A mysterious musical message?

Many years ago, my sister-in-law Kay Griffiths shared the musical message above with me. Can you read it?

I use it to explain these three musical symbols to my students. And I always let them know how I learnt it.

Don't be sharp
Don't be flat
Always be natural

I'll let you ponder the philosophical meaning of the saying: I've been doing that for forty years, and still reflect on it, every now and again. But for musicians:

 means Play the key on the right of B

means Play the key on the left of B


And


means Play the original key.


Do you have any other great musical puzzles? We'd love you to share them.

But the little person in the picture is starting with exploring music through movement and actions and sound: sharps and flats can come later!

Your child can explore music at Mitchell Conservatorium in our early childhood program and later learn to make sense of those mysterious symbols, too when you phone 6331 6622 and enrol in 2013 classes.

Five make magic music

On Saturday, 24th  and Sunday, 25th November, the Western Wind Quintet will delight you with music by Beethoven, Gershwin, Reicha, Farkas and Milhaud.

Mitchell Conservatorium folk remember with great affection The Quintessentials, a group of five talented young ladies who played the same instruments as those above: clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn and flute. The girls have left Bathurst and moved on to make music elsewhere, but the magical sounds they made can be heard again, but this time played by

Justin Screen, from our Lachlan branch
Orange's Laith Ismail
Blue Mountains-based Nerida Hext
and Bathurst's Mathias Rogala-Koczorowski and Prem Love
 

They can be heard in Bathurst at Mitchell Conservatorium, on Saturday, 24th November at 7.30 PM, and in Lithgow on Sunday, 25th November at 2 PM at Eskbank House.

The concert is free for children, $15 for concession card holders and $20 for adults.

For more information, please ring Mitchell Conservatorium during office hours on 6331 6622.

Musical appenings

Sight Read 4 Piano is a great iPad app, developed in Britain by music examiner, Christopher Wiltshire to help you improve your sight reading. The app is free, but only includes a few sample exercises to show you how the program works. From the screen above, you click on an exercise you'd like to play, and a new page opens up on your iPad, with a counter ticking down, while you scan the music.
After a few seconds the music disappears. When you are ready, you tap the screen and a two bar count-in begins. After it is finished the metronome continues and a ding! alerts you to start playing.
Then something alarming happens: the music starts to disappear, one bar at a time! But this is a good thing, because it is teaching you to keep going and not go back when you play a wrong note.

When you first begin using the program, you should start a few grades lower than where you are aiming to get to. You may find initially that it is making sight reading harder, not easier. But once you get used to playing in time with a metronome, and can cheerfully play wrong notes and keep going, you have already begun to be a better sight-reader.

For a piano teacher (and there are also modules for people who play other instruments), the most cost-effective version of the program is the whole package. If you only want examples from your own exam system, or only from a few grades, each exercise is proportionately dearer.

I bought the whole lot, which gives me more than 1000 examples and loads of flexibility.

Scale Blitzer is an all-Australian app developed by Abe Cytrynowski, and Andrew and Samantha Coates, of Blitz Books fame. This app costs about $7 and then an extra $3-$6 for modules for your particular exam grade.

The app encourages you to practise up to 16 scales at a time, and tests you on your playing in a wide variety of ways. I am currently road-testing the app with my students, and hope they will like it enough to purchase their own copies to use at home.

It includes fun ideas and characters, and gets you playing your scales in different forms, at varying tempos and volumes, and with plenty of different rhythms. The program develops security and accuracy, and the many different activities provided should keep students enthused and motivated to perfect their scales.

It is designed for your iPhone or iPod, but also works on the iPad, which is my favoured tool in the studio.