Genres of Music During Piano Lessons for Kids in Tulsa
Hi guys thanks for joining me for another awesome podcast about Curtis Music Academy and about some of the things we do at Curtis Music Academy and some of the teaching techniques that we use so I would like to talk a little bit about teaching chords. Now you can apply this to piano lessons for kids in Tulsa or you can apply it to guitar lessons as well. But in this particular case I want to talk about piano lessons for kids in Tulsa specifically . I have a piano student who has gone through the basics of learning chords. We have learned the major and minor chords we have learned left hand rhythm patterns. We’ve learned how to read lead sheets and we’ve learned the different types of seven chords.
We have just learned a variety of scales and our poll shows and all this kind of stuff and we’ve even played through some complicated lead sheets that have a variety of augmented and diminished and seventh chords and incredibly complex stuff that honestly most people don’t get to when they are learning piano. So one thing that I spoke to my student about this week was actually some different ideas for moving forward in the future during piano lessons for kids in Tulsa. We could go a few different directions. So the first thing I explained to him was we could learn some left hand patterns.
During the piano lessons for kids in Tulsa, I pulled out this book that I just bought a couple weeks ago called One Hundred left hand patterns for the piano and it’s an awesome book. It goes through some basic left hand patterns but then it also goes through jazz and blues left hand patterns boogie woogie new age. And I think that’s where I think those are the broad categories. And then there’s just numerous patterns under each of those categories. This is extremely helpful because you can actually play the same song 100 different ways which is really awesome.
So the example that they use in that book is Taking Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and it’s just playing it with a blues sound in the left hand playing it with a new age or contemporary sound playing it with a basic sound playing it with a minor sound which is really interesting because normally Twinkle Twinkle is a major song and I’m just going through that different example and really a fun exercise it will be fun to take this book and to apply it in a number of different ways. This is a great tool for piano lessons for kids in Tulsa.
Another really cool thing is it’s also kind of a general overview of some of these different genres of music like the blues or gospel or jazz or all these different things. Actually during that piano lessons for kids in Tulsa we decided to go ahead and pursue this book first and to kind of learn some different things about it in order to get an overview of some different ways to play music. This is great because I feel like most musicians at one point or the other they run into the problem of all the songs that I write or all of the ways that I play music all end up sounding like the same style which that’s actually normal. In fact that’s kind of what I have run into myself now. That is a blessing and a curse because everyone does have a unique sound that flows out of them.
Exploring New Sounds Piano Lessons for Kids in Tulsa
But at the same time it’s also a good idea to challenge yourself and go a little bit outside of your comfort zone with some different styles of music during piano lessons for kids in Tulsa. That way you’ll have a little bit broader of a repertoire in that way. Not all of your songs will sound exactly the same. OK so another book that we were talking about using was a gospel technique, a book I’ve actually been working through on my own for the same reason I’m challenging myself to kind of like go outside of the mold and break the box of normal for my piano playing and it’s incredibly interesting.
So something that I learned right off the bat was gospel music does not necessarily mean just Christian music because sometimes people wrongfully use gospel music to describe Amy Grant for example which she yes she sings Christian music but it’s not the gospel style gospel originated out of I believe the blues style. This can be a lesson used in piano lessons for kids in Tulsa. And in this book and like one of the first pages it goes through seven or eight different criteria that gospel music uses that’s unique from any other genre.
And so it even uses a different scale which is the mix a Libyan scale which I am excited we’ll talk to you later about those different kinds of skills but so it’s just very unique sounding it’s not just well if it has a gospel choir then it’s a gospel song which normally yes that might be the case but it also is really important to use that slow triplet sound in the gospel music and there’s just some other key elements as well. Now this technique is one thing that I’ve been doing to really bring it in. My scopes as a pianist because they used some of those complex chords in stylings and sometimes even the riffs or the improvisation with gospel. I like to use these contents during piano lessons for kids in Tulsa.
It just makes the music sound more full and more interesting. So it is definitely a winner for me during piano lessons for kids in Tulsa. Another genre that would be interesting is jazz. And so some of those thick chords on the piano. I especially love this when it comes to Christmas music. I think that Christmas music with jazz is perfect. So I’m actually planning on buying a Christmas jazz book just for fun and for myself. But also that is a different genre that we could have gone down another genre is the blues which is kind of like one of the major brackets of music. It is similar to the gospel but it also has its own unique elements as well.
So when you get to a point where you’ve kind of graduated from level one of chords it’s awesome to be able to go on into these different subgenres and so that’s where we are. I wouldn’t mention the rock category but honestly rock is so simple that when you learn how to play the major and minor Pinta skills you really can play the rock genre or country. You know that’s kind of the same style of music and same way that the chords are belts. But anyway I could talk longer about this but thank you for joining this awesome podcast about piano lessons for kids in Tulsa. We’ll see you at the next one explaining more about piano lessons.