What's the Piano Sage about? Chapter 1: Bringing Music to Life

This blog will give insights into the discovery process of musical discovery and learning.

Question to the sage? can you play this piece, what's it about?
This piece is about Zulu warriors - from looking at the left hand chords
C and G, which is repeated in 4/4 time, this is basically the drumming sounds.

Lesson learned: know the background of the piece! A big clue is the title. How often does a piano learner play a piece and they don't have the spirit, swing of the piece? Is this what differentiates an etude (or study) from a musical piece? Is this technical vs musical? Too often do we learn pieces in the early grades with Gavotte or Minuet and we forget these were once dances! Ask your student would you dance to it? Does it have a pulse and a strong first beat. Demonstrate demonstrate.

Live and learn the music!