Too many pianists seem to have forgotten that their instrument is classified as part of the percussion family. They spend so much energy and focus on the minute details, such as which note goes where, that they lose (or never get) the visceral connection with their instrument, the relaxed physicality that drummers have.

It’s no mystery why drummers tend to make the best jazz pianists. Listen to the great Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. He was originally a drummer, and you can always hear it in his playing. To be able to spontaneously craft beautiful melodies on the piano while functioning also as a percussionist is just one of the many tightropes you must learn to walk as a musician.

In the following metaphor I have used absolutes to make appoint strongly. I’ve minimized the important of individual notes in favor of the larger elements of rhythm and shape. Certainly this is an injustice to a more complex truth. Undeniably, tension and release, occurring as one melody note moves to the next, is a vital and emotional part of music.

However, much of the emotional content in music is to be found in its larger elements: the rhythms and the contours of the line as opposed to the individual notes.

If you want to express your emotions freely, you need to be able to focus your attention on those elements. And you can only do that when the smaller, mechanical tasks have been “hard-wired” into your hands. For instance, shifting scales as the harmony changes is not a creative act. It is largely a bookkeeping issue that should be delegated to your hands - it should become automatic.

In order to thoroughly program your hands to handle the mechanical aspects of playing, you need to spend years focusing on them - working out note-choice, fingering, and technique minutiae. And you need to know theory: the task of analyzing a tune for scale-choice (another non-creative act) should feel automatic. But all of this disciplined detail work is a means to an end, and you’ll progress much more quickly if you have a clear image of that end.

Image an odd-looking keyboard with keys, just two touch-sensitive drumheads where the keys used to be.

The drumheads are digital and there is also a built-in computer that can instantly analyze chord to determine the most appropriate improvising scales. You simply insert a card that has a recording of your style of playing, so the computer can adjust its scale analysis to match your style.

Before you play, you insert the sheet music into the data slot. During your solo you tap rhythms on the right drumhead, shifting your right and left to indicate higher or lower pitch. While your right hand is busy tapping, you comp on the other drumhead with your left hand -again, just by tapping the rhythm you want. The computer selects one of your favorite voicings for each chord. Your only concern is the rhythm.

Playing this piano is almost as easy as playing a set of bongo drums. You can express your rhythmic impulses freely through the instrument without the usual complications of being in the right key, making transitions from scale to scale, or searching for the right voicing.

Do you want to buy this piano? Sorry, it hasn’t been invented yet!

The point of this metaphor is to get you to envision what being a pianist is like after you’ve learned all your theory, scales, voicings, and other structure thoroughly. It’s a way for you to imagine the physical, loose, big-movement, conductor-like, drummer-like way of being at the instrument. It’s to help you keep that end vision in mind so that you don’t end up boxing yourself in. And it’s to remind you that the piano is a percussion instrument.

Copyright 2006 RAW Productions

Ron Worthy is a Music Educator, Pianist and Songwriter. If you wish to learn more by joining his Private Monthly Online Membership and/or purchase his Piano “Tricks of the Trade” DVD, please go to: http://www.playpianotonight.com

The delicate sounds of a ballerina music box, inlaid music box, musical jewelry box, or music trinket box is loved by many a music box and antique collector. Some collectors and lovers of mechanical music may not realize the interesting history that is part of the world of music boxes and mechanical music. Let’s discover what that is.

Attempts to create mechanical music reproductions really began in the third century B.C. Plato had an idea for making a water clock that would sound the hours of the night on pipes. He felt this was needed since darkness made it impossible to read the face of a clock. No one knows whether or not the clock was made, but it did reveal that interest to produce music automatically occurred very early in history. Singing birds and organs, which were worked hydraulically likely, were developed from Plato’s clockwork idea.

After clocks were invented in AD 1000, more advances were made. Soon carillons of bells were made which played simple tunes on a barrel. Next came the barrel organ, which had air for the organ coming from bells driven by clockwork.

One of the most basic elements of mechanical music is how storage of the music is in a barrel or sheet, both of which rally make the memory of the instrument. The music was then set on the barrel with pegs and pins and on the actual sheet as perforation or projections. When rotated steadily and evenly against the levers, the levers then played an organ or carillon.

In 1502, the first mechanical music was made in the form of a barrel organ. The most famous one was the organ made in Salzburg for L. Von Keutschach. It had 350 pipes from which music from a barrel was played. The organ only had one tune for centuries until Leopole Mozart composed 11 more in 1753. Now, only 9 tunes survive on the original barrel. Announced with a grand and might chord, the locals have nicknamed it the “Salzburg Bull”.

It is fascinating that mechanical music has been around for so many centuries. It puts a unique perspective on the history of collectibles such as music boxes, antique music boxes, ballerina music boxes, inlaid music boxes, musical jewelry boxes, and music trinket boxes.

Copyright 2006 Monique Hawkins

Monique Hawkins is the owner of Monique’s Music Box. Located at http://www.My-Music-Box.com is a music box gift store specializing in products such as inlaid music boxes, wooden keepsake boxes, ballerina music boxes for ballerina rooms décor, and musical jewelry boxes. The company also provides interesting information for music lovers of all ages.

Fan support for musicians is a two way street. You make the music, release the CDs, and play the shows. You need fans to show up at the gigs, buy the CDs, or spread the buzz about you or you don’t have an audience. When these two elements are out of balance, your musical endeavors can get sidelined.

