Tag: composition

  • “Composer-Performer”. Lost in freedom

    While traveling and visiting different schools in Europe, I noticed, that these days classical guitar teachers let students to improvise and compose their own piece more than before. That’s a very good tendency! I do it regularly with my students already for several years. Recently I gave a lecture, during which I spoke to teachers…

  • The way to learn

    Thought about improving my piano playing skills and… Wrote a “waltz” piece for piano solo! 🙂 One of the ways to learn any instrument is to “talk” to it, to discover it and to understand how it works (how sound is produced). Then to write a small easy pretty piece for it. That’s how that…

  • How to cope with unfamiliar…

    … STYLE. Want to imitate a certain style of music? I found a few basic ways how is possible to do that, put them in a step by step way and would like to share it with you. Learn which instruments (1) are used to make music in that style. Which rhythms (2) are typical?…

  • Presentation

    Preparing a presentation for Tallinn Guitar Festival. In that presentation I will try to show the importance of teaching composition to small kids and adults. Looking back in history, when each player was also a composer, and learning from our predecessors is an access to a lot of joy when playing an instrument.

  • Looking back

    I remember how my jazz guitar teacher, who also gave me my first lessons in composition, told me: “Dmitri, write down all your musical ideas and melodies, never throw them away – you might need them in future.” So I did. Recently, looking through old papers, I found an entire piece that I wrote in 2014,…

  • A piece to record

    Soon, in the end of June, will be recorded and published my guitar duo piece “Un Rêve”. Inspired a little bit by Indian pop music, as well as African rhythms it was written in 2016 winter, when I was living in Geneva. The theme was written while I was watching out of my 5th floor…

  • The power of music

    Someone can impress you for a several of times with a perfect technique, virtuosity, drumming, strumming and all other athletic stuff on an instrument. But it’s all is short-lasting. The real power of a piece is in a melody. A melody, that is singable, swinging and expressive. If you are able to write such a…

  • Purpose of music

    I would like my music to serve at least three purposes: 1. To be educational (that it would contain information about a distant places and cultures; connected to history) 2. That it would have something, that one can think of and discuss, as well as 3. Purely for aesthetical pleasure while listening to it (relaxing,…

  • My favorite composition technique is…

    … a DIALOG. It opens many opportunities how to compose a piece as well as puts certain game rules. In case of a two instrument composition it is very beautiful when one instrument “asks” and other “answers”, one “proposes” and other “rejects” or “accepts”.

  • Reserve some time for…

    I had a chance to study with very good musicians. One of them was my orchestration teacher. He taught me to pay more attention to instrumentation and orchestration. Through him I again discovered the art of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (couple of year ago I visited his home – now a museum, – in Saint-Petersburg, sensed a…