Music In The Heart Since Childhood
My first experience with music was when I was in my toddler my years. I asked my parents for a notebook, and instead of writing notes, I literally drew 'NOTES' in the notebook.
Since I was born I've been going to church and I think it has predominately influenced me to go into music, when the pianist played I always used to watch, stare and listen to what I called 'amazing sounds'. I remember sitting in the pews at church and pretending to play on the back of them for the whole church service. I use to sit at pianos and pretend to be able to play them. I always wondered to myself 'how do I play this instrument?'.
It would be fair to say that music was a part of me. I wanted to play the piano, but how would I get there, who would teach me?
Since I was born I've been going to church and I think it has predominately influenced me to go into music, when the pianist played I always used to watch, stare and listen to what I called 'amazing sounds'. I remember sitting in the pews at church and pretending to play on the back of them for the whole church service. I use to sit at pianos and pretend to be able to play them. I always wondered to myself 'how do I play this instrument?'.
It would be fair to say that music was a part of me. I wanted to play the piano, but how would I get there, who would teach me?
Learning The Piano
My dad was a big part of music. He was saxophonist and organist. My dads not too normal though, he had the strangest rules. His rules for him to be able to teach you were, and still are:
1. STRICTLY 10 OR OVER- NO YOUNGER.
2. Your fingers have to be a certain length or longer.
Yes, very weird. Most people would say these rules are just stupid, I agree. But maybe, in my case this was a good thing.
Finally, my long awaited birthday had come! I can't explain how excited I was. After more than 5 year of waiting, I got my present of piano lessons, probably the best present of my life. As he spoke his first words in the lesson my heart fell as if it was pumping 5 times faster than usual.
The first thing my dad taught me was chords. As Christians I had to learn hymns. 'C, F and G are the three 3 main chords in scale of C' he said to me. We went through all the hymns, learning all the 3 chords in each scale and then progressing in to more chords such as minor ones. It was hard, but it took dedication and within about 2 months I was quite fluent playing hymns with chords. There was a problem though. Playing simple chords and nothing else wasn't the most pleasing thing to the ear, I wanted to hear the melody.
He taught me how to read sheet music, what use to be the hardest thing, ever. 'Every Good Boy Deserves Fish. ‘E, G, B, D and F', the notes that were on each line of the stave. So now I went through all of the hymns again but with only one finger on the right hand, then two, then one finger on the left hand and two on the right and finally two on each hand. This is the way hymns were put down on sheet music; no more than 4 notes were to be played at any one time. It was if the piano had levels, as if it was some kind of XBOX game. Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4. It was fun and exciting! I cannot tell you how much heartache it was to learn all this; I played for hours on end trying to perfect the skill. My dream at this point was to be able to open up any hymn in the hymn book and be able to play them straight away. I cannot tell you how much heartache I endured trying to achieve this goal. Most of the time I just wrote the notes on top. I don't know who on Earth would invent sheet music like this, but what really baffled me was why the same positioning of note on the treble cleff would be 4 semitones lower than it is on the bass cleff. For example F on the treble cleff would be A on the bass cleff. Why? That was an art in it's own, but learning to be able to do that, read both cleffs at the same time and then play the information I gain from each cleff through my hand was an even bigger one.
About a year into my first piano lesson I was able to play most hymns in the hymn book with both hands fluently. But up until then I had never played for the church or choir. The first time I played in church was a struggle as if the congregation were singing the song quicker than I had learned to play. My timing was a disaster. I went through many church services playing like an utter fool. And when it came to accompanying someone? Don't ask. I had to go back to the drawing board and rewrite the equation. After practising, practising and doing some more practising I had mastered it. I completed the dream, I was able to able to play just all about the hymn books with ease with the congregation. At this point I was nearly 12.
1. STRICTLY 10 OR OVER- NO YOUNGER.
2. Your fingers have to be a certain length or longer.
Yes, very weird. Most people would say these rules are just stupid, I agree. But maybe, in my case this was a good thing.
Finally, my long awaited birthday had come! I can't explain how excited I was. After more than 5 year of waiting, I got my present of piano lessons, probably the best present of my life. As he spoke his first words in the lesson my heart fell as if it was pumping 5 times faster than usual.
The first thing my dad taught me was chords. As Christians I had to learn hymns. 'C, F and G are the three 3 main chords in scale of C' he said to me. We went through all the hymns, learning all the 3 chords in each scale and then progressing in to more chords such as minor ones. It was hard, but it took dedication and within about 2 months I was quite fluent playing hymns with chords. There was a problem though. Playing simple chords and nothing else wasn't the most pleasing thing to the ear, I wanted to hear the melody.
