Education and research

Education & research services in the fields below are offered both:
– online
– face to face

Skill areas:
– Aural and harmony
– Analysis
– Music history
– Piano tuition

How can Emotemuse help you?
– Tuition
– Research and analysis

Contact


 

THE CRAFT OF THE MUSICAL LANGUAGE
Greg Smith completed a Bachelor of Music (Honours Class I) at the University of Newcastle in 2001. He was awarded a University Medal. Awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award, he undertook a Master of Creative arts, which he completed in 2003, studying performance practice issues in Russian Piano Music. This study was focused around the music of composers such as Arensky, Kabalevsky, Liadoff, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Scriabin, Shostakovich, Sorokin and Tchaikovsky.

Greg lectured in academic studies (harmony, aural and history) at the Faculty of Music, University of Newcastle, from 2000-2005. He also taught at Avondale college in 2006, and has since tutored privately.

Education & research services in the fields below are offered both:
– online
– face to face

Skill areas:
Aural & harmony: Greg Smith has developed a unique approach to training the ear. Using this approach, students can quickly learn to:
– notate melodies
– identify and notate cadences
– identify and notate harmonic progressions

BROWSE EMOTEMUSE ONLINE EDUCATION

Analysis: Musical analysis from works of all genres

Music history: Understanding the personalities of composers and the culture from which their music grew, not just through serious study, but also through sometimes humorous accounts of their lives.
Browse:
– articles
quotes
anecdotes

How can Emotemuse help you?

  • Collaborative research: are you researching a related field of the arts and require some input from the musical perspective

THE CRAFT OF THE PIANO
PIANO TUITION
Piano lessons for all ages and levels is offered in NSW, Australia.
– Undertake exams or just learn for pleasure.
– Variety of styles: classical and jazz
– improvisation
Enquire about piano tuition

Piano method:
A new approach for the beginning pianist. The works are of incremental difficulty. They are designed to:
– encourage ensemble playing;
– promote equality between the left and right hands, bass and treble clefs
– focus from an early stage on expressive elements such as shape of phrase, dynamics, and articulations
– elements such as syncopation are introduced at a fairly early stage.

More about the Piano Method.


Featured Content

Who needs four strings anyway?
In his work Le Streghe (The Witches), the virtuoso violinist Paganini would use scissors to reduce the number of strings on his violin throughout the piece, until he would be left playing the work on just the G string. Source: Haylock, Julian, “Nicolo Paganini”, Classic FM, December 2009, p. 41.
Playing with fantasy
“Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” – Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology Quoted at QuotationsBook  
The fire of knowledge
“When teaching, light a fire, don’t fill a bucket.” – Dan Snow, television presenter. Cited at QuotationsBook  
How not to get an audience
Satie’s ballet Relâche (1924) had trouble pulling a crowd: the title translates as “this performances is cancelled”. Source: Lawrence, Christopher (2001) Swooning.  Sydney: Random House, p.70.
The best of every man
“I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.” – William Yeats, Deirdre
The London Proms in the 1930s
A recollection of the London Proms in 1936: The behavior of the Promenaders was more genteel in those days … there wasn’t the same degree of shouting as now.  During the famous hornpipe in Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs people tapped with their umbrellas and sticks, rather than stamping.  As the applause went […]
Submit file for audio to text transcription
Notes: If you have multiple files to upload, either compress them to a single .zip file or submit a form for each file). If you get an error message during upload, your file size may be too large. Trying compressing the file as a .zip file. Alternatively, get a free Dropbox account, upload the file, […]
Sondheim on audiences
“I do think audiences become more sophisticated. You try something out on them and they say, “Ugh”. You try it a second time and they say, “Oh”. You try it a third time and they say, “Ooh”. You try it a fourth time and they say, “Oh, that’s awfully old hat.”’ He laughs. ‘That’s the […]
Ringo Starr
Is Ringo Starr the best drummer in the world? He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles. Reporter and John Lennon. Source: Jarski, Rosemarie (2005) Great British Witt.  London: Ebury Press, p.257.
Anxiety
“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity”. — Chuck Jones, animator Goleman, D., Kaufman, P., & Ray, M. (1993) The Creative Spirit. New York: Plume.