Hi Everyone-first of all I'm excited to join the forum, hoping to learn a lot here!
Little bit of information about myself - I was born into a musical family where my dad is a DMA out of UMichigan and my mom a concerto pianist out of China. Needless to say I was brought up in a very musically competitive environment. I grew up to win multiple awards and have played at places such as Carnegie Hall while I was in High School.
Here's some of my previous performances (all of which done sophomore year in high school)
[2]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VJpciouQdg[3]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWHNtNtm8h0[4]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1rxcvO_1l4I have since gone out of the serious piano scene after college, but was wondering the other night - I should start up a video blog aimed at the beginner or intermediate crowd. This is the crowd that is maybe OK at reading music but needs help interpreting it, or needs that extra little exercise to bring their finger dexterity to play that Prokofiev they've always wanted to play.
My videos would probably be 5-10 minutes long each, updated biweekly or weeky. Areas of interest would be:
Beginner:
Form - how to start to play the piano correctly, so injury doesn't occur. Also a lot of people overlook the fact that without correct form the piano skillset is drastically diminished.
Basic music theory - major/minor scales, how to read staff, basic chord progressions, etc
Finger exercises - Hanon, scales, arpeggios, etc
Simple song transcriptions - would probably be popular among the folks that "just wanna play that Beyonce tune".
Intermediate:
Finger dexterity - I didn't put this in finger exercises because it focuses more on the type of sound you get with different ways to press the keys
Interpreting musical passages - taking standard repertoire and dissecting certain parts. This part I'm flexible on because I can take suggestions from viewers. I will probably include pieces like certain Chopin Etudes, Mozart sonatas, Bach preludes/fugues, maybe even some modern pieces such as Prokofiev sonatas or Liszt Transcendental Etudes (more advanced). New age stuff like Phillip Glass and Steven Cravis would also work but less challenging..
Composers, musical eras and how that relates to interpretation of their pieces.
Memorization tips - different theories into how to memorize music & when to do it.
Other general tips that I think up as I go along.
So, here's the question: Most pianists would rather learn to play popular songs instead of classical. Would this blog really benefit a large audience? I'm excited but I'm on a high horse right now and possibly I need to be brought down to reality and reminded that maybe this idea goes outside of the general population's motives. My goal for this project is to have a supplement to formal piano instruction.
Thanks!
