Today’s post continues renowned composer Christopher Norton’s series here on my blog. Christopher suggests helpful practice tips and advice for one of his pieces, which can be downloaded for free; In The Spirit comes from the highly successful series, Connections For Piano.
You can read more articles in this series, here.
Connections for Piano has been very popular since its launch in 2007. It is a major part of the new Royal Conservatory syllabus in Canada as well as being a feature of many other syllabuses, festival programmes, and competitions around the world.
Connections: this series is the best and most complete series for ALL levels (up to RCM 10!) and has so many pieces in varying styles. Truly worth it!!
Royal Conservatory Piano Teacher
Connections features a variety of pop and jazz styles, with (free) backing tracks available online. It is also available on Superscore (look for superscore-music on the App store).
There are 11 Connections levels – Preparatory, then 1-10. All Connections books are available from www.80dayspublishing.com. Look for the piano tab!
Download your free copy of In The Spirit by clicking on the link below:
In The Spirit by Christopher Norton
In the Spirit is a country gospel-style piece in shuffle style (I am a son of the manse), with rather striking questions and answers – right hand answered by left hand. The backing track (available by clicking the link below) tells the student a lot about the style. With the track playing or someone else playing the piece, try tapping the basic bass drum and snare drum pattern on your legs!
FINGERING is also very important in this piece. The right hand fingering always signposts a change of position, the left hand helps the articulation.
PHRASING and ARTICULATION are very specific. The left hand mirrors the right hand phrasing-wise – a good exercise! The main figure is very specifically articulated; if you get bar 1 you have most of the piece. Three-note slurs always start with a drop and finish with a rise. Longer phrases should always be well shaped. The piece could be tapped entirely so that the rhythms are clear in the student’s mind. Listen to the composer playing In the Spirit. Don’t forget that composer performances of ALL of Connections 3 are available by clicking here.
The chords in In The Spirit in functional terms, are:
SIMPLE IMPROVISING ON IN THE SPIRIT
Using the E flat pentatonic major, with the track, try improvising your own melodies over the first 4 bars:
Some ideas:
- make up a 2-bar idea and repeat it up an octave
- make up a 2-bar idea and “answer” it with a different idea
- play more than one note sometimes (2-note chords)
- try longer ideas
Try continuous swung eighth notes, grace notes and pedal notes. Start with a rhythm:
- Use the drum pattern to start your own ideas
Make up your own rhythm patterns and build ideas on them.
In The Spirit left hand voicing for the A section (with some scale ideas):
Subscribe to Christopher’s YouTube channel, here. In the following video, Christopher performs and talks about In The Spirit, which is from Connections Book 3:
