Working as a Performing Musician
Being able to work as a performing musician is a privilege that very few people can live off of. Although there are many different situations in which music can be performed, it is a very competitive market and you have to have a high standard skill set covering multiple areas in order to survive the competition. The performance market ranges in salaries of millions for pop and rock stars all the way down to an average salary for function performers. According to statista records there are 50,000 musicians working in the UK, which although sounds like a lot only amounts to 0.077 percent of the population. Many performing musicians plunge thousands of hours into practicing and refining their skills on their instruments. In order to fully develop as a musician it is key to be able to understand how to detect and improve your weaknesses and implement this into your personal practice time. A key step in my career path could be going to University or a conservatoire which requires an entry audition and interview. Therefore, by picking a varied repertoire I could potentially play all of these at auditions in the future.
Practice Routine
Performance is the area of music that I focus on the most. A well structured daily practice is key to personal development on an instrument and musical in general. In order to progress as best as possible I have developed a balanced practice routine in order to encompass as many musical aspects of performance as possible. As I mainly focus on Jazz, a large part of my practice is dedicated to using practical exercises in order to expand my theoretical knowledge. I find that it is easier for me to understand theory by applying it on piano and visa versa.
Here is my daily practice routine:
- Warm up exercises/gadgets (45minutes)
I begin my practice routine with a classic piano warmup which is to practice scales. I have a large pool of scales to choose from and I try and add new ones whenever possible. Here is a list of the current group.
Scales: Major, Natural Minor, Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor, Dorian, Mixolydian, Lydian, Major Blues, Minor Blues, Octave and Altered.
When beginning a practice I will pick 4 scales out of this group, I practice each scale in every key for 4 octaves in time with a metronome alternating between straight and swung rhythms.
Practicing my scales in every key has allowed me to develop my theoretical knowledge and allows me to be much quicker when it comes to transposing or reading music. It has also helped me develop my knowledge of different chords and how notes and chords within a key signature relate to one another.
I have recently changed the amount of octaves from 2 to 4, initially I thought that this would be very easy to do however it took me some time to adjust covering a larger range on the piano. When improvising on the piano, I often find that I am afraid to break out of the octave either side of middle C, meaning that most of my playing centres around two octaves. By changing my scale practice to 4 octaves, I have noticed my confidence develop when improvising as I am more familiar with the sound and the feel of the higher and lower octaves, this has hugely benefited my playing overall.
Practicing with a metronome is something that I have started doing in the past year, practicing with a metronome allows me to both develop my understanding of timing as well as to increase my playing speed. When practicing with a metronome I make it so that it ticks on beats 2 and 4. This is a technique that was shown with me in order to improve my swing rhythms however it also serves to help me be more conscious about where I am in regard to the beats of the bar. This helps me to develop my improvisation as where you start playing within a bar can hugely effect the outcome and interpretation of a song. After practicing which a metronome for some time, my timing has improved dramatically and I have raised the metronome speed up to 190 Beats Per Minute compared to I believe about 130 BPM about a year ago.
When practicing scales I alternate between straight and swung rhythms, doing 2 of each per session. Swung rhythms and straight rhythms are probably the two most popular rhythms within popular music and it is equally important for myself as an aspiring musician to keep on top of as much rhythmic technique as possible. By always practicing both rhythms, I am never usually fazed by a piece when reading it or listening to it when it is in either of these styles. I have recently been listening to Latin and Bossa Nova and attempting to play them. As the rhythmic structure is slightly different it has been challenging to learn how to play in these styles, however it is something that I will look at introducing into my practice routine in the future.
Seventh Chord Arpeggio Gadget
My second gadget is one that I added into my practice routine a couple of months ago. It centres around breaking up seventh chords into arpeggios and inverting them through out. For example with a Cmajor 7 chord, you would start on C and play E,G and B before switching to the 2nd inversion which would be E,G,B and C. I go through the 4 inversions up and back down before moving onto the next chord. I practice these in all keys and generally pick a type of chord for example minor or dominant in order change it up per day. This is another exercise where I use a metronome and I mostly practice it with swing rhythms as it is an exercise tailored towards improving Jazz improvisation. It can be practiced with separate hands, hands together or one hand playing a block chord whilst the other plays the inversions. Personally, I feel that this is a very useful exercise as it addresses both theoretical and practical techniques. I am now much more confident when playing different inversions of 7th chords as well as improvising using arpeggios. Physically, this exercise helps me to develop my hand rotation which which will hopefully improve my overall technique and allow me to improvise faster and with more technical accuracy. I am going to look at adapting this gadget in order to include other chord extensions including 9s, 11s and 13ths.
