Do you listen to George Winston’s December around the holidays or throughout the winter and think “I would love to be able to compose and play music like that”? If so, Quiescence Music has an offer for you! Simply sign up for their Yahoo group using your email address, and you will get one free lesson and a PDF ebook called “Free to be Creative at the Piano!”.
Here are some of the details:
Join Edward’s Yahoo group and get a free piano lesson: “Summer Morning.” In this lesson you learn how to use a few chords to create a bright, welcoming mood. No experience required! You’ll also get a free copy of Free to be Creative at the Piano … a #1 Amazon.com bestseller!
Plus, you’ll also receive our free weekly newsletter Pianoscapes! It comes to your inbox every Tuesday offering tips, perspective, and solutions for creating your own beautiful New Age piano music. Unsubscribe anytime.
After you join, you’ll receive a welcome message along with the links for your free piano lesson and book!
When I read about this on AllAboutJazz I wasn’t sure if it was worth passing on to the Gear Diary audience, so I subscribed myself to the Yahoo group and waited for something to arrive in my inbox, then checked it out.
The piano lesson called ‘Summer Morning’ is ~7.5 minutes long and focuses on demonstrating the use of open chord positions to create new age sounds. I really hadn’t thought about it, but the open chords really help create the sense of space and separation that helps define new age music compared to the more dense sound of closed chords. He also discusses using broken chord structures – playing the notes sequentially rather than simultaneously – which is a great technique for developing melody and harmonic structure. Finally he demonstrates ‘chord jumping’ – simply shifting the same chord to different places on the piano. So in the course of a few minutes he gives you all of the tools needed to create a small piece, then he plays Summer Morning … and then explains what he did. It is actually a pretty effective lesson!
The free book “Free to be Creative at the Piano!” isn’t just a sample or an advertisement – it is a full 342 page PDF book with loads of advice and examples. That honestly surprised me as I expected the book to be one of those 30 – 60 page ‘sub-books’ which gives some info but really just upsells you to a larger product. Not here – if you liked the video clip you will *love* the full book – heck, there are even some sections dedicated to how artists such as George Winston construct their music.
One thing you WON’T find in either the online video or the book is loads of staff paper and sight-reading exercises. This isn’t a technique-based instruction in the traditional sense, but rather an inspirational exercise where your initial love of music and desire to create your own fuels your learning process, and then you can develop a stronger and deeper technique.
And after all – it is FREE! If you have always wanted to try the piano, love New Age music or just want to take a shot at creating your own music, sign up for the Yahoo group and grab the free lesson and ebook! The worst that can happen is you find it useless and unsubscribe from the site. The best thing is that you get to connect with your love for music. And isn’t that worth a shot?
Source: Quiescence Music via AllAboutJazz
