Monday, November 30, 2009

The International Music Score Library Project!

Wow, what a great resource I stumbled upon today as I was looking for Beethoven Piano Trio scores.
The Petrucci Music Library at this site provides tens of thousands of scores by thousands of composers that are free to download. Quite extraordinary and must have site to Favourite/Bookmark if you are at all into playing classical music on the piano.

Monday, November 23, 2009

The Mysterious Barricades

Couperin's strange little gem for the harpsichord has always been a favourite transcription for guitarists, due to a similar lack of sustain as the harpsichord, unlike the piano where the degree of existing sustain can destroy the charm of this piece.
On Radio National recently, the luminary of the day being interviewed, someone called Bill, who knew an awful lot about Lucian Freud, had chosen this wonderful piece and it was played by George Malcolm on the harpsichord. Well, what a treat that was and it sounded far more convincing than when I had played it on the guitar. So immediately I tracked down a terrific free arrangement in F ( rather than the original Bb ) by William Wallace and have started working on it.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

C Blues - just love it!

Now that we are all settled into the new house I am back into my piano practise routine.
I spend far too much of that time improvising over a 12 bar blues in the key of C (working on G and A also). I use a simple walking bass pattern in the left hand and a combination of David Sprunger licks I have learnt and a whole lot of other licks I have come across in the hours I have wiled away. On the advice of Mr Sprunger I have also been practising blues scales in octaves (block and split) and have just started to introduce these into my impros too. Damn - it is such a lot of fun and a style I really want to nail ultimately.
I have finally got my Casio connected up to Logic Pro and will put together a little track with backing and post it soon so as you can hear how I am going or not!