Paul Hirsh
jazz panpipe pioneer and designerRecent Comments
Author Archives: jazzpanflute
Diminished fourth? A Greek secret
I love listening to bouzouki players, especially when they improvise those rubato introductions to songs called taxim. They seem to be cramming semitones and augmented seconds wherever the fancy takes them. It wasn’t till I started playing some Greek pieces … Continue reading
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Serious noodling
The whole point of having an intuitive instrument is to be able to follow the promptings of your Inner Ear without having to stop and think. Which scale is this? What note am I starting from? And much less: which … Continue reading
The Philosophy of Fingering
Many moons have passed since I was last on speaking terms with film composers, so I was unable to ask John Williams if he was aware that his Imperial March for the latest Star Wars movie uses one of those … Continue reading
The elephant in the music room
This is a rant that I wrote some fifteen years ago, so some of the technological references are somewhat dated. But the rest still applies. Stop the ivories trade! Many young people who begin piano studies or who just fool around … Continue reading
Posted in Intuitive Instruments, Music Education, Scale Practice
Tagged Daskin keyboard, Janko keyboard, janko piano
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How do You Read Music?
Well, how do you read music? Western music notation is unique in having adapted essentially one and the same system to the task of notating for all musical instruments and voices. But does that mean we all read the same way? … Continue reading
Posted in Music Education, Musicianship
Tagged intervallic awareness, reading music, sightreading
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Chunking down on Scale Practice
Chunking down into N chunks reduces practice required by a factor of Nx where x is the number of possible chunk flavours Paul Hirsh (@jazzpanflute) Why do we need full-length scales? Or: why do the scales we practise always need to … Continue reading
MOVES to the rescue !
You would have thought that the bass guitar was one of the most logical and intuitive instruments around. It even beats the 6-string guitar because its tuning only uses fourths (=5 halfsteps), while the guitar slips in a stray major third … Continue reading
Posted in Mappings, Moves notation, Music Theory
Tagged bass guitar, chromatic patterns, diminished scale, Nicolas Slonimsky, Slonimsky
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Get your first scale free?
Remember all those collections they use to sell at the newsagents, offering you a free binder with the first instalment? As if you wouldn’t end up paying for it in the end! The idea was that once it was in … Continue reading
Inspiration
Hammond organ wizard Cory Henry says he gets his inspiration from Jesus. Does that mean that atheists can’t get inspiration? No doubt, connection with some “higher” power helps a lot of people. But what if even that, for you, is … Continue reading
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Tagged CC Sunchild, cory henry, inspiration, inspirational quotes, MonoNeon, Olivier Messiaen
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Weightlessness
Jazz education generally does its best to keep up with the latest trends in music, with thousands of teachers worldwide analysing classic performances and attempting to reverse-engineer them into exercises that you can try at home. Working always on the … Continue reading
Intervallic Awareness for Improvisers 