Piano Guidance
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What mood is D minor?

Pauer's key characteristics for D minor are that it: “expresses a subdued feeling of melancholy, grief, anxiety, and solemnity.”

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Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2, “Tempest”: I. Largo – Allegro (Louis Lortie, piano) Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 49: I. Molto allegro ed agitato (Itzhak Perlman, violin; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Emanuel Ax, piano) Mozart: Missa brevis in D minor r, K. 65: I. Kyrie (Cologne Chamber Choir; Collegium Cartusianum; Peter Neumann, cond.)

In our earlier series on C major and minor and G major and minor , we listed Ernst Pauer’s suggestions from 1876 of pieces that fit the particular affect he assigned for a key. For the rest of the major and minor keys, he left us the attributes but not list of pieces.Pauer’s key characteristics for D minor are that it: “expresses a subdued feeling of melancholy, grief, anxiety, and solemnity.”What pieces do you think should be added here? Keep in mind that the piece should date from before 1876, when Pauer’s book was published. Another guideline might be to note the relatively small list of composers he gave as examples: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert Rossini, Weber, and Spohr – all stalwarts of German classicism / romanticism.The feelings of melancholy and grief are ones that we avoid nowadays, even to the point of developing whole ranges of pharmaceuticals to deal with those emotions. In the 19th century, however, they were part of the range of human experiences that you had to endure and get through. Death was common, particularly at a young age. It is estimated that in 19th-century Germany, one out of every two children born, died. So, much appropriate to grief wouldn’t be out of place.I’ll make a couple of suggestions and the reasons and see what you might add to these:This piano sonata, named after Beethoven’s death for Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, has a sense of anxiety in its first movement, pushed by the alternate fast and slow sections, the repeated figures, and the many changes in texture. It’s not settled, but unsettling.Melancholy and anxiety seem to rule here, where even the theme gets distorted.Here’s one that I think DOESN’T work:This very early mass, even though in D minor, doesn’t really yet have the solemnity one might expect. It was only the 2nd mass that Mozart had written and he’s still struggling with the voice setting and getting it to be interesting. It was written in 1769, when Mozart was only 13.What would you suggest?

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What is the Japanese scale called?

The Japanese pentatonic scales (Hirajoshi, Kumoi, In, Itawo) are 5-note scales that emphasize the half-step interval. While the “pentatonic major” emphasizes the consonant intervals such as the perfect fifth, the Japanese pentatonic scales emphasize the darkness of the half-step.

Hi, this is Hub Guitar.

The Japanese pentatonic scales are fairly different from the pentatonic scales used most often in modern music. There is a much bigger emphasis on half-steps in these scales. And so that erie sound of constant half-steps is part of what defines the scale. Another thing about learning scales used in World or Traditional music: the scale may not have been understood or used in the same way we normally use scales. For instance, this scale was played by a ninja guy sitting up in a tree playing a thing called a shamisen. There was definitely not another ninja guy jamming out playing a I IV V chord progression with one shamisen while the second ninja guy uses his shamisen to play pentatonic scales like we will have in musical setting today. That's just not how it works. So be willing to try using the scales a little differently. For instance, you might play these scales using the root of the scale as a drone note. I'm going to give you one example of that, and I'm going to do that in A.

Or you might use these scales to improvise without accompaniment.

You can also find ways to apply them in the more conventional sense of using them to improvise melodies with related chords.

Here's pattern number 1.

And here's pattern number 2.

Here's pattern number 3.

Here's pattern number 4.

Here's pattern number 5.

So try these pattern yourself and see if you can find a way to apply them in your own playing.

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