Major 2-5-1s
Two five ones are a major part of Jazz Harmony and chord progressions.
A major 2-5-1 is made up of the second chord which is a minor chord, the 5th which is a dominant and the 1st which is a major chord. When practicing 2-5-1s, I practice them in every key following the circle of 5ths. When practicing with Major 2-5-1s, I mix it up by adding 9ths in the chords as well as practising rootless voicing’s.
Major 2-5-1 rootless voicing’s
A rootless voicing is relatively self explanatory as it is a chord that doesn’t contain the root note. An interesting part of Jazz for me is that when people such as Bill Evans begin using more complicated extensions, they will take notes out so as to improve the overall colour and reduce the clutter of a chord. Therefore by playing rootless chords, you can add in 9ths and 13ths at the expense of the root in order to create a different sound. Here is an example of a rootless voicing:
2 Chord = Minor 9, 5 Chord = dominant 13, 1 Chord = Major 9
E.g A rootless 2-5-1 in the key of C major could look like this:
D minor = F(3rd) A(5th) C(7th) E(9th), G Dominant= F(7th) A(9th) B(3rd) E(13th)
C major E (3rd) G (5th) B (7th) D (9th)
Minor 2-5-1s
A minor 2-5-1 is made up of a 2nd chord which is a half diminished a 5th chord which is dominant and a 1st chord which is a minor chord. Minor 2-5-1’s have a very beautiful sound with the diminished 2nd chord and can also be practised in the same way as the major chords.
With both major and minor 2-5-1s, I try to experiment with different voicing’s by adding and subtracting notes in order to see what different sounds I can make.
These exercises allow me to pick out 2-5-1 voicing’s when critically listening to a piece as well as to develop and practice my understanding of extended harmony.
Five finger Gadgets
The five finger gadgets that I have implemented into my practice routine are focused mainly on improving my hand speed and dexterity. The first of these involves placing the thumb on the first note, the index finger on the third note, the middle finger on the 4th note, the ring finger on the 5th note and finally the little finger on the 6th note before coming back down again. You would then do this on each of the notes in that particular scale. It can be practiced hands separately or together and I vary between using a metronome and not using one so as to free up my approach to it slightly. When rotating your hands correctly, you can get up to very fast speeds and it will hopefully benefit the quality of my touch in the long run.
Whole Tone Scale
The whole tone scale is based off a very similar approach as the gadget above however the fingers 1-5 go on the notes 1-5 instead of notes 1-6. A whole tone scale is made up of whole tone intervals, for example here is C whole tone scale:
C, D, E Fsharp, Gsharp, A sharp and C
The whole tone scale was used in improvisation by artists such as Thelonious Monk and has a very different sound to both major and minor scales.
Sight reading
I often choose classical or grade pieces to sight read when practising as they are often technically very difficult. I can see proof that my sight reading has improved massively and by practicing different targeted pieces I can improve upon different techniques.
Ear Training
Ear training is something that I try and do every day and can range from a few different areas, these include working out chord progressions in pop or Jazz songs, working out melodies or working out Jazz solos. I find myself being able to hear certain intervals as time goes by and hopefully I am improving my relative pitch as it is a very useful thing to have as a musician.
Polyphonic playing
Polyphonic playing is a technique aimed at spreading the voicing’s of a chord and melody between all fingers of both hands, the aim is to cover all 4 voicing’s of soprano, alto, tenor and bass, Here is a video describing this technique.
Dynamic Exercise
A major part of a pianists individual style is the way they approach the piano with their individual touch, a pianists touch is an element of piano playing that can take years to master. Depending on the genre an experts touch can sound very different depending on whether they just use their hand on if they also use their forearms and body as well.
