As you know, this lesson is about finding your voice,
exploring your creativity, and really opening up
the possibilities for songwriting and for expressing yourself with freedom.
I wanted to start with a little story.
Suzanne and I felt maybe we should give you
a little insight into our personal journeys with music,
and with expressing ourselves, and letting go of inhibition.
When I was about maybe five I was in primary school.
And my teachers were presenting a song at an amazing event,
and they were singing a song that I knew very well.
But one of my teachers was singing this different line-- different melody.
I couldn't figure out what she was doing, but it sounded amazing.
So I went up to her and I said, explain to me what that was.
And she told me it was a harmony, and that blew my mind.
So I went home, and my parents had a Dictaphone,
and I took it and I recorded that same little song, about five or six bars,
and I started experimenting.
And that's really when I knew I loved experimenting with the human voice.
And today I'm majorly into a capella music.
And it's my life.
It's my passion.
I'm living my dream, thanks to those beautiful experiences from childhood.
My childhood wasn't terribly pleasant.
I had a lot of illnesses, and I was hospitalized a few times.
I remember my parents driving me home from the hospital,
and I was going to have to stay in bed for an extended period of time
to recuperate.
And, of course, I was feeling quite low.
We all were.
And my parents asked me, what can we buy you?
And they thought I was going to say a doll, or a toy, or a game, and I said,
I want a piano.
And somehow, three weeks later, one appeared in my bedroom.
And I didn't know anything about a piano, but I had heard one before.
And so I couldn't wait to just get my hands on those keys.
And I started banging out some chords in the very low register of that piano.
And it expressed exactly what I was feeling.
That frustration, that angst that I wasn't
going to be able to go out and see my friends or go to school for some time.
And then I would experiment at the upper register and tinkle those bright keys,
and think about my future, think about what
I was going to do as soon as I got out of bed and back to school.
And those sounds spoke just what I was feeling,
and it gave me a chance to really express what was going on for me.
And somehow I felt better after I played the piano.
Every sound has an emotion, it has a color, it has a vibe, it has an energy.
And I find now, in the present day as a musician,
there are certain keys that I gravitate to naturally, especially according
to the seasons of the time of the day.
And this happens a lot in Indian music, that we have specific ragas and scales
that we use only in compositions that we perform
at night, or at dawn, or at dusk.
And I find that I do that naturally even as I'm composing or writing a new song.
In the winter I kind of have more of a minor approach,
and I write in some of the darker keys.
And in the summer its always happy, major keys.
And that's fun.
I allow myself to feel whatever it is I am feeling, and just give into it
and let it flow.
Ah, that's so beautiful.
Now that I'm a trained musician I have a very different approach to my piano.
I've learned about the modes and the key.
And I've learned about the phrasing, and the counterpoint,
and all the formal aspects of music.
And in some ways it's taken the fun out of it.
I no longer bang out those low notes, but I'm
really aware of the formality of it.
And, you know what?
I'm actually experiencing this in the frontal lobe,
in the analytical part of my brain.
And I've lost some of that spontaneity, freshness,
that I was able to do improvising before I learned all of these skills.
And now I am concentrating my compositions more on giving them away.
Writing to people, writing about people, writing about things
that I want to say to them, and using that as my gift.
I hope we can give you a gift as well in some of the techniques and examples
that we'll be sharing.
We'll offer you some beautiful music as ways to express yourselves, and give
you some inspiration, I hope.
And empowerment, to write and compose yourself.