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    The Power Why: Why 25 Musicians Composed a Legacy: The Power of Why Musicians, #3
    The Power Why: Why 25 Musicians Composed a Legacy: The Power of Why Musicians, #3
    The Power Why: Why 25 Musicians Composed a Legacy: The Power of Why Musicians, #3
    Ebook125 pages1 hour

    The Power Why: Why 25 Musicians Composed a Legacy: The Power of Why Musicians, #3

    By Glory St. Germain, Rami Bar-Niv and Bradley Sowash

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    About this ebook

    Loss, Improvisation, Depression, and Personal Struggles - every day, musicians from around the world begin their journey of musical expression.

     

    • Discover WHY a lonely girl from the UK won the John Lennon Songwriting Award, and why an Israeli composer, impacted by the holocaust, became a concert pianist.
    • Discover WHY a student from Indonesia composed an award-winning anthem, and why an American classically trained multi-instrumentalist composed a jazz legacy.
    • Discover WHY a Canadian Juno Winner was recognized for his arts leadership and why a composer's course won the 'Australian-made' award that led to music schools.

    These 25 Global Authors are the 'players' that have overcome obstacles and Composed A Legacy - one note at a time.

    It's time to discover your WHY and put your creativity to the test - Dream Big and transform your musical mind into a musical masterpiece.

    Why 25 Musicians Composed A Legacy: Adrienne McKinney, Dominique Levack, Frances Balodis, Bradley Sowash, Rami Bar-Niv, Kamara Hennessey, Pam Turner, Mark Matthews, Caroline Quinn, Linda Gould, Benny Ng, Elizabeth Garland, Connor Derraugh, Eric Carlson, John Burge, David A. Jones, Julianne Warkentin, Hillary Lester, Joanne Barker, Richard Simonelli, Gillian Erskine, Rick Sowash, Rebekah Maxner, Edy Rapika Panjaitan, and Glory St. Germain.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGlory St. Germain
    Release dateAug 19, 2021
    ISBN9781990358005
    The Power Why: Why 25 Musicians Composed a Legacy: The Power of Why Musicians, #3

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      Book preview

      The Power Why - Glory St. Germain

      1

      From Improvisation to Intent: My Journey as a Composer

      Adrienne McKinney

      United States

      H ow… how did you even… think of this, my student, giving me a side-eye-to-remember, asked hesitantly as she sight-read the first part of my newest piano composition. Granted, the piece is titled Macabre Incantation , so clearly not a sunny, cheerful tune, but it still made me chuckle to hear that question. I have no idea, I responded, adding, I just sat down and played it one day. Maybe it was something I ate? or something like that. We giggled. She resumed playing the eerie, descending bass ostinato.

      In the summer after my junior year in college, I often found myself improvising for hours at a time. Sitting at the piano in our house, just a few blocks from the university campus, I would practice my solos and then launch into whatever melodies, harmonies, and rhythms came to me. Sometimes I set up a tape recorder with one of those ninety-minute cassettes and recorded everything I played. Out of hours of tape, there was one musical idea that stuck with me. I jotted it down in a new notebook and played it for a composer friend, saying I had no idea what to do with this, but it felt good to share it and have it well-received. This became relevant later, but at the time, I didn’t know why I wrote it, let alone what to do with it.

      Composing was not especially easy for me, or at least I wasn’t doing it the way I thought I was supposed to. I envied composers who could seemingly transfer notes directly from their minds onto the page. My technique involved playing first, and then writing it down. Does this count as real composing? I always questioned myself. I kept improvising. After a while, I began writing more of my ideas in my notebook. Everything was by hand.

      In graduate school, I had an opportunity to study composition as an independent study. I wrote two new pieces, both based on melodies that came out of improvisation. One of them premiered at the spring student composer recital. I felt nervous, yet grateful to be included. Was this my Why?

      Years passed, and though I was focused on teaching, I kept my manuscript notebook nearby. Sometimes, I would jot down a rhythmic motive or harmonic progression. I composed so infrequently that I used the same notebook from my college years. Hang onto these ideas, I told myself. Surely, I wrote them for a reason, even if I wasn’t sure what it was yet. Flipping through the notebook, I saw that musical idea I had improvised as a student; the one I shared with my composer friend. I sat down and played it again, a series of broken chords in contrary motion. I played it once more and suddenly knew what to do with it. This little idea, from ten years ago, was really an accompaniment pattern. Of course! I set about writing the solo over it and later it became my Sketch for Horn and Piano. This gave me another idea. What if I wrote music for my students? I needed music to supplement the materials I was using to teach beginning piano students.

