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Mirror Image Piano Exercises - Piano Drill for Dexterity Used by Chick Corea\r
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Chick Corea: Its an old tango. Annas Tango. I thought that would be a nice intro to this. Were going to talk about as a basis for our chat, this book that we published ourselves, many many years ago, called A Work in Progress. What the book was, when I put it together, was an attempt to just write down the way I do things. People ask questions. Musicians ask questions. How do you did this? How do you write? How do you put a band together? So forth, and what ever. \r
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The thing that I want to get across is, in music everyone does it the way they do it. Its a subjective thing. Its an art form. So I thought the best that I could offer, in terms of answers, is the way I do things. So this is the way I do things. I call it my hat write up. My musicians hat. So we have the new version of the musician hat, A Work in Progress, by the time we do this in March. The new revisions. \r
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Thats what its going to be about. Theres all this stuff in here. We can talk about whatever we want to talk about. Lets see. You know personal policies as a musician, playing the piano, comping, accompaniment, making time, talking about tempo and rhythm, composing. Thats some things that are in the book. \r
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I thought it would be interesting to take up this one thing. I put a revision in the book under, I call it the Basics. Playing the piano. This is in the chapter, Playing the Piano. I came across an interesting thing many years ago, that I find is not commonly known, but its a way of looking at the keyboard, because the keyboard -- theres the keyboard. Youve got all these white notes, [Plays notes.] \r
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Then all these black notes [Plays notes.] \r
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If you see how theyre arranged [Plays notes.] \r
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Theres an octave. From C to C. [Plays notes.] \r
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Thats an octave. Its kind of unevenly arranged, if you look at it. Theres 5 notes there, 6 notes there. Theres another bunch of notes here. Its a little -- its not like this. But there is a way to view the keyboard in a mirror image. Where it gets divided exly in half. And all you have to do is look at the A flat [Plays note] or the D [Plays notes.] \r
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And all of a sudden you have a mirror image, a complete mirror image. If you look this way from the A flat, and this way, from the A flat, youll see a mirror image. [Plays notes.] \r
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Graphically, that is. And its a great reference point because -- I dont know if this was thought of when this construction of the keyboard was put together, or whenever it was, but if you think about it, most living things, especially the human body, is a mirror image. Make a line down the middle, theres the two hands. \r
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Its a mirror image. Divide the mirror in half. Its a mirror image. The hands fit on the keyboard exly as a mirror image. You know how you -- when you do exercises, you might exercise one side, but then you balance it out by exercising the other size because its a mirror image. You do exercises like that. Cause you have to balance the body. With the piano, its the same thing. you want to keep both hands going. Usually were brought up where one hand is stronger than the other. Usually the right hand. This exercise and using this principle is a way to strengthen any phrase that you want to strengthen by turning it into a mirror image. Let me show you what I mean. Theres a D [Plays note.] \r
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One of the exercises that I wrote, simple exercise, with the five fingers. \r
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You put [Play note] this note here, [Play note] that note there. \r
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See, its a mirror image. Thats a D [Plays note]. The hands fit on it like this, the five fingers. Thats a mirror image sound. You see that? So youve got five fingers and theres a book that I used to- that my piano teacher, when I was 8 years old, Salvatore Sullo, from Boston. Classical pianist. Wonderful guy. He used to laugh at jazz. When I went and auditioned for Sulo, I played [Plays song] \r
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He sat there snickering, Haha thats that Dizzy Gillespie music! But anyway, he was a cool guy, he introduced me to these Italian books called the Rossomandi. I dont even know if they make them anymore. I have this tattered copy. They have these mirror image exercises in there. This was the first one. It was [Plays notes.] \r
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You know, [taps fingers.] Thats all it is [Plays Notes.] But the shape of the keyboard, shapes the ex shape of the hand. Its a mirror image. You can do all sorts of things with that, you can go [Plays notes.] .