The dynamic exercise allows me to be more conscious about my touch and how to address it, it centers around playing completely different dynamic variations in left hand compared to the right whilst playing the same notation. For example if I used a 5 finger gadget for this exercise then I could play the left hand quietly whilst playing the right hound loudly. This allows me to understand and develop my dynamic ability on the piano
Learning Standards
Learning Jazz standards is a great way to implement all of the knowledge gained in my practices. Most Jazz standards contain a range of extended chords including 2-5-1s as well as technically difficult areas. By learning Jazz standards regularly I am developing my sight reading skills, my harmonic structure knowledge as well as my Jazz piano technique overall. This usually takes up the largest chunk of my practice time as I can sit down and experiment with different standards for hours as there are so many different ways to approach a Jazz standard and due to the fact that I have recently purchased the real book for piano, I am spoilt for choice when playing Jazz. I have recently started to use the real book as a way to help develop my ear training as I’ll listen to a Jazz song and try and work out the chords or melody and check it within the real book. This is a great exercise to do as it allows me to really develop my ear when it comes to extended harmony. I also try to transpose the chords and melodies of Jazz standards into different keys so that if I am playing in a band and they feel more comfortable in a different key or a certain key suits a vocalists range, I should be able to adapt the music in front of me to any of the 12 keys.
Specific Pieces
Something that I have improved upon as a musician is being able to understand my weak areas on a piece of music and focusing on practicing these specific places. Before, I often didn’t look as much into detail as I could have when looking at how I could improve my technique for a certain part of a melody or phrase. By breaking it down and analysing my mistakes , I hopefully can build up the knowledge and practice to overcome them. In the time of this project (project 2) I had a large number of songs to learn for my repertoire with some being more important than others as I was using them for auditions or for my final performance. I therefore focused a lot more of my attention on these pieces as can be seen in the breakdown of each below.
Set list
For my final solo performance, I decided to challenge myself in showcasing two different genres of music being jazz and classical.
Sarabande and Gigue
The classical piece that I selected was one taken from my grade 8 ABRSM piano book.
The name of the piece is Sarabande and Gigue, Sarabande can be translated from Spanish as a dance in triple metre whereas Gigue is the french meaning for jig. It was composed by J.S Bach
Here is an example of someone playing this piece.
I chose this piece because I really enjoy both listening and playing classical music especially Bach. Classical piano requires a completely different approach to Jazz piano and the waltz time of this piece is not a time signature I have a lot of experience in. Originally I was playing the piece with use of a sustain pedal, however I was advised that this wasn’t the way that Bach was supposed to be played. Playing with a sustain pedal is something that I have become very reliant on in recent times and although it was incredibly challenging approaching this piece without the use of the sustain pedal, it served as a good reminder that I could play piano without it and that it brought forward a whole new technique to the table.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Born 31 March 1685 – Died 28 July 1750
https://www.biography.com/people/johann-sebastian-bach-9194289
Here is a short biography summarising Bach’s life.
Classical piano technique
Classical piano technique is known for being notoriously difficult as it requires an immense amount of control over the piano in areas such as timing, touch and dynamics. Although I have put in a lot of practice time on the piano, this has been more focused on improving my Jazz technique which can be similar in parts to classical but is generally focused on a lot of different areas to classical piano.
Improving Technique
Timing – Sarabande and Gigue was in the time signature of 3/4, which although I had played in before, I had little experience in. Playing this piece was a really good reminder to myself as a musician that not all pieces are in 4/4, that may sounds really obvious but when playing a lot of pop and Jazz songs you find that this is the case and it is easy to forget how to phrase other time signatures. Originally I was struggling with the timing as in some sections I was slowing down and in some sections I was speeding up. To rectify this , I began to practice with a metronome in 3/4 at 50bpm. This really helped me understand where the beats fell in the bar and allowed me to take a steadier approach to the piece.
Touch – Touch is something that I am working on across all styles of piano therefore it was interesting to look at potential techniques I could use to develop it within a classical performance. A large element that I was looking was improving the control over the piano both within my hands and by utilising the rest of my body to aid them.
Here is a short article that essentially sums up the difference between having curved or flat fingers when playing the piano. The key difference is that by playing with curved fingers, allows you to play with greater speed and accuracy as the position allows you to play with greater strength over a more balanced area.
Here is another good article to use as an example as it covers the overall points of how to create a good posture when playing piano. Posture in general makes a huge difference to your overall energy and confidence levels, you can see more about how body language affects you in project 5 from year one on this website.Good posture is something that develops over time and requires you to make a conscious effort at the beginning. This can often be very physically and mentally demanding, however it pays dividends as it hugely improves your technique overall. To begin this process when practicing and performing on the piano, I tried to keep my back straight and be self conscious about my posture and how it was effecting my playing. To help this process, I was tipped to move my seat backwards so that I was perched on the front. This allowed me to refrain from leaning back and to create a much stronger and balanced stance. I saw my ability develop by improving my posture over the course of this project, as I felt more comfortable when playing the piano and able to play with confidence in the higher and lower octaves.
