How can KPop Golden Help Improve Musicality?

 At my last piano group lesson, several of my students were talking about K-Pop. I'm out of the kid movie loop, so at first I thought, "Is this some new kind of candy?"😂

After the lesson, I explored some of the memorable music from this movie that just sticks in your mind after you hear it.  

Writing Effective Melodies

As I teach composing to students, I often start by emphasizing that using more steps and skips than leaps will create more effective melodies. Hopping around on the keys like a ping pong ball bouncing is not likely to create memorable music!

But music is an art, not a science. "Breaking the rules" sometimes is more effective than you think!

This YouTube video gives some intriguing insights regarding the number of steps and leaps in melodies that make them effective.  

Tendency Tones

As I listened to the pre-chorus (3:58) "Golden," it brought to my mind the tendency tone vocal warmups we did every day in my college music class. The excerpt from the pre-chorus creates a churning wavelike feeling with the repetitive tension and resolve from the tendency tones to the "home" notes of the tonic chord at the end of the musical phrases.

Listening for the spots of tension and resolution in music can help you play with more musicality. When the phrasing or slur marks are not added into hymns, pop or intermediate level music, noticing the resolution of the tendency tones can guide you in shaping the phrases with mini dynamic changes so the music doesn't feel flat and lifeless.

For group lessons, I created this Free Printable K Pop Tendency Tones Worksheet to introduce them to this concept. Maybe one of them will choose to surprise me with a composition full of tendency tones for their "Don't Scare Me, Surprise Me Challenge" this month.