Hieran Del

I write pieces, starting from melodies. I write melodies from inspiration. My inspiration comes from one of three places: other composers, my sister, or my emotions. My advice: 1. Listen to alot of music, and sing along with them (try to complement the music with your own counterpoint/voicing/whatever.) 2. I will also at times ask my sister, "Can you play a few notes on the piano?" She does so, in seemingly random order, but it gets the mind creating true, connected melodies. So play a few random notes, and make a melody out of it. 3. Of course, my emotions are the largest inspiration. Whatever I feel like at the time, this I will compose. If you do a lot of the first two parts I wrote, then your emotion will build the melodies for you. This takes time. But, then again, everything does. I hope this has been helpful!

Samuel Barber's Excursions for piano. It's a four movement piece that describes the regions and life of the American environment, including a bustling, boogie-woogie style New York city song; a relaxed blues set in the southern Louisiana; variations on an American folktale (talk about difficult, this pits 7 to 8!); and an American squaredance. Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor (opus 3, my favorite opus!) It opens in a resolute, march feel, and it quickly builds to powerful bursts of chordal energy. I am just floored by the middle section of this piece: it is SOOOOOO beautiful! I think I would die to hear this part performed by orchestra and a male and female vocalist. It's progression is basically: D , D7 , C-7/D , D7 D , C-/D , Bb^0/D , D7 G- , G-/F , C-/Eb , A7/Db D , D , A7/D This chordal style is seen somewhat in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Hearing that on piano...(drooling on keyboard)

I'd have to agree with Chopin here. And also: listen to music from genre your aiming for, and listen to various artists' interpretations of the pieces. And if you're a beginner, I strongly recommend learning by the intervalic method.

I am a piano player of 15 yrs., and I've self taught myself from day 1 until last year. I must say that I was able to successfully learn some famous works, such as Clair de Lune (Debussy), Liebestraum (Liszt), To Spring (Grieg), 6 Poems after Heine (MacDowell), Moonlight Sonata and Sonata Pathetique (Beethoven), and more by the age of 12 (that's 7 years of playing.) Comparatively, a friend of mine took beginning piano lessons for a year and learned Clair de Lune, playing it much better than I initially did (technically speaking.) However, he could not perform it as musically as I could. To learn something most efficiently, I recommend lessons, as the teacher can guide your technical skills best. I decided to get lessons when I was 19 (last year), and I drammatically improved in my abilities to read and perform pieces which were deemed impossible by my technical experience to play. (In example, I mastered Chopin's Revolutionary Etude in two months, whereas the most difficult piece I could play decently before that was Grieg's To Spring.) After taking lessons, my technique became refined and my site reading skills dramatically improved. AND: my musical horizons were expanded. I learned several new artists, composers, and styles that I was previously unaquainted with (ie. Rachmaninoff, Barber, Vladmir Horowitz, Jazz). However, self-teaching taught me something valuable: memorization and playing by ear. I've developed an uncanny ability to memorize a piece, whatever length, in a maximum of three days. Within a week I would have sufficiently mastered it, and within two weeks, improved it enough to perform. What is more, I will never forget what I've learned. Unfortunately, as a teacher, I have no idea how to teach my students how to memorize. I personally don't know how I do it, therefore can't teach them. The other benefit is playing by ear. I find it very easy to pick up a piece from the radio and play it fairly close to what it sounds like. I don't know whether teachers can teach that to students, for my instructor doesn't need to teach me that. To answer your original question: "Is there another way to do this?" Yes. Play the piano as much as you can. Pick up new music all the time. Read as much as you can, and, more importantly, listen to as much music from that genre as you can. That is my answer. If you do decide on piano lessons, make sure you learn by intervalic teaching style, as opposed to middle C and the third style (whatever it is.) It is the easiest, most practical, and most efficient, as what you play after learning the basics is entirely based off that technique. I hope this has been helpful!

Greetings, all fellow musicians! I'm new to this site, and thought it'd be appropriate to immediately submit a work as a means for me to learn: what to expect, what to post, and whatever else. The following link is a small, short arrangement I've done of the Zelda III: castle theme (Koji Kondo copyright Nintendo; arr. Jay Tennant.) It is mp3. (Are mp3's discouraged?) http://www.desertcolossus.com/media/Zelda%...e_Castle_sq.mp3 (As a side note, I keep thinking about Sherlock Holmes whenever I hear this. Anybody else?) This is the only piece of music I've posted online, and it is not representative of my full compositional skills (rather, just a little arranging.) Yet, if possible, I'd love to see this work torn apart by critics. Not that I enjoy that, but I've never received any constructive criticism before, and I sorely need it. I will post more contributions later (solo piano or full orchestra done in late classical, romantic, and impressionistic.) I look forward to either criticism as to the work, or instruction/recommendation as to posting, or both. In any case, thanks for listening! Good health to all! -Hieran Del