He taught me how to read sheet music, what use to be the hardest thing, ever. 'Every Good Boy Deserves Fish. ‘E, G, B, D and F', the notes that were on each line of the stave. So now I went through all of the hymns again but with only one finger on the right hand, then two, then one finger on the left hand and two on the right and finally two on each hand. This is the way hymns were put down on sheet music; no more than 4 notes were to be played at any one time. It was if the piano had levels, as if it was some kind of XBOX game. Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4. It was fun and exciting! I cannot tell you how much heartache it was to learn all this; I played for hours on end trying to perfect the skill. My dream at this point was to be able to open up any hymn in the hymn book and be able to play them straight away. I cannot tell you how much heartache I endured trying to achieve this goal. Most of the time I just wrote the notes on top. I don't know who on Earth would invent sheet music like this, but what really baffled me was why the same positioning of note on the treble cleff would be 4 semitones lower than it is on the bass cleff. For example F on the treble cleff would be A on the bass cleff. Why? That was an art in it's own, but learning to be able to do that, read both cleffs at the same time and then play the information I gain from each cleff through my hand was an even bigger one.
About a year into my first piano lesson I was able to play most hymns in the hymn book with both hands fluently. But up until then I had never played for the church or choir. The first time I played in church was a struggle as if the congregation were singing the song quicker than I had learned to play. My timing was a disaster. I went through many church services playing like an utter fool. And when it came to accompanying someone? Don't ask. I had to go back to the drawing board and rewrite the equation. After practising, practising and doing some more practising I had mastered it. I completed the dream, I was able to able to play just all about the hymn books with ease with the congregation. At this point I was nearly 12.
The Arpeggios Were Discovered!
So I had completed my dream. What more was there to do? I was able to play with other people? What more was there to the piano? My dad said improvise, do fancy thing (My dad had stopped teaching me by this point, he taught me everything he knew). I was only playing block homophonic chords, it was a bit dull, I had to add some flavour to the music. The words improvisation wasn't in my vocabulary, I was clueless. One afternoon, I was fiddling around with the piano trying to solve this equation that I had been working on for months. x = improvisation. What on Earth was x? But then I made a big discovery. I noticed that if I was playing an Ab chords in the left hand I could move around with the notes Ab, Eb and Ab to make beautiful harmony. To you this is just common nature. But I was never told this, instead of it getting laid a table I had to discover it. It was amazing. At the time I never knew it, but what I had called the outward, inward, outward manoeuvre was called an arpeggio. I started to develop on my discovery; I swapped the third note, in this case an Ab and played a note a tone higher instead, or even two. I made this really cool sequence Ab, Eb, Bb, Eb, C and Bb again. It was absolutely beautiful and by the time I had mastered it, the feel good factor had already devoured my soul.
More Discoveries
You've probably heard of the saying 'Sometimes the greatest discoveries are and discovered by mistakes'. And that was certainly true in my next discoveries. I was playing at church when I made a mistake: instead of playing of a D, G and B. I played a D, F and B. It made this very colourful, sound and texture. Again, I didn't know that it was called a 7th chord, I had no teacher. I quickly worked out that I could apply the same pattern to all chords instead of G, C and E; I would now play G, B, E. So in conclusion I discovered that:
1. If I played a played a chord in a certain inversion and played the 2nd notes one tone lower, I would produce better sound.
I asked myself 'What other patterns could I make up?' I worked that:
1. If I played a normal triad (e.g C, E and G) and then add a note one semitone lower than the first note in the sequence (B to make B, C, E and G) I was produce another great sound.
2. If I did the same as in point 1, but add a note a tone lower (Bb, C, E and G), it would flavour to the chord.
3. If I do similar patterns but now in the left hand as well I would produce amazingly great sound.
What's Better Than Hymns?
So now I could play Hymns really well, I added a lot of flavour to them by using 7th, 9th and 11th chords.
I was bored. Hymns were boring me; almost 3 years into my 'pianist lifestyle' all I could play were hymns.
Then I thought to myself why I don't play something other than hymns? I went into deep thought and finally came up with a song I wanted to learn: Titanic.
I looked for the sheet music, when I printed it off it looked really hard to play. I was use to the block chords that the sheet music in the hymn book had, no fancy rhythms and certainly nothing special in the left hand. It took me hours to learn in the duration of about 7 days. I had to learn a quicker and easier way to learn popular sheet music. I applied what I had learn't about arpeggios into popular music. Hours now turned into minutes. I went sheet music crazy; I printed off probably about 500 sheets.
A problem though. Sheet music needs paper and ink. Paper and ink cost money and it's very, very untidy. Then an idea came up.
I was bored. Hymns were boring me; almost 3 years into my 'pianist lifestyle' all I could play were hymns.
Then I thought to myself why I don't play something other than hymns? I went into deep thought and finally came up with a song I wanted to learn: Titanic.
I looked for the sheet music, when I printed it off it looked really hard to play. I was use to the block chords that the sheet music in the hymn book had, no fancy rhythms and certainly nothing special in the left hand. It took me hours to learn in the duration of about 7 days. I had to learn a quicker and easier way to learn popular sheet music. I applied what I had learn't about arpeggios into popular music. Hours now turned into minutes. I went sheet music crazy; I printed off probably about 500 sheets.
A problem though. Sheet music needs paper and ink. Paper and ink cost money and it's very, very untidy. Then an idea came up.
My No.1 Inspiration
The man on the left, Yiruma, is why where I am today. He opened a new door for me. New Age Music. His music taught me how simplicity added with emotion can create some of the best music. I learned all of his pieces. When I say all, I mean ALL.
