Keyboard Companion is Listening (Archived)

(Readers: highlighted words are links to definitions and more information.)

In a sleepy-eyed meeting over breakfast at the MTNA conference in Austin, TX, last year, my friend, Michelle Conda, asked if I'd scribble down some suggestions for Keyboard Companion Magazine. Here are the three topics that seemed to be missing from an otherwise well-rounded publication:

1.Music Theoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theoryand Structure (integrating theory knowledge to help with learning & memorizing, etc.)
2.Improvisation
3.Ear Training

I suggested that simply including a section on "Creative Activities" could well encompass many of these headings, including various styles of improvisation, (including jazz improvisation, but not just jazz improvisation), arranging, composing assignments, theory games and applied theory, and ear training activities.

Lo and behold, in the Spring 2007 issue, Keyboard Companion Magazine announced their addition of a new Jazz and Pop Department. While secluding jazz off into its own separate category is not something I'd encourage (after all, we don't have a segregated “baroque department,” or “serial music department”), creating this new column is still a step in the right direction.Tony Caramiahas written a fine article outlining some ways teachers can get started teaching jazz.

A jazz/pop department is an obvious choice, but I think a more comprehensive and integrated approach to the abovementioned creative skills is better. Why limit the application of these skills, essential for any fine musician, to the genres of pop and jazz?

What keyboard teachers and students really need is an understanding of all keyboard music, both traditional and contemporary, from the inside out. We need to understand the building blocks of form, melodyandharmony, including the extended harmony of jazz and other contemporary styles, well enough to recognize these elements by ear, then use them while we improvise in various styles, including jazz styles.

Understanding the building blocks of music is truly not rocket science. It's just that piano teachers and their students have become so accustomed to simply looking at notes on a page, and fingerings for those notes, for so many years, they've unfortunately become divorced from what comprises the actual music. Music theory is thought of as a separate subject, often taught in boring and unimaginative ways, instead of the fun, practical and useful tool is actually is.

A hard copy magazine, not always residing in the digital world, is limited to physical page space, so the type of categories it chooses and what they are named is crucial. Jazz/pop is a common, ready-made Wal-Mart type of classification with which readers can only generally identify. Reasons why these two very different genres shouldn’t be lumped together is beyond the scope of this article, but may be addressed in a future entry.

The skills I'm referring to, often missing in keyboard study, apply to all styles of music. But it's impossible to play jazz without them. In Caramia’s article, essential stylistic pointers are provided. However, there is no mention of functional harmony, chords,or chord voicings, all indispensables for jazz pianists. Perhaps these topics will be addressed in future issues. Teachers need ways of getting started with the brass tacks, including arranging and improvising.

Time spent only discussing fully notated, composed pieces, with several excerpts provided, only reinforces the notion that keyboard teachers should, first and foremost, be concerned with notes on a page. And what is the music of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Brubeck, Basie and Bill Evans? Surely it is not notes on a page.

Check out Keyboard Companion Magazine, and Tony Caramia's article, which appears both online http://www.keyboardcompanion.com/spring2007/jazz/jazz1.html and in the print edition, Spring 2007, Vol. 18 #1 issue.