The transformative power of classical music | Benjamin Zander | TED
Why Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange recommends it
Music Stack Exchange answerers point people to it for a vivid demonstration of phrasing and musical direction, plus an accessible view of how harmony wanders and returns.
Recommended by 3 people across 3 different months, 2014 to 2017.
What it is
A 2008 TED talk by conductor Benjamin Zander on his love of classical music and on helping people discover their own connection to it. He uses live piano demonstrations, including a student-style performance that is reshaped step by step, to show how phrasing and long-range musical direction work.
What people said
Strong rec Gauthier · 2016-04 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “How to give music a sense of "musical direction"?”
Rather than "trying a bit" on every note, I think the musicality of going forward lies in the ability to see the big picture, and phrasing according to a larger context. If you think of speech, reading poetry aloud beautifully is at least as much in the melody of a whole sentence or a whole poem, as just in pronouncing the syllables beautifully. More than that, I think concentrating on every note makes you lose the larger context, and lose the "going somewhere". I cannot put it better than Benjamin Zander, whose video I probably watched 15 times: Zander's illustration of how a beginner plays and phrases, then stepwise evolves through the year, is just marvelous. It's very relevant to "going
Recommends T. C. · 2014-06 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “Learning to create melodies”
As you listen to music analytically (especially music you like), there are various patterns and things you'll discover, which will help you learn how to write melodies. For example, it's obvious that in many pieces, a melodic phrase spans a number of bars that's divisible by the number 4. If you can pin down the 4 parts of some such melodies (that you like, of course), you can figure their role in the melody. I noticed rather early, for example, that I really favored melodies where the first and the second part are the same, except for the last note [LINK] . You may find some such patterns that work for you, as well. Also, as you might have noticed already, movements in semitones are great f
Recommends SpiderShlong · 2017-05 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “How to notate this progression with text”
@DavidBowling you're absolutely right, as far as modern music is concerned you can just call that chord a Gsus4 and be done with it. The problem I have with that is it doesn't tell much about the "wander & return" trend that makes the building blocks of harmony. Here's a great video that touches on this topic: [this video]