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Be An Organized Church Pianist
Playing in front of a congregation each Sunday is no easy feat. Make sure you are well prepared before giving your best for God and before others. 1) Practice the piano and more preferably the songs you will be playing early in the week and often. 2) Sing while you play so you can have a feel for how well your playing will mesh with the singing. 3) If you use sheet music make sure it is organized and ready to go. Write up your introductions and endings or make sure the ones you have used before are the ones you will want to use this time. 4) If you are accompanying a soloist make sure you set aside good time to practice. 5) If you are still working on your craft then make sure you are studying your piano lessons and practicing those in ADDITION TO practicing your Sunday songs. Don't stagnate. Add to your skills. Learn new songs or new ways of playing old favorites. 6) If you are the worship planner also a nice resource to have is an index that lists songs by scripture,by topic, and by key. 7) Don't give up because you don't have a piano. A keyboard will keep you going until the Lord sees fit to bless you with a piano. Truly. This happened to me. 8) Do you want to play in a particular style? You could just purchase music that is arranged in the style you want to play. But an easier option is to learn what specific notes or chords are making that special sound. Use these ideas for how you can keep yourself together so come Sunday morning you can concentrate on making a joyful noise for the Lord! See more ideas for a beginning church pianist in my book The Struggling Church Pianist Kemi is a church pianist and author of the book The Struggling Church Pianist. Visit her website and download some free musician tools at... http://www.strugglingchurchmusician.us
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How to Stop Thinking and Start Playing Learning how to improvise is confusing for most. The sheer number of choices becomes a burden. Should I play this note? What chord next? Where do I go from here? All valid questions newbies (and oldbies) at improvisation sometimes ask themselves. New Age Music - What Is It Good For? Let's face it. The world will not end if there isn't another new age music CD on the market. So why bother? Why play when most people don't care or want to hear the kind of music you like? The answer lies in the nature of art itself, for the world really does not need art. It can survive without painting, sculpture or music. It can survive, but it would be a pretty dreary place. How to Get Past Creative Blocks When I first began playing the piano and improvising, there were times when the music just wouldn't flow. No matter what I did, I couldn't make it go any further. Blocked and frustrated, I wondered why this happened. One minute I would be in flow and enjoying the process of playing the piano. The next, I would find myself trying to come up with material Does Reading Make Music? When you read music you are deciphering the printed page and transferring the information to the keyboard. You might say that you are decoding what the composer or arranger put on the page . The symbols put on the paper by the composer are the only means he or she has to convey his/her musical ideas to the performer, hence to the listener. Piano Lessons Can be Fun! There are essentially two ways to learn piano - note reading or chords. For those who want to spend years learning how to play other peoples music, note reading is the way to go. How To Make Money On A Music Website Through Pay-Per-Click? Interested in making money while you're asleep, or making money while you're not even on the computer? Well here is a way that you can do that, clicks!! Once you have gone through godaddy .com and purchased your domain name for a cheap $9.20 per year, and found a hosting company such as GoDaddy .com for $3.95 per month, you are set to begin building your website and making money. Live Music! "Live music." That common saying may contain some truth, but these days the word "live" is having less and less to do with music. For many people, a dj is their form of live music. Despite what dj's would like to have you believe, musicians make excellent entertainment. Formation of a Song (Recording) As industry insiders, we sometimes forget that when discussing the recording process, the rest of the world really has no idea what we are talking about. Hopefully this will provide an explanation of the song formation process in layman's terms so that there may be less disconnect between the professional and the consumer. Music & Citizenship: Can Playing a Musical Instrument Help Your Child Become a Better Citizen? Disregard the popular image of rappers with their ghetto blasters, terrorizing neighborhoods with eardrum-splitting cacophony. Consider instead our delightful school bands and orchestras? and ponder on whether those students might be becoming our best future citizens. The Future for Independent Record Labels Small independent record labels are facing a different fight today to obtain a