Home | List of Articles | Submit an Article | Contact Us

Paint Your Own Musical Landscapes!

I don't know why, but I find the idea of interpreting nature musically to be very appealing. Maybe it's because I'm attracted to nature's beauty, but the notion of communicating that beauty musically has always intrigued me.

Not being a very patient person, I wanted to find a way to capture a musical idea very quickly and sketch out an entire piece all at once. Visual artists do something called a thumbnail sketch and I wanted to do the same thing for music.

It then occured to me that if I just sketch out the first 8-bars of the piece, and write in the first 2-bars of melody, I could capture an idea that would be remembered weeks or even years later. It's amazing but this actually works! The secret is the melody.

If you can't read music and want to do this just do what I do. I write down the note values (quarter notes, half notes., etc.) and write the letter name of the note beside the note value. One of the most important things I've discovered over the years is that the note value (it's time length) is what really captures the idea. Just think of Beethoven's fifth symphony for a good example. Da Da Da Duh... These notes mark the whole composition.

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music's online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and now teaches an online class. Stop by for a FREE piano lesson!

Related Articles:

Free, Legal Music Online - Almost everyone has heard about the massive crack down on Internet music piracy that has been occurring over the past few years. Napster was taken down (although it has now returned as a pay service), other file sharing programs now require users to pay for a license and the RIAA and other similar organizations are doing their best to hunt down cop ...

Randy Travis: "Music Ministry... Is that what you call what I'm doin'?" - "Listening and experiencing Randy's performance was certainly all I had expected and more... but little did I expect that I would be impacted by something in a more profound way..." We had been waiting for this day for a month. Being big Randy Travis fans, my family and I arrived at the concert two hours before they opened the doors t ...

iTunes: Download music and so much more - Itunes is one of the largest online music retailers. Last year, millions of people went online to download music from the store and organized their mp3 files with the iTunes Jukebox. Right now, the jukebox is free so anyone can use it to rip CDs, store mp3 files and organize their playlist. If you want to download music from the iTunes jukebox into ...

Meditation with background music? - Most people find it difficult, by exercising meditation, to focus and to empty totally their minds. There is a technique to eliminate that problem. Start with choosing a certain daytime to your convenience to do your every day meditation. Over time, it will become your most pleasant time of your day, you’ll awaiting it from day to day. It ...

Managing Your Time, when Music isn't Your "Day Job" - You CAN do everything. Repeat. You CAN do everything. What you cannot do, however, is do everything at the same time, or create a day that’s longer than 24 hours. The two most important aspects of time management are acceptance and choice. When you think of time in terms of acceptance and choice, you’re never “wrong”, “bad”, or ...

Learn to Read Music Online - If you or anyone you know wants to learn to read music, it’s a lot easier to do than it used to be. The Internet gives us all access to almost unlimited information, and can deliver an incredible array of products and tools right to our desktops. Not surprisingly, there are some really clever products out there that can help you learn to read no ...

5 Sure Fire Ways to Get Radio Play for Your “Independent” Music! - You have to find radio airplay time if you’re going to be heard and we’re not just talking the local college campus. The trick is called promotion. Now that doesn’t mean you just put your press kit in an envelope with a demo and hope they take pity on you. Perhaps you call a station and they give you the standard pitch of, “Send it and if we like i ...

For a Complete list of Articles with summaries Click Here