Genre Analysis Draft 2

The Art of the Piano and its Music Connotation

The piano has been around since the late 17^th century but in today’s society, people have been forgetting the intrinsic value of just the piano and a vocal or the lyrics that can convey a true message. Playing the piano can express many different types of emotions depending what song is being played or even the type of environment a person is in. There are various ways to create your own technique in experiencing the full effect of playing the piano. Playing the piano can evoke many emotions in how a person plays, personal experiences, and the music connotation of the piece itself.

In the article, "The Art of Reflection in Music Learning", by Beverly Lapp from American Music Teacher, explains the experiences of the student’s techniques, motivations and experiences with playing the piano. Lapp is a professor of music at the Goshen College, where she teaches piano, piano pedagogy and music theory. She’s also on the Board of Trustees for the Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy. She explains that she’s trying a new teaching practice with an online journal component where the students periodically respond to questions regarding how playing piano makes them feel, their inspiration to play, and their method of playing. One student named Samuel wrote, “Another high point … is that floating, blissful feeling, often when I practice at night … when time slips away and the whole world is simply the smooth black frame of the piano and the music issuing forth from it; the only sound is my voice flowing through my dancing fingers” (Lapp, 1). This shows how someone can lose themselves in the music and really feel how the keys sound and the music they’re playing is a form of art. Another student, named Renee, wrote about her source of motivation, “Having been raised in a small close knit community in the art music has always been something have highly valued, the main reasons I love piano is simply because of the connections I draw between the music the instrument creates and who I am and where I have come from” (Lapp, 3). People find different motivations to play regardless of skill level or to improve themselves for a personal achievement. Lapp formatted her academic journal in a multi paragraph sequence of quoting a student’s work and explaining the assignment that they were given. Her writing style is not hard to follow because as a teacher, she wanted the journal assignments to be more about the students in how to think more critically and tying together their individual work and what they are learning. Lapp wanted to help students assess and learn how important it is to practice no matter what skill level you are. She states that most of the non-music majors in her class are taking piano after taking some time away, having stopped lessons around middle school or early high school years. (Lapp, 3) Her main messages is to encourage those practicing playing the piano to not take the privilege for granted, to know what techniques work best for them, and how playing can help them in their near future. Someone who knows practice to its full extent is a singer, songwriter and pianist, Alicia Keys.

At the Super Bowl in 2013, Alicia Keys sang the National Anthem with her signature style of just her and the piano. Keys has been playing the piano since she was seven years old. What makes her the great song writer that she is today, how she learned to twist the chords to her favorite songs, play it backwards, and experiment with how it sounds. With the visual of Alicia Keys singing and playing at the Super Bowl 2013, she sets the tone herself by the way she performs.  The reader can easily see the emotions that Keys displays as she’s feeling the music and is in the zone of the song, even as it is the National Anthem. In comparison to Lapp’s academic journal, the visual provides an open interpretation rather than reading what other people experience when playing the piano. As big as Alicia Keys is, she started off just as a typical piano student just like everyone else. The more experience and practice she put in, she got the outcome of success. She pursues great power when she sings and exudes her dedication to a song whenever she performs no matter how big the crowd is. Within that big crowd, one person may experience music connotation.

            Virginia Reston “On Music” from Connect for Education states that music influences our feelings, thoughts, and actions. “On Music” is a website from California State University Sacramento, a music appreciation class that is online for non-music majors. Reston’s main purpose is to inform, educate, and improve the skills of musical history and instruments dating back from the early 17^th century to the present. Unlike the visual and the academic journal, “On Music” consists of a lecture format with audio and visual aids. The writing style is simple but with very technical music terms. In section one, part three, Reston states, that music’s main function with its subtle and sometimes not so subtle ability to evoke conscious or subconscious feeling, mental images and physical states in the listeners. The connection between music and its function is called music connotation, where a person hears the music and a mental reference to an event is automatically triggered. Each individual has certain connotation on the music that they listen to, similar to how people interpret the same painting but get a different opinions on what they see. Same goes for how people perceive what makes books, articles, or news interesting, depending on the persons preferences

            I think what makes a particular text effective is the use of imagery, whether it’s with an actual picture or the amount of details helps the reader picture a scene as I’m reading the text. One of Lapp’s students wrote, Samuel about how when he practices there’s a high point with a feeling of bliss when the time slips away from him and the world is just him and the piano and the only sounds are what’s being played by his dancing fingers. I can really picture what it was like when he was practicing by himself and to really feel the music and that nothing else around him mattered.

Of the three documents that I chose, the most effective was Beverly Lapp’s academic journal, "The Art of Reflection in Music Learning", because with a lot of her students I can relate to because I play the piano as well. Also the journals written by the students kept me interested in what they were going to say about how the practice, or how they feel when they play or what got them started to practice playing the piano. One of the students named Celia said, “Whenever I play the piano what gets me to practice is the fact that I know how to play. Out of my entire family nobody knows how to play the piano. I do not want to lose this ability.” I too am the only one in my family to play the piano and I don’t want to forget what I have learned. I can easily relate to many of the students writing which made it more interesting to read to see what they got out of playing the piano and why they play. The text that was least effective for me was the visual of Alicia Keys singing at the 2013 Super Bowl because it was open for interpretation. People can read things with a positive, negative or optimistic approach. The right side picture shows how into the National Anthem Keys is and how powerful she is when she sings, but some people might say that she was faking the emotions as she was singing, or that it looked like she was screaming not singing. Although the source is the same, the same visual, people’s perception of the world may be different which causes “open for discussion” type of atmosphere when looking at the same object.

Texts from the same genre are not always similar because depending on the author’s background, their views may be different or their intended audience are not the same, therefore the tone and writing style varies to satisfy the readers. Music for instance, if someone was writing an article about how music is in today’s society and one author was a man in his mid-sixties wrote about Eminem and Justin Timberlake, their article on mainstream music would sound a lot different compared to someone from age eighteen to twenty, they’d possibly have more of a positive thing to say about those artists and how the influence the music industry. But still they would have one thing in common, its theme of mainstream music.

The relationship between different texts is how they relate back to a similar theme. There are many styles of writing and not one is right or wrong, it would still convey a general theme in the article, book or webpage. The message of a text that an author is trying to express to the reader can be different because of the authors point of view, their background or their target audience is. A message can be similar but in how an author says it can also vary depending on the writing style, the tone and how it is laid out, and if it’s easy to understand. Most people read what’s appealing to their own personal interests because of a certain author they like, the genre of writing or the popularity of that book or series.

I believe the types of texts we read do impact us individually because what we read is what interests a person, I wouldn’t want to read something, outside of school, that doesn’t interest me. What we read shapes us because, for girls, some may like to read fashion magazines because they like to keep up to date with the latest styles or some may like to read fantasy books because they like the unrealistic attribute to it to get away from reality. As a society, I think more about the news and how the society should care about what’s going on worldwide and what’s happening in a person’s own backyard. I think people can learn from what they read and see but cannot become it unless it’s a motivational video or book, then a person can become a better student, or learn how to lose weight, whatever that text is trying to promote. Reading and seeing what interests us is for our own brains stimuli to retain, be motivated or enjoy.