music.

With a lot of classical veterans, reading the music
notation quickly, accurately, skillfully seems to be a
larger concern than making the piano sound good. I
remember being caught in the trap in my younger days.
Then I learned I could listen to a piece of music and
start to recreate it. I began to rely on listening more
and more.

I found that when I came back from a piano lesson,
having the lesson recorded on a cassette tape was much
more valuable than what the teacher wrote down on a
piece of music paper. And that's one of the major
points I try to get across at my workshops.

Maybe we'll revisit this subject at a later time, but
in the mean time, if you have a question, comment or an
observation about reading versus listening, please
click on "comments" below.

Spilling the Beans

Here's a question I get all the time. How can you teach
classrooms full of people how to play piano in just one
afternoon? Learning to play an instrument is supposed
to take years.

I don't often reveal the answer to that question. Until
how the answer has remained a secret that I only reveal
when students take my workshops. Actually there are
several secrets involved here. But a lot of people
never get a chance to take the three and a half hour
workshop from me, so I've decided to reveal some of
these secrets here. If you're curious, read on. It's
time, finally, to spill the beans.

The first secret concerns learning to read music
notation. I avoid it as much as possible. It's learning
to read music that takes a huge amount of time and
dedication. If we take that out of the equation, we can
go directly to "playing the piano."

"But isn't it necessary to read music before you can
play an instrument?"

No.

I can read music somewhat, but I seldom do when I play
piano. And I know a fair amount of good piano players
who do not read music at all. Not a single note.

Note reading does have its place. There have been times
that I've found it helpful. But it's not essential. You
don't learn to read before you talk, do you? For the
same reason, you don't need to master note reading
before you play an instrument.

Why do most piano teachers insist on teaching reading
from the very beginning? Maybe it's because that's how
they were taught.

Now let's clarify a couple of points. What I've just
said about reading music is not be true for learning to
play classical music. Since "classical" is the genre
that is generally taught by typical music teachers, I
guess that's why reading music in general is emphasized
so much.

But we want to be able to read somewhat, don't we? Yes
we do. And all the important parts of music reading are
covered in the first three pages of our basic book,
Popular Chord Style Piano.

And you can get roughly the same information by
downloading a pamphlet from our web site, no charge.
You may have already done this. The pamphlet gives you
all the essentials, but none of the fluff. And you can
get through it in under 30 minutes. Pamphlet download.

So are there other secrets? Yes. Maybe we'll talk about
them later. In the mean time, it's play time for me.

Summer Music Camps

Summer for the Laughlin's tends to revolve around music
festivals and camps. This year is no exception, but we
will be leaning less toward the festivals (watching and
listening to music) and more to the camps (learning and
teaching music). Here's what's on our agenda for this
year.

In July we're going to Sweetsmill outside of Fresno,
California. The camp has been going since the 60's but
this will be the first time for Pam and me. We have
heard so much about it, yet we really don't know what
to expect. So we'll report back from it.

More familiar to us is Lark Camp in the Mendocino
Woodlands of Northern California. This will be our
seventh (?) year of teaching and learning there. The
staff consists of experts in Celtic, Balkan, Americana,
swing jazz, and just about every type of ethnic music
you can imagine. Classes run all day for seven days,
and at any given hour of the day you have a choice of
about 20 different classes you can take. Total
beginners are welcomed and encouraged.

This year I will repeat my gypsy jazz guitar class and
my duties as piano accompanyist for the swing vocal
class. But I'm putting together a new piano class that
I'm pretty excited about. It's called "Piano
Accompaniment for Vocalists."

Wife Pam will be giving her workshop in elementary
jamming. When the classes are not in session, there are
dances and monster jam sessions. Tons of fun. Last I
heard there were still some openings which is very
unusual for this late in the year. More info at
www.larkcamp.com

Finally in September another new one for us. Again in a
beautiful spot in Northern California, this time by the
Russian River. Brazil Camp. We'll be participating in
samba, bossa nova, chorinho, dance, language and
culture classes. It goes for two weeks, but we'll just
be there for the first one, this time as students only,
not as teachers.
http://www.calbrazilcamp.com/overview.html

So we've picked up a couple new events, but then again
have had to let some others go. Not enought time to do
it all. But it just goes to show the richness,
abundance, and diversity of music instruction. And of
course none of that would happen without demand.

I know it's tough for music in many public school
districts right now. That's really too bad, and I don't
know what to do about that. But over all I would say
that demand and supply of music information is alive
and well.

Now here's a request. If you know of similar kinds of
opportunities for music instructional camps in other
parts of the country, leave a comment here so that
others can be made aware of them. And then I'd like to
see some feedback on these places if you have any first
hand knowledge of them.

And if you happen to be at one of the camps where we
are, please say hi.