Here is a brilliant video that talks about the effects of different finger, hand and arm positions when playing classical music on the piano. It is fascinating to see how the mastering of these techniques allows him to play in so many different ways. An interesting section he talked about was hand rotation. I have talked about this in my practice routine briefly as some of my warmup exercises are tailored this technique. Hand rotation allows a person to play piano much faster and accurately as it adds the movement of the wrist to the strength of the hand. The overall use of the wrist and arms adds so much to your piano playing as it means that you can play with a lot more control as well as accuracy which allows for creating different balances and emphasising one area more than another resulting in different dynamic and touch approaches. For example you could create a lot more variation when playing with the arms, wrists and hands compared with just the hands.
Sheet music –
Don’t get around much anymore
About the song
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore is a Jazz standard that was originally written by Duke Ellington in 1940 with lyrics added later written by Bob Russell in 1942. The song was originally called “Never No Lament” and was first recorded by Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra on May 4, 1940 as a big band instrumental.
Duke Ellington and Swing Music
Edward Kennedy ”Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death over a career spanning more than fifty years.
https://www.biography.com/people/duke-ellington-9286338
Here is a short biographical piece on Duke Ellington’s life.
Ella Fitzgerald and This Recording
Although Hundred’s of people have covered this classic standard, Ella Fitzgerald’s is the best one I have heard so far. It was the main inspiration for me choosing this song as the combination of Ella’s voice and the wonderful arrangement turns this song into a masterpiece.
I would love to operate with a band on this scale at some point as the range of instruments offers up so much potential contrast when improvising. It’s an interesting recording in that both the piano and electric guitar are both playing as comping instruments which you don’t hear too much in Ella’s recordings.
When approaching this song, I decided to perform it within a trio. I therefore needed to organise a drummer and a bassist to play with me. This song was part of the set list for the Birmingham performance and although it worked really well, the drummer for that band was busy on the day of my final performance meaning that I needed to employ the skills of another drummer being Lars Harrison. This provided me with an excellent opportunity to understand how to work with different musicians on the same project due to their availability. This is a very real situation in the music industry as musicians often work on multiple projects at the same time meaning that most session and function bands often switch around all the time. My arranging for this piece could have been more interesting. As I am still learning so much about how to play in a Jazz band and how to lead a band , I played it safe with the classic structure of playing the whole song once through followed by once through again with improvisation from myself on the piano before finishing with the tune once round again and repeating the last two bars 3 times. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with sticking to a simple structure, I would love to look at experimenting with arrangements in the future in order to make standards sound more original and iconic.
The main thee about this piece is the strong swing feel, when practicing Jazz I either use a metronome or a backing track with bass and drums. I have recently started using a brilliant app called ireal which allows you to select the tempo, instrumentation and key of a backing track and which has really allowed me to improve my timing and soloing ability. Although I was relatively comfortable with swing rhythms before playing this piece, it has really challenged me to fine tune those rhythms and to be more conscious about where I’m playing compared to where the beat is. My piano teacher encouraged me to think a lot more rhythmically when playing and to start improvised phrases on the off beat. Although this might sound trivial, it really enhanced my playing as by playing on the off beat it added a different colour to the music as well as allowing me to take more interesting pauses when soloing. One thing I did to try and improve my knowledge of the piece was to learn the vocals which really embedded the tune in my mind. One area which I still need to improve upon is listening to different versions of this piece by different artists and taking parts of solos and arrangements that I enjoy and seeing if that will influence my work.
Sheet music –
High and Dry
High and Dry is a song by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released as the first single from their second studio album The Bends (1995). It was released as a double A-side with album opener “Planet Telex”. “High and Dry” was released in the UK on 5 March 1995. Thom Yorke had performed an early version of the song with the band Headless Chickens while he was a student at University of Exeter in the late 1980s. Radiohead later recorded a studio version of “High and Dry” during the sessions which produced the song “Pop is Dead” in 1993, but the band dismissed it as a “Rod Stewart song”. During recording sessions for The Bends, the band’s demo recording of the song was rediscovered and remastered for inclusion on the album, as it was felt that it worked well with the rest of the album’s music.
