New Haiku Book by Edward Weiss

Hello everyone. I've published a book of haiku poetry titled "Seashore Haiku!" If you like haiku and are looking for a great gift for yourself or friends and family, please take a look.

Creating Your Own Compositions

The idea of actually creating a complete piece of music to play frightens many students. They just don't understand how someone could come up with something, put it down on paper, and call it their own.

The good news is that you don't need to read music to compose. All you need is to understand a little about chords and musical phrases.

For example, in the lesson "Reflections in Water," we have 4 chords to create with. We have the order in which the chords are to be played - and then we play, creating an entire piece of music.

Click here to read the rest of this article!

How to Jump Chords Up the Keyboard to Create a Free-Flowing Sound!

Chord jumping is a simple technique that allows you to use much of the piano. You simply take a chord and "move it" up the keyboard.

Now, I'm not talking about inversions here, although there's nothing wrong with inversions. I'm talking about taking a simple chord structure and just using the entire piano to create with. Here's what I mean.

Take the lesson "Coral Reef" for example. Here we have 2 chords, A minor and F Major. The beauty of only having 2 chords for this improvisation exercise is...

Click here to read more!

Creating a Broken-Chord Piano Improvisation

There are really only two ways you can play chords on the piano - solid or broken. While solid chords are nice, it's the arpeggio or broken chord that students love to play! Cascading notes shimmer and glide up and down the piano keyboard to create a waterfall of sound!

Creating a broken chord piano improvisation need not be difficult. All that you need to know is what chords to play and how to create the broken chord sound. Knowing the chords you will play is the easy part. Creating the broken chord sound can present some with problems. These problems can be easily overcome if we start out by using a special chord structure known as the open position chord.

Click here to read the rest of this article!

How to Improvise a Complete Piano Piece Using Just 2 Chords!

Most people think you need to learn sophisticated chords and lots of them to play "good" piano music. Wrong! You don't need to learn 100's and even thousands of chords you'll never use. What's perfect for the beginner and experienced player too is to limit choice!

Just a few chords, a scale to improvise in, and we're off creating a world of sound! For example, take the lesson "Winter Scene." Here we have 2 chords played by the left hand. We use a certain pattern to play these chords with and we've created a harmonic background. All that's left to do now is to add in the melody (foreground) and that's it - an improvisation that can last as long as the improviser is in the present moment and the music remains fresh.

Click here to read more!

Painting With Sound

Whenever I go to a Borders bookstore here in San Diego, I make it a point to look at the art instruction books. I'm not a visual artist, but I've always enjoyed the step-by-step approach authors of the better books take to teach students how to create a finished painting.

I've always wondered why music instruction couldn't be more like this... Click here to read more!

How to Quickly and Easily Block out Entire Sections of Music

Most of you don't want to go to college and learn theory, harmony, and composition techniques. Not only is it tedious and for the most part -boring, but it's also unnecessary.

That is, if you want to compose atonal music or whatever the latest fad in academia is, go to college. If you want to capture your ideas and quickly put them down on paper, you only need to learn how to think in phrases!

This is what most improvisers/composers do anyway. For example, many of you have heard me speak of using 8-bar phrases as a cornerstone to both improv and composition. Why? Because it's a very easy space to work in! You can very quickly complete 8-bars and have both your theme and the first section of music.

Click here to read more!

Animals and Music

Sometimes when I'm playing the piano, my cat Snowy hops up right onto the top. I don't know if this is a possesive thing or what, but I assume he wants to get closer to the music.

I've always wondered how animals "feel" or experience music but my hunch is they enjoy it as much as we do.

What about you? Do you have any animal stories unique or plain you'd like share? Please add your comments.