Micek Music

-- My teaching schedule for the month of June will be uninterrupted. -- The  Summer Piano/Guitar Recital  is scheduled for the afternoon of  Sunday, June 27 . Every participating student needs to include the $10 recital fee with their payment for June lessons. Further details on the start time of the performance groups are forthcoming. -- My  " Ear Power"  program continues this month. I will no longer be printing out the template pages for this ongoing work. Students who wish to participate should at the beginning of each month print their own fresh copy at home. The template is here . A link to this and notation for all past songs of the month will be permanently placed on the upper right side of my main website (click on the headphones).  -- You can download a copy of our song for May - "Down" by Jay Sean - using the link at the bottom of this post. The  Ear Power  song for the months of June/July 2010 will be: “1, 2, 3, 4” by Plain White T's Down - Ja

Further discoveries: - The verse melody begins with the notes D D C# C# D (pitches correspond with the lyric "You ought to know").  - The chorus melody begins with the notes D D E F# F# D (pitches for the lyric "So baby don't worry") - The chord progression does vary. I am encouraging some students to play the simple progression - |   IV   |   I   |   V   |   vi   | - for the whole song. Other students who are more ambitious/advanced have been tasked with determining where the occasional iii chord is mixed in. We'll work it all out by the end of the month. A personal musing: - Jay Sean is not a poet. But he makes the ladies swoon.

I was unable to work much on this song with students in the first week. However, there are a few details I covered that are worth noting: - The song is in the key of D Major - The verse is comprised of 16 measures (same as the Train song from last month) - Although there is some variation in the chord progression throughout the song, one could play this simplified progression the whole way and it would sound just fine: |  IV   |  I   |  V   |  vi   | More to come this week. Some personal asides: - Jay Sean is the latest prince of melisma - Even if you can't stand this song, "Down" is an earworm and it will get stuck in your head 

-- My teaching schedule for the month of May will be uninterrupted save the May 31 Memorial Day holiday. I will not be teaching on Monday the 31st. -- The Summer Piano/Guitar Recital is scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, June 27 . It will be held in the recital hall at Cal State East Bay. Please save the date. -- The inaugural month of my " Ear Power"  program was a great success! Almost all of my students learned how to play the song "Hey, Soul Sister" by Train. It was a lot of fun. I decided to notate this song to cap off our work this month. You can download a copy via the link at the bottom of this post. Let's keep this train rollin' along: The  Ear Power  song for the month of May 2010 will be: “Down” by Jay Sean