Big Thanks to Classic Pianos of Portland!

Without their help, this recording project would not have been possible. They let me use their recital space with a gorgeous 9′2″ Schimmel concert grand free of charge, and they even tuned it! Support them by visiting their website: http://www.classicportland.com/ and giving all your piano-related business to them. Special thanks to Maurice Unis, the president of Classic Pianos, and Peggie Zackery for setting everything up and being a pleasure to work with.

Iconoclassic Cover Art

In between albums and singles

Because I’m not writing music that the norm of 4 to 6 minutes per track, it doesn’t make much sense to release singles. Elegy is about three minutes, Sonata No. 2 is about twelve, and 24 Sketches is twenty minutes or so split into several tiny tracks. If I had my way, I’d sell each piece as a whole, individually priced, but the music distribution business doesn’t exist like that, and each piece isn’t long enough to justify being an entire album.

Iconoclassic (Simon Bielman, Volume I)

At the moment, I have 31 minutes of recorded music, and a full album should be around 75 minutes. Volume I will contain the recordings I did this week and live music that will be performed on August 11th at The Old Church. This means my music won’t be available online at the beginning of August like I’d hoped, but it will be well worth the wait. Also, I’m adjusting the concert program a little bit to get some new material for the album.

The New Plan

So, the goal is for the store to be up and running mid-August. This has been a good lesson for me to take my time. Don’t worry, there will be a big parade with elephants and giraffes when everything’s finally online. (BYO giraffes+elephants.)

Stickied Posts/Events:

Purchase Iconoclassic Contains: Sonata No. 2, Op. 7, Elegy for Solo Piano, Op. 6a, 24 Sketches, Op. 12, Sonata No. 1, Op. 4, Etudes, Op. 10 no. 1, 5, 6 by Frederic Chopin, Le Tombeau de Couperin by Maurice Ravel.

The key action in a grand piano is very complex.

Finger movements need to have control, speed, and power behind them. So, I’ll start practicing by doing some warm-ups: scales up and down for dexterity, ostinato (repeated) chords for strength and endurance, double third scales (two notes at a time per hand) for finger control, and several other exercises. After blood flow gets going and I feel like I can tear a phonebook in half with surgical precision, it’s time to play.

To learn a difficult piece well takes work with a metronome. I’ll start very slowly (as slow as a quarter of the tempo), making sure all of my motions are efficient. As I speed up, it takes more concentration to make sure everything works; a fingering pattern could be too busy to control at high speeds, so I’ll have to slow back down and readjust. This takes a lot of patience and I’ll often spend hours on one or two pages to make sure I’m playing it well. All of this applies to warm-ups and memorizing new music.

Exercises from Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist
look like this, and they’re really boring.

Good piano playing takes more than pushing the right buttons at the right time. When you push a key, a hammer flies forward to hit some strings (one to three strings, depending on the register). Now, if you were to suddenly force a jammed dresser drawer open, you’ll get a loud noise and its contents will jumble around. The same thing applies to pressing a key at the piano; if you hit the key in an awkward way or forced way, that energy transfers into the hammer and ultimately into the string, which will vibrate in an unusual way and produce bad tone. None of this applies to electronic keyboards, which is why I act like a piano snob and demand to practice on accoustic instruments.

At some point, I need to start making music! Once I can physically play a piece, it’s time to think about phrasing, dynamics (volume levels), playing around with tempo, and putting some real artistry into it. This part never ends, and it’s the reason I’m a musician. If I were playing nothing but Beethoven, playing his music “correctly” would already be explained in a textbook somewhere… but I want to make my own music, so Beethoven is off the table! I’m also a composer, after all.

That’s about it. Next up, I’ll write an article about turning music making into actual dollars which, in turn, turn into food and rent money. What a concept!

Some site updates: Articles on the front page are now shown in full, no longer in short summaries. That should be more convenient! Also, if you visit the homepage, you’ll notice a neat events calendar on the left side of the page. Every public event will be there, including the two new ones listed in the article below.

Events:

Music & Coffee: If you’re in the Southeast Portland area and love coffee and music, stop by Oblique Coffee Roasters on July 30th or Rimsky-Korsakoffee’s on July 26th to hear me playing some solo piano.

From the Composer:

Elegy for Brass Quintet, Op. 6: This sombre piece was written for a brass quintet (two trumpets, trombone, french horn, and tuba), but I liked it so much I also made an arrangement for solo piano. (Audio samples available!)
24 Sketches, Op. 12: These short pieces are what you get when you set an egg timer for 30 minutes and start writing. Originally started as an exercise, this collection of sketches in every key goes to some interesting musical places. (Audio samples available!)

Blog:

Elitism and Classical Music: I’m fighting an uphill battle to “unbrand” myself from the image of the distant concert pianist. How can I play and write the music I’m passionate about without appearing pretentious and snooty? Read this article and please voice your own opinion!