That’s why it’s so important to always embrace the positive, well-meaning encouragement you receive from your fans. If I could sum up what fans want most of all from an artist, it’s not only to be reached through your work, but to also be able to reach back in return. It’s a great privilege for fans to give back something positive that the artists bring to us.

Here are three ways to keep that fan loyalty working for you:

1. Accept your performance compliments graciously. Maybe you had an off night. Maybe you didn’t feel you were in the pocket as often as you expected to be. If people come up to you and tell you they thought you were great, that is exactly what it means to them. They are there to be an encouragement for you. Even though you didn’t think you reached anyone, they felt you got through to them. So, don’t beat yourself up or diffuse it by saying how lousy you thought you were. Remember, the hearts’ desire of the fan is to reach you, too. Say thank you and show your appreciation.

Modesty is always an admirable trait–but don’t take it to the extreme. The fans who have spent the better part of a year or so communicating to you why they think you’re the best singer are going to feel badly if you say in an interview that you don’t have much confidence in your vocal abilities or your performance. That tells the fans they have not been successful in getting the message through to you. That can be very disappointing to fans and make them wonder, well, what’s the point of saying anything at all. And there you go, letting encouragement slip through your fingers.

2. Acknowledge your fan base. You can show some love to the fans by doing something to demonstrate that you are connecting with them. Think about a regular communication vehicle above and beyond, such as an email or online newsletter where you make direct communication with fans. If you have a message board on your website, try dropping in now and then just to say hi and let folks know you’re hearing them.

Here’s one “be aware” in this area, though. If you are one of those with a broad or growing popularity base, you have the challenge of keeping a lot of people who want to be noticed by you happy. It’s nice to recognize deserving fans on your websites and other communications. But if you mention the same people too often, it might create the impression of favoritism, which could possibly cause jealousy and hurt feelings among fans. If you do something for one, others might want it as well. So be sure it’s as much as you can handle. You would be surprised how many fans do know each other and compare notes!

Besides those fans that are particularly visible or diligently make themselves known, there can be others giving solid support for you behind the scenes. You probably are unaware of them because they may be a little more on the shy side, haven’t had the contact opportunities others have or just can’t seem to stick out enough for you to take notice. But that’s not to say they don’t want to hear they are appreciated. So do give credit to those who are due–doing that privately is nice, too. But, be sure you give ALL of your fans those “virtual group hugs” from time to time!

3. Keep communications current. If you have a website, keep it regularly updated. If you don’t show enough commitment to keep your information up to speed on gigs, recordings, features and all, people will stop coming by after a while. After all, how can fans encourage you when they don’t know where, when and how?

With all of the options that exist for communication between artists and fans, when it’s done in a positive, uplifting manner it’s a win-win situation for your career and for the people who are out there waiting to enjoy your gifts!

Wendy Vickers is a writer, encourager, life coach, speaker and author of two audiobooks: “Treasures In the Tip Jar: the Art of Awesome Fan Support” (from which this article is taken) and “Out of the Jar…And Into the World.” Wendy offers resources, encouragement and support for musicians at her websites http://wendyv.com and http://embraceencouragement.com

Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it. Now it is targeted to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele. Small companies use Small Business Manager (which is based on the same technology - Great Plains Dexterity dictionary and runtime), Great Plains Standard on MSDE is for small to midsize clients, and then Great Plains serves the rest of the market up to big corporations.

If you are developer who is asked: how do we customize Great Plains with its native programming language - Great Plains Dexterity - read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.

The history of the Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity - is proprietary programming language and technology, designed back to earlier 1990th with the goal to build platform independent graphical accounting package - Great Plains Dynamics. Dexterity itself is written in C (following popular those days hope - that C will provide platform independence). You can install Dexterity from Great Plains 7.5 CD #2. Obviously it requires a lot of learning / training, but it allows your custom piece be seamlessly integrated with Great Plains interface.

Native Dexterity Cursors. Dexterity was designed as platform independent programming language and so if you want your code to be operable on all currently supported databases - you use Dexterity ranges and loops to manipulate the records

Great Plains Dexterity with SQL Stored Procs Nowadays, most of Great Plains installations are moved to SQL Server - so you can use Dexterity for custom forms drawing only and make the buttons run SQL stored procedures.

COM Objects calls. Beginning with version 7.0 Dexterity supports COM objects - you register them as libraries in Dexterity. Refer the manual. This technique allows you to call such nice things as web services across the internet.

Dexterity Forms - if you like VBA and are comfortable to do all the business logic in VBA - you can use Dexterity as new forms creator/editor. This is OK - but you have to purchase VBA/Modifier and Customization Site Enabler from MBS.

Some restrictions. Great Plains is actually integration of multiple dictionaries: DYNAMICS.DIC, ADVSECUR.DIC, EXP1493.DIC, etc. In your Dexterity customization you can deal with one dictionary - DYNAMICS.DIC. If you need cross dictionaries customization - consider using SQL Stored Procs for crossing dictionary borders and pulling data/making changes in the other dictionary..

Happy customizing! if you want us to do the job - give us a call.

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York and having locations in multiple states and internationally www.albaspectrum.com, he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

akarasev@albaspectrum.com

1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com