Harmony Tip 4

A great way to practice ear training is to use our voices and bodies to feel the sound vibrations. Here is an exercise I learned from my friend and bass player Andy Zadrozny, who also teaches ear training. Play a note on a keyboard using a sound that can be held with the sustain pedal, but has no reverb, delay, etc... Make it a pure tone. Then sing each interval within the octave over that pure tone. You can sing 'oooos', or 'aaahhhs', or 'eeeees'. For example. Let's say you choose to play the

Harmony Tip 3

Harmony is so amazing. This word means a lot of things, as Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s Grammy winning song ‘Ebony and Ivory’ sings about. When I went to study with the great Luizinho Eça, I was already playing classical piano for about 10 years and was attending the Brazilian Federal University of Music, and The Brazilian Music Conservatory for music theory. On my first lesson I brought one of my compositions to play for him – at the time I hadn’t start singing yet, so it was an

Harmony Tip 2

I’ve heard songwriters say that sometimes they feel stuck in one or a few chord progressions and would like to try different harmonic paths. Or as I like to say, to dress their melodies with different kinds of clothes. The blog post from March 2nd presents Tip I, and I recommend that you read that one, if you haven’t already. By the way, the example posted on Tip I as well as this method of choosing chords are based on the harmony method of the great pianist, arranger, composer Luizinho Eça,