High and dry was an interesting piece to play as it allowed me to look at comping in a different way. The original composition by Radiohead is already a brilliant recording however Jamie Cullum used some really interesting techniques coupled with his great vocal range to create a really nice cover. Although the song only really features 4 chords, there is a huge contrast in piano technique throughout the piece. The first can be seen in the introductions and verses where the voicing’s are very spread and the piano is quite busy with a lot of emphasis around the tonic note Eb , the chorus on the other hand is slightly more regimented and is played slightly louder in order to distinguish it from the verse with which it shares the same chords. The solo is also relatively simple and revolves around the same chords from the verse as well as the emphasis on the Eb. This creates a very interesting texture on the piano as due to the very basic harmonic structures, a lot of the character of this song comes from Jamie Cullum’s technique on the keys and the dynamics that he uses. This was an interesting piece for me to look at as my touch on the piano is an area that I am always looking at improving and this gave me a new interpretation of how to come about that.
Creating An Enjoyable Piano Performance Atmosphere
Mock Performance
I did my mock performance split over the course of 2 sessions due to the singer I needed for High and Dry not being in college for the first one. The performance was off the back of my audition at the RNCM therefore I was a mixture of tired and energetic and probably not in the most prepared mindset for a performance. It is safe to say that over the past few weeks I have failed to practice my Bach piece to the same standard as the other two, therefore the overall standard of this piece was a lot lower which was a huge part of my decision to cut it down for the final performance. I will over the next few days have a look at wether I can achieve both the A and B sections or if the A section is a realistic idea of where I can be.
All of these songs were disappointingly performed in my mock, which really focused my mind for the final performance and made me analyse the mistakes that I had done. A major element of this was my poor timing in all three songs, therefore I sought to rectify this by playing all of them with backing tracks and the use of a metronome. Overall, there was a huge disparity between the quality of Don’t get around much anymore and High and dry compared to the Bach piece. I put this mainly down to the fact that the first two were the pieces that I used for my audition at RNCM, which I had put a lot of graft into. I therefore focused a lot of my efforts on working on the Bach piece in the final week and once I worked out the timing of different sections, it really started to come together. Although I practice playing piano all of the time, I have rarely performed solo as the main event. A lot of my experience is either playing as background solo piano, with a singer or n a band. Therefore I had to balance being technically correct, playing in time as well as creating an interesting performance when performing solo. Often a venue can really help to create a special atmosphere, therefore I was really lucky to be able to play in such a beautiful environment as the gallery.
Final Performance
Although I had been advised to tone down a bit on the witty side, I couldn’t resist a bit of banter at the start as its just the kind of person I am. I thought I started the Bach piece quite rushed , however did well to rectify this timing and by the 2nd time round of the A section and into the B section it was flowing quite well. I think it is evident that my classical technique still has so much room to develop as although sections of it sounded really nice, it was quite a clunky performance and there were still errors with certain sections throughout. However saying this , I was very proud of the progress I had made since playing my mock performance. Overall this piece has rekindled my passion for playing classical music and it’s definitely something I’d be more keen at playing in the future.
We started the second piece, Don’t get around much anymore , very strongly and generally played a good head section. I was slightly worried with my solo at the time, however listening back to it there are some great sections in there and I definitely think my technique and soloing ability has improved over the course of this project. I think that we could have been set up slightly better to communicate as a band, however it wasn’t a major issue and we were pretty strong on timing overall.
High and Dry started incredibly strongly and set the tone for a great performance overall. Initially I was slightly thrown off when Sonny came in on the first verse as it was only the second time we had played with him taking the verse instead of Leah, and maybe a bit more practice could have made this sound more fluid. The colour and tone of both voices on the chorus worked really well together and it was really fun to play it as a five piece. I thought that my solo was a it weak on this particular performance and that I could have played the bridge with a bit more conviction, however with the help of strong final chorus and outro we finished the piece to a very high standard.
Summary
Overall I feel that I did very well on this performance task, Although there were mistakes in parts, there are always different ways that you can improve on something which for me is part of the joy of music as it allows you to admire those who have mastered a technique and always be open to making changes and receiving different opinions on your work. By looking at classical techniques, I have developed the understanding of how different body positions can affect the way that you play and your tone on an instrument. I am looking forward to exploring these more throughout my practices and seeing how they can develop my sound on the piano. I am very happy with the structure of my practice routine at the moment as it has a perfect mixture of disciplined practice as well as encouraging creativity and exploration with music. I think that by being too disciplined in the past with practicing technical exercises I have been slightly put off doing them, however knowing how I can implement them into my performances and compositions gives me a really big boost when practicing them as I understand the ways in which they can benefit my playing, therefore making them a beneficial exercise to do.