Arsenio Rodríguez was called El Ciego Maravilloso (the marvellous blind man). During his time, he was the most famous band leader and composer is Cuba. He died in 1970.
I was planning on writing a funny story by going to Wikipedia and letting it choose a random article. But then I decided I didn’t want to make fun of this guy.
I like composers.
My favorite is Mozart.
Recently a page of Mozart’s music written by Mozart with is own little hand was sold for $250,000. I think if it had a grape jelly stain on it then it could have gone for $50k more. Something with Mozart’s handwriting on it is about the only collector’s item I would pay so much money for.
I’m not really into owning objects. I like tools though. I especially like computers and communication tools. Of course paper is a communication tool when combined with ink and Mozart’s writing is beautiful.
I learned one page of a Mozart piano piece way back when. I can’t remember which one. It took me a while because (a) I don’t read music very well, and (b) Mozart used all sorts of freaky fast notes and triplets and stuff like that.
My own music is not so structured.
I learned to play piano by sitting at a piano and deciding what sounded good to me.
Eventually I looked up how notes in a particular key are arranged.
An octave in a key is eight tones.
Anyone can play the notes in an octave in the key C Major. You play middle C, then keep going until you play the next C.
Here is a virtual piano keyboard (a Flash program online you can mess with for free).
What you want to notice is that when you skip from C to D you are moving one WHOLE TONE. Then D-E is one whole tone. Then E-F is WAIT FOR IT… a HALF TONE. Then F-G whole, G-A whole, A-B whole, B-C half.
So a scale in a MAJOR key is always START, WHOLE, WHOLE, HALF; WHOLE, WHOLE, WHOLE, HALF.
The black keys between white keys are half-tone steps.
Here is the next key up from C-Major, D-Major:
So D-MAJOR starts on D, then E, then F# (you skip the F because it’s only a HALF TONE from E), then G (the half step from F#), and so on.
There are other keys which use different patterns — Minor keys. There are variations on Minor keys which can make things sound like Blues music, for instance.
Chords are multiple notes played at the same time in intervals on the same key. Everyone can play in C-Major: C-E-G. There’s another natural chored at C-F-A.
But play it in D-Major: D-F#-A and D-G-B. See the relationship? It still sounds great!
Don’t play chords, just play the notes in order… First D-F#-A, then D-G-B. Then mix it up,B-G-F#….D!!!! E-G-E-D!!! Whoa!! You’re making music. You skipped from one chord to another and it made people think.
Composers don’t want you to know that making music is pretty easy.
Actually, my little example doesn’t say anything about the beat… music generally follows a beat people can expect… then you mix it up by putting notes off beat to keep them guessing or to make a point.
Love you!!
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