At this point I was 14. I was watching Twilight with my classmates and like a lot of people I liked the piece that was played for Bella by Edward. So I went on to YouTube and searched it up. For some reason Yiruma came up, for some strange reason people though River Flows in You was the Bella's lullaby; even though it clearly wasn't. But oh well, things was amazing, it was so emotional. I learned it and what was funny was that my arpeggio sequence applied to this song a lot! I then learned Kiss The Rain, then Maybe..., then many other such as Do You?, It's Your Day, Sky, Ribbon, Love, Fotografia, Dreams, Letter, Destiny of Love, Yellow Room, Chocanne, Passing By and Love Me just to name a few, haha. I fell in love with this guy. This addiction with this guy lasted for about a year.
But then... he got boring too. I learned all of his songs, suddenly while I was just sitting there staring at my piano, with sheet music all around me I had a light bulb idea. Why not create my own sheet music?
After 10 minutes, trying to make some kind of song I said to my self 'Okay... not as easy as I thought'. It took me nearly a week to compose my first piece. All though I made a few others before this, one of my first pieces was called 'Dreams'. As you can hear in the video, it was bit unorganised and the musical ideas weren't really flowing properly. I haven't got any other videos to show you, but since then I've gotten better at composing. I went to many concerts and churches playing my compositions, and have only stopped playing them about a month ago. (Current Date: 12/05/12).
Yiruma changed the way I thought about music. He gave me a voice. But I soon came to realise his pieces were very easy, I needed to play harder music to develop my musical ability.
At this point I was 14. I was watching Twilight with my classmates and like a lot of people I liked the piece that was played for Bella by Edward. So I went on to YouTube and searched it up. For some reason Yiruma came up, for some strange reason people though River Flows in You was the Bella's lullaby; even though it clearly wasn't. But oh well, things was amazing, it was so emotional. I learned it and what was funny was that my arpeggio sequence applied to this song a lot! I then learned Kiss The Rain, then Maybe..., then many other such as Do You?, It's Your Day, Sky, Ribbon, Love, Fotografia, Dreams, Letter, Destiny of Love, Yellow Room, Chocanne, Passing By and Love Me just to name a few, haha. I fell in love with this guy. This addiction with this guy lasted for about a year.
But then... he got boring too. I learned all of his songs, suddenly while I was just sitting there staring at my piano, with sheet music all around me I had a light bulb idea. Why not create my own sheet music?
After 10 minutes, trying to make some kind of song I said to my self 'Okay... not as easy as I thought'. It took me nearly a week to compose my first piece. All though I made a few others before this, one of my first pieces was called 'Dreams'. As you can hear in the video, it was bit unorganised and the musical ideas weren't really flowing properly. I haven't got any other videos to show you, but since then I've gotten better at composing. I went to many concerts and churches playing my compositions, and have only stopped playing them about a month ago. (Current Date: 12/05/12).
Yiruma changed the way I thought about music. He gave me a voice. But I soon came to realise his pieces were very easy, I needed to play harder music to develop my musical ability.
I've Found My Ear!
People at my church were able to play by ear and I wanted to, too. Yeah, yeah, so we know there are three main chords, the first, fourth and fifth in the scale, but creating the melody was the hard part. I've actually only been playing the piano by ear for just over a year actually. (Current Date: 12/05/12). It changed the way I saw and understood music, music was much easier than before. Minutes now turned into a single minute. I was able to create more complex chords, this greatly helped my compositions. It was a stepping stone in a brighter future.
My No.1.1 Inspiration
Yes, number 1.1 because I thought the number 2 was too far behind. Hiromi's only been in my life for 3 weeks now, but already, unlike Yiruma, she has changed every single thing about the way I play. Yiruma was only composing, but with Hiromi I now, compose and arrange in Jazz Fusion. Her energy through her fingers, which with kinetic energy moves the keys, creates the best sound energy I had ever heard! I wish I had known of her sooner.. Yiruma's only my number 1 because he was first.
Because I played Gospel, I had all my chords in place. All I had to do was learn Jazz scales, which by the way I learned by myself and within no time I was Jazz Fusion natural. I learned her style of music much quicker than Yiruma's, all of a sudden I was composing and arranging very intricate music.
I've composed a few pieces such as 'Reminiscence', 'Conscience', and arranged some themes too such as 'James Bond's Theme'. I've found that Jazz Fusion is much more fun than any style of music I've played before. I've only been playing this type of music for 3 weeks and I can only imagine how far I will progress with it over the coming years.
Because I played Gospel, I had all my chords in place. All I had to do was learn Jazz scales, which by the way I learned by myself and within no time I was Jazz Fusion natural. I learned her style of music much quicker than Yiruma's, all of a sudden I was composing and arranging very intricate music.
I've composed a few pieces such as 'Reminiscence', 'Conscience', and arranged some themes too such as 'James Bond's Theme'. I've found that Jazz Fusion is much more fun than any style of music I've played before. I've only been playing this type of music for 3 weeks and I can only imagine how far I will progress with it over the coming years.
