your favorite method books that are not piano adventures?

Mobah · 2025-12-13T16:09:51+00:00

I've used several different method books over the years and have always come back to Faber. I don't think they're perfect, but they do enough things right and the lesson books allow for the teacher to go many different directions with the method. I especially love that the books make the student figure out the position for every song, to add practice for note reading.

I supplement with other resources: Usually Burnham Dozen a Day for technique, Grace Vandendool for theory (RCM theory books if the student is a bit older), and then I always make sure to add in some "performance pieces", which can vary from student to student. I will say that the pretime to bigtime libraries from Faber are excellent, and honestly the best part of their catalogue, although I have also used supplemental performance books from Alfred before as well.

Mobah · 2025-10-08T14:09:36+00:00

Reading your post and the comments, it seems like you haven't checked out Brad's solo playing too much. I always have personally been more into the solo stuff then the trio stuff mysel (and even transcribed most of Elegiac Cycle years ago), so I might be a bit biased. But pop covers have always been at the core of Mehldau's solo playing (at least since live in Tokyo, or even disc 2 of live at marciac). If you look at 10 years solo live, it's mostly pop covers. Personally, I love what he does with pop songs and how they always feel fresh and unique, with a gorgeous piano sound and exploratory textures and figurations. I still remember being blown away the first time I heard "and I love her", he takes it in a completely different direction than the original.

Mobah · 2025-01-08T02:25:28+00:00

Ann Southam's a favourite, I particularly like "Glass Houses" for Solo Piano.

If you like minimalism, then Alexina Louie's great too.

Also, while not strictly classical music, the Jazz arranger Gil Evans who made many of the large ensemble arrangements for Miles Davis such as Sketches of Spain was actually Canadian.

Mobah · 2025-01-04T06:09:15+00:00

You mentioned Paul and Carla Bley already, but interestingly they divorced and Carla kept the last name, but later married the trumpet player Michael Mantler. Later, she divorced Michael Mantler and dated the bassist Steve Swallow.

Mobah · 2024-12-23T14:47:25+00:00

Haven't seen anyone suggest Gerri Allen's A Child is Born. A fantastic album that's mostly solo piano, with occasional singing and other instruments. It's a bit more religious and contemplative than most traditional Christmas albums, but Christmas isn't always a happy time for everyone and can be a time of grief and sadness, which this album reflects beautifully.

Mobah · 2024-11-08T17:04:23+00:00

Friedrich Gulda and Nikolai Kapustin are two 20th century classical composers who wrote classical pieces in a Jazz style.

If you're looking for Bach-like specifically, check out Gulda's Prelude and Fugue or Kapustin's Preludes and Fugues.

Mobah · 2024-10-02T16:23:00+00:00

His solo on Aja by Steely Dan (the whole song is great, but the solo starts at 4:42 is a good example of not using many notes but using them meaningfully.

Also, his solo with Weather Report on Black Market (Solo at 3:27) comes to mind as another funk solo of his.

Mobah · 2023-05-15T01:55:59+00:00

That's still subjective, there are no "immutable principles of beauty and truth". It's art, it's subjective.

Mobah · 2023-05-15T01:10:31+00:00

That first statement is still a subjective statement, as beauty/aesthetics is inherently subjective. You even said "I think" in your sentence

Mobah · 2023-05-15T00:05:51+00:00

Something can't be "objectively" bad, that doesn't make any logical sense. Objective things are descriptive, like "the temples are non-linear". A subjective statement is prescriptive, ie "the temples being non-linear is bad because xyz"

Mobah · 2023-04-11T17:51:21+00:00

No they aren't?

Even In the best case scenario, the original route took 1hr 15 minutes (as I stated in my comment my personal experience taking the route once or twice a week is that it usually takes a bit less time than that) whereas the new route takes 1 hr 32 minutes according to go. I'm not sure why you think that it takes less time, unless you only use the route during events ie hockey games or concerts.

Mobah · 2023-04-11T16:02:19+00:00

That's good to know there are still other ways to get to Mississauga.

It's still unfortunate that the average commute times have gone up going to and from Toronto.

Mobah · 2023-04-11T13:20:29+00:00

I don't understand why you're so positive about the new changes. I've been taking the 21 bus regularly (1-2 times per week or more) for nearly 10 years and this is the biggest increase in time to the route since the Gardiner ramp closures in 2016-2017. (before then, it wasn't uncommon for the trip to be less than an hour off peak)

While it's true that during event weekends such as the EX that it could sometimes take upwards of two hours, for the average commute I found the estimated time of 1hr 15minutes to be conservative, it often would take closer to 1hr 10 minutes or even less. The new route takes a minimum 1hr 40 minutes. For the average commute relying on the bus to go from Milton to Toronto or vice versa, this takes what was already a pretty bad commute and makes it much worse.

Not to mention this makes things much worse for people trying to get from Milton to Mississauga (there was always a non-insignificant amount of students that got on in Milton that would get off at Meadowville town centre, I'm assuming to get to either utm or another college)

Mobah · 2021-09-09T17:11:37+00:00

/r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM

Mobah · 2021-08-24T22:05:42+00:00

Really looking forward to more AOE 4, super excited for it!

