Piano Memories

Music draws memories and emotions from the listener, reminding him or her of previous melodies and songs.  Certain songs just seem to embody something's essence or the present moment, and the listener recalls those moments when they hear the music.  Music both triggers memories and is a memory itself.  A world without music would be a much plainer place.

I've been playing piano since I was 6, and music has always been an important part of my life.

The one on the left is a grand piano, and it has a great, full sound that is used in concerts.  The right-hand piano is an upright, and it has a more thin, honky-tonk sound that is often used in bars.  Someday I'd love to own a grand piano, but I've grown up playing only (the much cheaper) upright versions.

Playing piano is a very physical activity: your feet operate the pedals or keep time by tapping, your arms sweep across the piano, your fingertips slam or caress the keys, your body sways to the time.  Each piano has a distinct feel and requires a different touch, due to the different action (how fast the key returns to its top position) of the instrument.  I love playing those old pianos with worn out ivory and dissonant keys.  It feels like someone has really loved the instrument, and that comes through in the feel of the piano.  It is as though the piano remembers the music that has been played through it and retains traces of those melodies.

I grew up studying Classical music, so that's still where a lot of my background is.  Here is the quintessential classical piano song, Mozart's "Sonata in C":

I've never been too crazy about Mozart, but that song is a must for any self-respecting pianist.  It is a perfect example of the sonata form, but still has enough creativity to not sound robotic.  When I was taking piano lessons, my teachers were always Classical music snobs, so the closest that I ever got to playing modern music was through ragtime, especially Scott Joplin.  My favorite rag is Maple Leaf Rag:

I love the grainy recording sound -  it sounds exactly like you are back in an old honky tonk listening to someone bang on the piany.  All of those old piano styles almost sound better on an out of tune piano with poor recording equipment.  I don't want crystal clear sound coming through, I want some dirt, some grit, and some dissonance in the music.  

Do you hear how the left hand                                  While            the right       hand

Keeps moving steady,                                                          Jumps            around,

Never missing a beat,                                               Skipping        among         the

Keeping the 1-2-3-4                                                                 Strong beats       Of the

                                                                                                         Left?

That off-kilter left and right hand mash-up is called syncopation.  My only exposure to that sort of rhythm was through ragtime, which, historically, laid the groundwork for Dixieland and Jazz music.

It wasn't until I got to college that I found myself interested in Jazz.  The melodies are complex, the chord progressions incomprehensible, and the rhythms disjointed and jagged.  I love it, but it's difficult to play.  I can't resist putting two Dave Brubeck pieces on here:

This first one is "Blue Rondo Ala Turk," which is a great Jazzy twist on Classical structure.  Mozart and Beethoven both wrote famous Turkish-sounding pieces, and Brubeck took that model and made it distinctly his own.

The big difference here is that this song is in a 9-8 meter, meaning there are 9 beats in each measure, and each beat is an eighth note.  That gives it an extra eighth note in each measure, compared to the rag or classical songs from above.




This second one is called "UnSquare Dance," and it's a great twist on (you guessed it) the square dance.  Instead of adding a beat, like in "Blue Rondo Ala Turk," Brubeck deletes a beat to make it in a 7-8 meter.  This gives the music an off-kilter feeling, making it feel "unsquare" and unsteady.

I cannot hope to show you all of piano music in one shot, but this post should give you a little taste of the varieties of music the piano has to offer.  If you listened to nothing but Mozart, Joplin, and Brubeck, you'd have a pretty good body of work to select from.  

I'll leave you, dear reader, with a fun little video of a man sight reading a Super Mario Bros. theme.  I aspire to be him, neck beard and all: