Tag: Chicago piano teacher

  • Is classical music up for interpretations?

    A written classical music piece of music must be played exactly. That’s the premise. The composer worte the notes, you have to play them. All of them. And, you do not mess with the notes. What the composer has written, you play. Nothing less, nothing more. Right! I’ll take a famous work from Mozart: Sonata…

  • From the great ones

    I am thinking about Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach or Mozart. They made the effort to pass on their knowledge to the next generation. Bach, famously, wrote a whole book for his wife, some very simple pieces that every piano student has studied at a moment or another. Mozart also composed some short pieces. But his…

  • That old pad

    I remember when I first started, back when the dinosaurs were not yet created, I didn’t have a pad. I had a pair of sticks. That’s it. Sticks and nothing else. I traveled light. But everywhere I would go, I would be drumming. There was always a surface, flat or not so flat, to play…

  • Building a right foot

    As a drum teacher, I often get ask how to build a right foot, a bass drum foot. The subject is extremely important because the bass drum is one of the prominent voice of almost any rock/funk groove and requires a lot of dexterity. To play singles, the training is fairly simple: put the metronome…

  • Young pupils

    Young pupils should be taught music with games. And, the younger they are, the more playful the games. I was almost ready to write : “the younger they are, the silliest the game”. Yet, I am convinced that is the best way to learn, when we don’t think of a task as a chore, a…

  • Care

    Being the main care giver, I have always been very close to my children. It has been a lot of fun taking them to the zoo, the museums, the aquarium or teaching them how to bike, how to swim, how to be nice to each other and to themselves. And, of course, it has been…

  • With or without you

    This song is usually the last one we play on stage. We’ve done it with Louis’s drum solo since the beginning. Only now, he rips it something grand. I am so proud!

  • I want you to want me

    This was done back in the days. We loved playing that song. Although, here, my children are a little intimidated by the cameras, as you can probably tell.

  • The nine years old in us

    If you look at the kit on the picture, and I hope it appears on your device, it is obvious that this is a magnificent drum kit. Yes, it is! And it is so for all of us, drummers of all ages and background. Why? Because it is not big, but monumental. It is the…

  • Wipe out

    As drummers, we all know how the song “Wipe out” goes. You get the guitar riff (You accompany that with a rock beat), then the drummer does that accent pattern, and then you go back to the “normal” rock beat when the guitars come back. Riff, Drums, riff, drums, alternate that a few times, and…