Mizue's Blog

This blog is for advanced students who are ready to learn or want to get better at modal scales. In this blog, I would like to recommend singing modal scales to get familiar with the sound of each modal scale. Modal scales are 7 different scales that start from 7 different step degrees (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII) of any major scale. Below are 7 different modal scale names and where they start from. 

• Ionian (starting from the 1st note of a major...

Beginner piano students always get confused about reading notes in the treble clef and notes in the bass clef. They ask me why the notes are not read the same way in both clefs. But it's actually easy. Try this: Rotate your sheet music or music book that has both clefs on it clockwise 90 degrees. If you do so, it's going to look like the 1st drawing on this page. You see the 10 lines (5 lines for bass clef and 5 lines for treble clef) vertically now. 

I drew a...

If you've started learning how to read music, please remember. Of course, it's essential to be able to name individual notes on the staves. But being able to read intervals is even more critical. Piano players, for example, are playing more than 1 note at a time all the time. Sometimes you may need to read and play 8 notes at once, 4 notes with the right hand and another 4 notes with the left hand. Do you think you have time to name each individual note? Of course not. This is...

People who notice they are not good at reading rhythms usually think that they are not as good at it as other people. But the reality is that reading rhythms is a lot harder than reading music notes for everyone because rhythms happen in time. For notes, you can stop, think, and name the note (if you are allowed to stop and think.) But for rhythms, if you stop, you are already incorrect because the rhythm is gone. 

Everyone who is studying reading music needs to learn...

I live and teach music on the West Coast of the U.S. In the West Coast. There are all kinds of people living here, including a lot of immigrants from all over the world. It's delightful to run into people from different cultural and musical backgrounds. But I don't think West Coast is the only place in the world that is a melting pot. More and more places (especially cities) in the world are becoming a melting pot. And I strongly feel that music teachers need to be more...