Fugue-Shit-Up

Raymond Parada, 29 year Steinway employee, tunes a grand piano at the New York plant

google: he was 5'1" and for that reason his friends called him the Little Mushroom :)

me: mahler favorite food

google: he liked Austrian apricot dumplings which his sister made :)

me: what did shosty do in his free time

I teach little kids piano and these are some of the things I tell them and they seem to think I’m funny

“woah there buddy”

“be expressive, not aggressive”

“play staccato like you would play hot potato”

“yikes”

student: “why does posture matter?” me: “look at my hands when I’m playing with flat fingers. doesn’t that look weird? it looks kind of disturbing. don’t have flat fingers.” student: “you’re right”

“no no no don’t do that you’ll break your hand”

me: “what chord is this?” student: “g major. but can we name it carlos?” me: “…I don’t see why not”

“the man on my screensaver is dmitri shostakovich and you will learn to love his music, too”

“yeah this guy wrote angry music”

“we’re going to play this excruciatingly slowly. suffering is how we make progress”

me: “so a harp is basically just a naked piano.” my student: “so, you could say that inside a piano are the piano’s…organs.”

*miscellaneous sound effects and screeches*

*badly singing along as they play*

“composers were crazy. don’t ever let anyone tell you that mozart was sophisticated because he told some very bad jokes.”

me: “what interval is that?” student: “EL DIABLO”

“it’s going to sound bad, but that means you’re playing it right”

“please don’t play the piano with your elbows. you can try that at home”

“so the music says that it should be an f sharp but you played it as an f natural and I kind of liked that so we’re keeping it”

I get a lot of questions about how to learn music theory and honestly, there aren’t enough resources out there that teach most of what you’ll actually need to know to be able to compose. but, here is a list of just about everything I have found

1. learning the basics

-music theory for musicians and normal people: it’s a pdf that explains just about everything you would need to pass theory 1 in college, and a bit more

-musictheory.net: perfect for learning the basics. also has ear training and other super helpful tools. you can also buy the app to have on your phone. however, if you want a free app for doing ear training, I would recommend this app.  something that would also be helpful is downloading a free piano app, because learning the basics of piano (if you haven’t already) is super important for learning the basics of theory. 

-8notes: this’ll teach you pretty much the same stuff as musictheory.net

2. learning some of the more advanced stuff (the stuff that’ll be helpful to know if you want to compose or learn to improvise. keep in mind that you have to learn the basics first)

-12tone music theory: my favorite youtube channel for this stuff. it’s really thought-provoking and I think that learning about this kind of stuff just makes everything a lot more fun

-8-bit music theory: it’s a channel for analyzing music from video games and I think you can also get access to a lot of sheet music (among other things) if you pay 

-adam neely: I don’t watch this channel as much (because the videos are kind of long) but there’s still some good stuff worth mentioning here

-books: there are lots of music theory books for advanced music theory, but unfortunately most of what I know is from the early-mid 1900s, but I’m not going to leave them out. there’s the art of counterpoint, harmony, and the etude music magazine (I have three issues and I found them all in antique stores while sorting through piles of sheet music, so I would recommend not to order this one online and instead just keep in mind that it exists if you ever find it).

3. random music theory concepts that I had to search the depths of wikipedia to learn about

-pandiatonicism

-the 12 tone system

-quartal and quintal harmony

-all of these fancy cool scales, like pentatonic, blues scales, and don’t even get me started on modes

-I think it would also be beneficial to look up the different systems of tuning, and to at least know what microtonal music is, because if you just focus on music associated only with europe then you’re missing a ton of great stuff

I spend so much time agonizing over my lip slurs or the tuning of my scales that I sometimes forget, and it’s hard to remember why I do any of that in the first place.

But then sometimes I’ll be counting rests or joking with a stand partner and the realization that I’m a part of something crashes over me, and sometimes I’ll be playing in a concert and a particularly lovely chord will make me think about how beautiful it is that music unites drastically different people in creating art. Sometimes I’ll remember that if it wasn’t for music, some of my closest friends and I wouldn’t have even considered getting to know one another.