hi-teresa
far-away-chorus

I recently made another delightful discovery of a music-comedian who I should probably have known about a long time ago. Australian pianist, songwriter, composer, poet, actor. Tim Minchin began giving his solo comedy shows in 2002 and has won fans and awards in Australia and the US. His performances have been broadcast on numerous TV shows and comedy festivals including Never Mind The Buzzcocks and The World Stands Up. A friend showed me this particular song and since then I’ve been hooked: F Sharp
His sense of humour is so delightfully crude, self-critical and brutally honest that I couldn’t help but become a Minchin fan in the space of 15 minutes.

As well as being outright hilarious, Tim Minchin also proves to be a pretty amazing pianist. A number of his songs (including Inflatable You and Rock and Roll Nerd) include a crazily virtuostic improvised solo somewhere, which he uses to comical effect. His cleverly detailed writing comes across very strongly in his comical poems such as Angry(Feet) and Storm, as does his absurd dry wit as he recites them.

Tim Minchin has recorded 3 comedy albums, and his debut DVD So Live released in 2007 is an eager addition to my shopping list!

Visit the official Tim Minchin website at http://www.timminchin.com/

As I get more experience performing, I find a lot of gigs getting thrown at me at short notice. This is the main reason my sight-reading has improved (see my earlier post …) - however, I still amn’t confident enough to sight-read my way through an entire concert programme. My only solution is to practice and learn the required songs and/or pieces as rapidly as possible. So how should I go about it?

One obvious aid in learning new music is to get yourself some recordings of the music you need to learn. If you know a piece really well to hear, then learning it will definitely be a faster process than starting from scratch with the sheet music. This also helps you to develop an understanding of the stye and mood of the piece.

We’re all used to being told to practice slowly, but you need to know how to use this technique properly. The purpose of slow practice is to allow yourself to properly observe which notes you have to play so that you can learn them in as little time as possible. I have only begun to properly understand this technique myself and am already enjoying great results. Sadly, many teachers don’t explain this method thoroughly and so students don’t use it; hence we often learn music a lot slower than we actually could. I’d like to try explain how it works so that others can benefit from it too!

There is one important skill involved in using this kind of practice. The trick is to be able to constantly look ahead and observe the next group of notes while you are playing the previous ones. Thinking in the present (i.e. the notes you are already playing) is useless when learning a new piece. This is why practice must be done slowly; you must find a speed at which you can readily prepare your hands for the next group of notes and play them confidently. Basically, you must refuse to allow yourself to play wrong notes so that you don’t let mistakes lodge themselves in your memory. This technique also allows you to find patterns such as sequences, inversions and other little variations the composer may have used. Remember that all the parts of a piece are linked in some little way, so that you don’t become intimidated by what might just seem like a mass of notes!

So there’s a tip on how not to panic when you get a last-minute call for a gig!

Happy playing!