      Here was my lightbulb moment. I began composing with intent. My improvisations, those aimless sessions that felt like they were just for me, would lead me to write new pieces for my own students. Why didn’t I think of this sooner? At the same time, I felt like such an impostor, as though I had missed out, and was too late to the game; there was already so much quality music available, why did I think anyone wanted something I wrote? I worked hard to push those thoughts aside and press on.

      What kind of music did my students need? They needed short pieces, music written in a specific note-range, simple rhythms, catchy tunes. I wrote to help my students reinforce the skills they were learning, in musical styles that they would find engaging and entertaining. I wanted to combine old techniques and ideas with new sounds and imagery. Chocolate Cupcake Machine, Apple Crisp, Spinning Web. Naming the pieces was more difficult than composing. The titles needed to be exactly right, not too childish, not too dry. Today’s students seem more sophisticated than I was as a student – or is it just in my imagination?

      The best feeling was having other teachers respond positively to my compositions. I set up a website and featured my pieces online. Still second-guessing myself, I continued to write and share my pieces for piano students, usually in online teaching forums. In 2016, Irina Gorin sought a composer to write a beginners’ Christmas collection for her Tales of a Musical Journey series. I jumped at the opportunity. I quickly wrote ten little arrangements with original teacher accompaniments. It was such a pleasure, and the challenge was just what I needed. I knew I could compose with intent, and that my pieces could serve an educational purpose and be enjoyed.

      So, what about Macabre Incantation? Some pieces seem to write themselves. I didn’t sit down with this idea, I just started playing, and there it was. How did I even think of this? Jotting as much down in my notebook as possible before entering it into my engraving software, I spent hours writing and revising, playing through and changing, reengraving and publishing. I knew my students would love it. Like several other pieces, if you asked me how I wrote it, I couldn’t exactly say, but now I can say why I wrote it.

      You may have a collection of musical ideas, too. Some of them may be from years ago. Perhaps there’s a reason you wrote them, and it’s only now that you know why. I encourage you to dust off your composition notebooks, locate your old MusicXML files, and see what treasures you find. Who knows? You may have the beginnings of a new piece ready to be shared. I wish you the best of luck.

      Author Bio:

      Adrienne McKinney, accomplished musician, composer, and UMTC Elite Educator, owns and operates McKinney Music Studio and Pianolex Music Publications. She provides personalized, engaging music instruction and composes appealing modern music for pianists of all ages.

      https://www.pianolex.com

      2

      Fairies and Monsters

      Dominique Levack

      United Kingdom

      Iremember it like it was last week: sitting on his lap, perched over the piano keys watching his brown fingers expertly whizzing up and down playing a boogie-woogie. It was the most thrilling moment of my young life up to that point. I was five years old and in the canteen of my mother’s Art College in Plymouth, UK, being looked after by a piano wizard called ‘Malt’ while Mum was studying. No crèches back in the seventy’s; Mum had to make do with her friend’s good will, and I hit the jackpot.

      When Mum left the college, she bought the piano, and it came to live in my bedroom - my musical shrine. I arranged all my dolls and teddies on it and proudly sat on top of four large cushions on a chair just to reach the keys. It became my world, and I spent every day playing fairies (high notes) and monsters (low notes) making up stories and reflecting them back to myself using the keys. I had no clue about octaves, or scales, or notation, but I got to know the sounds and the way the shiny ivory black and white keys made me feel.

      Because I was self-taught, once I started piano lessons around the age of fourteen, I was like a wild pony, almost impossible to tame. My poor tutor. I much preferred to make up songs about teenage life and hang out with my best friend who played the drums. Practicing scales and learning to read music was like trigonometry torture and I was dragged through the Pianoforte grades kicking and screaming.

      However, the joy of creating something in the moment, improvising and song writing has only grown, and I still feel it to be the best way to spend time.

      My family moved around a lot, and I rarely stayed at the same school for more than a few years. This caused me a lot of anxiety, always being the new girl. However, I used to find music practice rooms and shut myself away at lunchtime, eager not to be seen - to be alone in the playground. If I were having a particularly lonely day, I would look forward to coming home and spending hours into the early evening at the piano just playing my feelings out.

      When Mum called me to start helping her get the dinner ready or feed my sister, I would fly into furious rages, as I wasn’t quite ready

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