The event I went to was “Play The Blue In One Simple Lesson.” In this event a music professor at Baruch taught us the basic cords needed to successfully play the blues. She taught us that to play the blues we need to use the first, fourth, and fifth roots of a key. She then sat at the piano and played us an example of incorporating those roots into a Blues song. Then the fun part came. Each person in the room got a chance to sit at the piano and learn how to play the cords and even how to add more notes to them to make a simple chord sound more embellished. In the end we left learning more than just about the blues. We learned a technique musicians use to make the piano would like a harp. We learned how to do a glissando on the piano, which is when the musician slides their finger continuously up or down between two notes.
At first I was a little nervous to do this event because I thought we would be using complicated instruments. When I entered the room and there was only a piano I was relieved. This event was very enjoyable to me. The professor was very encouraging of us. The professor was also very patient with us and was open to answer what every questions we had about music in general or playing the blues specifically. This helped me to feel like there was no pressure to be perfect, and comfortable enough to actually be one of the first people to volunteer to try playing on the piano. This event was especially interesting for me because I haven’t played the piano since ending my music class senior year of high school. Doing this blues lesson was actually an eye opening event for me. It made me realize that because I haven’t practiced music in almost a year some of the knowledge was leaving me. After going to this event, I’m actually motivated again to keep learning and rehearsing my piano playing and music reading.