share of the music industry. The best possible means in which small labels were able to get their CD's sold vanished in 2003 when Southwest Wholesale Records and Tapes closed the doors. The ability to have their music placed in a position to be sold along the same shelves as the major record labels is becoming increasingly more difficult. The absence of competition on the shelves has generated an increase in profits for the major labels. What can smaller more nimble labels do to compete with the major labels? How to Buy an Electric Guitar For most of us, making any major purchase, such as a new refrigerator, or a new car, is a cacophony of options and confusion; do we want the silver one or the black one? How much can we afford to spend? Will it last over time? If nothing else, we at least know what we need these appliances to do: the microwave needs to make the food hot quickly, the car needs to get us from one place to the other without breaking down. When confronted with the purchase of a new guitar, even experienced guitarists can have trouble deciding what exactly they want and need. However, if you follow a few simple suggestions, you can make your guitar-buying experience a whole lot easier. 1. Determine your price range: you can spend anywhere from $99 to $20,000+ on a guitar, so make sure to work out your budget before you go into the store or start shopping online. Quality guitars are available at all different price ranges, so don't feel that you have to break the bank to get what you need. Things To Know When Shopping For A Guitar Amplifier Guitar amplifiers are a major part of your tone. Some amps can do many things well, while others excel at producing specific tonal qualities. When shopping for a guitar amplifier, you will have to choose between a Tube or Solid-State model, and whether you want a combo, or separate head and speaker cabinet. How to Create Hip, Mature and Lush Harmonies Rarely is a chord played with its tones contained in a single octave, the root on the bottom, the third in the middle, and the fifth on the top. Does Your Band Need a Manager? New bands looking to book gigs and establish contacts often start looking for a manager to handle the business aspects of their music. This is especially the case in cities with big music scenes, like New York, Los Angeles and Austin. How to Create Interesting Textures A lot of new age piano music consists of repeating patterns, or textures in the left hand while the right hand improvises a melody. This approach is really a good one! It frees you up to create in the moment. First you decide what chord or chords you'll be using in the left hand. You then create an ostinato or arpeggio that lays the foundation for the entire piece. Music Mini Course: Learn The Basics Of Reading Music On A Keyboard Instrument Welcome to the wonderful world of music. As you begin reading this Music Mini Course it is fun to realize that you are also participating in a very important cultural aspect from around the world which has been going on for centuries. Did you know that pianos in some form have been around for over 500 years? Some of the first instruments of this kind were created in the late Medieval Period and were called clavichords. They had a very light, metallic sound because the small hand-pounded 'hammers' were made of very light weight metal-like material. These hammers struck strings of varying lengths to create different tones or pitches. The next cousin to the clavichord was the harpsichord invented by Cristofori in Italy around 1450 A.D. This keyboard instrument had a mechanism in it called the plecktrum which 'plucked' the strings and produced a slightly stronger sound than its predecessor. Whether you are playing an acoustic instrument, which is the closest relative to the history just mentioned, or an electronic keyboard, you are now participating in a centuries old musical art form. Guitar Humidification Problems with humidity can lead to heartbreak for the classical (or other) guitarist. Excessive humidity or dryness can ruin an instrument probably quicker than you think. These MIDI Tools Are Music To My Ears Curious about MIDI? Want to find out what tools are out there and what they do? Here are a few pointers. History of the Clarinet From the 19th Century While composers had already begun to write music for the clarinet, such as Mozart with the Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet, it was the 19th century that saw an explosion of use of the clarinet in the music of most composers of the day. This was mainly due to two factors. Your First Guitar Congratulations, you just bought you first guitar! Now that you've met the love of your life and made that big commitment, you're probably excited about building a good relationship with your new partner. But where do you begin? You've just come home from the music store with this beautiful, mysterious stranger, or perhaps even rescued an abandoned orphan from the flee market or pawn shop. Cradling it lovingly in your hands, you admire it's graceful form and captivating voice.
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