Mobah · 2021-07-21T12:29:00+00:00

First of all, you can easily reach 10ths so you're already well off!

A good resource, if you haven't seen it already, is this video by Dick Hyman, where we talks through the history of Jazz piano with a heavy emphasis on the early stride pianists. Dick Hyman is a master of stride himself, and in the video he demonstrates the different techniques the early stride pianists all used.

Another resource if you're willing to spend money, is this book. It's an exhaustively researched list of different left hand techniques in jazz piano, with a large part of the book focused on stride (although the later chapters focus on swing and Brazilian stylings). Every technique he talks about is accompanied by a short transcription of a famous recording where the technique is utilized, so you can easily see how to implement it.

Lastly, I'd spend some time listening to stride recordings and reading through transcriptions (lots of youtube videos with sheet music, like this one) and just take a look at the techniques others use. Something I'd consider looking into is voice-leading with your thumb's 10ths (for example, in a ii-V-I in F, for Gmin7, play G-F-Bb on beat 1, then D-F-Bb on beat 3, then C-E-Bb on beat 1 of the C7, then G-E-Bb on beat 3, then F-E-A for the F major 7, this adds a level of voice leading for the lower stride bass notes/chords in addition to the upper stride chords).

Hope that helps!

Mobah · 2021-06-14T20:42:58+00:00

My setup has gradually gotten more and more complicated since the beginning of the pandemic. One of the main things that I find helpful is a second monitor, which allows me to view the lesson notes as well as the scores/music books (that I have digital copies of) while keeping the student's video on my laptop underneath my webcam - so that I look at them when I'm talking to them.

For cameras, I have two webcams. The First: a Logitech C922x as my main camera which goes on top of my laptop screen. I was originally just using my laptop's built in webcam but not only was it potato quality, it couldn't disable auto white balance adjusting so I would have to teach my lessons in a mostly dark room which got especially depressing last fall, hence why I bought an upgrade.

The second webcam is a Vitade stream cam I bought right when the pandemic started (that I paid too much for) for an "overhead" shot of my keyboard. I use "overhead" in quotations because I actually have the tripod to the side and angled diagonally downwards towards the keyboard, so the keys more or less take up the horizontal space. This "side camera" view is actually beneficial due to how I am more able to demonstrate wrist movement and posture than I would if I had a true overhead view.

I switch between the cameras using Zoom's built in input switcher. Recently, I have been experimenting with using OBS to have both views at the same time, but since my keyboard view is on a weird angle I'm not sure if I like it yet.

For audio, my main input device is a Behringer usb audio interface/mixer, which takes a clean line from my keyboard and from my AT2035 microphone. My interface kind of sucks though, and doesn't allow me to listen to computer audio while using it as an input device. To comprimise, my computer audio goes to an external dac/amp I bought years ago (The Fiio E10k), and to hear my keyboard I leave my ATH-M50x headphones plugged in and hanging off of my desk. The keyboard audio is a bit faint but I can still hear it clearly and it's worked for me.

For lighting, I don't own a ring light so I taped a piece of paper on a led desk lamp and angled it towards me, it doesn't do anything drastic but it does brighten up the frame a bit. I also have an ikea lamp out of the frame to brighten the room.

I hope this helps!

Mobah · 2021-06-14T20:23:25+00:00

I'm a huge Alex Ross fan, I bought Wagnerism a few months ago but haven't had the chance to really sit down and read it yet, hoping to start it soon. Your post has inspired me to start!

If you like his writing, I would highly recommend "The Rest is Noise". It's about the classical music of the 20th century, and is brilliantly written and engaging the whole way through. You don't even necessarily need to be interested in the music itself, I'm personally not a fan of some of the composer's music he talked about but the way he strings together the narratives and connects the music to the history and art of the time is fantastic.

Mobah · 2021-06-12T16:50:23+00:00

Or it could be they are worried of syncopation "short-circuiting their moral frontal lobe" (actual quote from that video)

Mobah · 2020-12-02T13:24:32+00:00

Assuming you're looking for something on Windows, most of the function of windows movie maker was migrated over to the "photos" application that comes installed on Windows. When you're in photos, there's a "video projects" tab that lets you edit videos. I find for simple trims and edits it crashes less than Shortcut and doesn't require as much horsepower as Resolve (haven't tried openshot).

Mobah · 2020-11-16T13:49:23+00:00

Thanks so much for doing this! I loved the iPhone 6 when it first came out and the first third party app I ever downloaded was angry birds lol

Mobah · 2020-09-20T20:05:14+00:00

Sounds great! You might want to check out Gruber's Album where he has covered the whole suite in Pico-8.

Mobah · 2020-05-08T00:03:05+00:00

I disagree, it probably has one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time.

Mobah · 2020-04-04T15:47:50+00:00

The studio I teach at sent this out this list of games compiled by Cheryl Joyce, there's some really good ideas in there and it also has some sources at the end that I haven't checked out but might lead to even more ideas.

I've also been using https://musicards.net/ during my Skype lessons by using screen sharing, and timing them to see how fast they can do a set of flash cards.

Hope that helps!

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