In an earlier blog I revealed that while I do enjoy listening to modern popular music, I don’t play it unless there is a purpose with my music teaching. I get it, this seems somewhat odd. I do have my reasons apart from genuinely enjoying playing classical music more than I have ever enjoyed playing modern or popular music.
So what is the main reason that puts me off playing modern music? The answer is that often the arrangements can range between ordinary and terrible. It seems rare for me to find I really good arrangement that I enjoy playing. This is just my opinion and my own personal preferences and you will find differing opinions.
There are actually reasons why I find modern music rather disappointing and unsatisfying to play. The main reason is that most modern music is not written primarily for piano, but rather a group of instruments and even those group of instruments are just the supporting or embellishing framework for the vocal part. Even Elton John’s catalogue of music which uses the piano quite heavily, if you take out the vocal parts, you are left with quite a repetitive series of chords. Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of Elton John’s music is very pleasant to listen to, but to just pick out one part of a number of instruments and play it as a solo does not interest me at all.
Another example I would like to discuss is Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. I really enjoy listening to this one because of its variety and uniqueness and yes, the piano parts are essential to the overall sound. However there is a fabulous electric guitar part and you can’t adequately replicate the electric guitar part on a piano – it just wouldn’t sound right. Again, it is really the vocal part that is the most important part of Bohemian Rhapsody, which is just not adequately interpreted by making it into a piano part.
As I revealed in another blog post, I genuinely enjoy listening to quite a variety of different types of music but I enjoy playing classical piano the best and the reasons are quite simple. The first and most important reason is that there is a lot of classical music that I really enjoy the sound of (and yes there are some pieces of music that I do not derive any pleasure from at all). The other main reason why I enjoy classical piano, is because they were originally written for a solo piano, not an ensemble of other instruments and we can play these pieces of music exactly they way the composer intended. We know that these pieces of music are exactly what the composer wrote as some of these pieces still exist in manuscripts that were personally written (or in some cases scribbled) by the composer. Modern composers of popular music wouldn’t be able to release their original compositions publicly simply to help protect their intellectual property from unauthorized use or being stolen outright.
Clearly, I have my reasons why I only choose to play classical music (at least, at this point in time) and I just don’t want to play modern music for the reasons I outlined earlier. This doesn’t mean that classical piano is better than modern, popular piano. It also doesn’t mean that my personal choices have to be your personal choices. You can agree with everything I have said here and still prefer modern piano music simply because that’s what you really want to play and that is what will give you maximum enjoyment from playing the piano.