Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Quitter
BY MARK ALMOND
I didn’t have any idea, at the time, that many among this
particular group of pianists, were known as some of the greatest
thinkers in all of music history. I didn’t have enough traditional
piano instruction to realize they were putting me on an entirely
different foundation — far away from many of the trends that had
been dominating in recent decades.
To probe deeper into the most important insights from the past
will take us back a little over 500 years. Around 1490, a Spanish
musician, Bartolomeo Pareja, declared the triad (the three note
chord) to be a phenomenon of nature. He emphasized the
importance of his discovery and even described some of the
mathematical properties involved. He may have had some
influence over certain individual musicians, but his insight did not
change an ominous and destructive trend in music education.
It would of course take time to explain what was wrong with this
foundation, but basically there were two main problems. First,
simple triads were tied to and hidden behind complex scale
patterns. A scale is supposed to be the main tones that occur
during an entire piece of music. Right there you have a problem!
This “backdrop to the whole song” idea makes the very nature of
a scale both complicated and non-musical! Triads, on the other
hand are both simple in structure and musical by their very
nature, especially when put with other triads in natural
sequences. Scales have value in their proper place, but triads
have immediate practical value that make it possible for even
beginners to play impressive musical sounds.
The next time I looked up at her, her face was beet-red. She was
deeply angry. She said, “This is what I wanted when I was a
teenager! I’ve had six different teachers, and you’re telling me
this is all there is to it?” She sat down at the piano right then and
started playing runs with both hands, up and down the piano,
using her first chord progression, playing without music, for the
first time in her life. This lesson was really not a pleasant
experience at the time. She wasn’t happy to have the
information; she was deeply upset. “Why isn’t it taught this way!”
“I needed this when I was younger!” “It can’t possibly be this
simple!” At Piano for Life, Inc. we hear all of these phrases
continually. I have omitted a few of the more “colorful” phrases
used by some.
The simplicity of the laws of harmony will surprise you more than
you can now imagine. The foundation is mathematical, but it is
kindergarten math! If you can count to three, you will quickly
understand the two building blocks for all of the chords. When
we make the claim, which we do, that two simple building blocks
give us the tools that will help us understand even the advanced
chords, no one believes it. That’s why we demonstrate it. Music
is organized. Music has structure. The substructure, the
foundation to harmony, was explained in 1490. Like all other
fields of knowledge, understanding basic principles first, opens
all of the doors.