What Does Occam’s Razor Have To Do With Piano Playing & Music?

Here is a transcript of the video in case you would like to follow along:

Good morning. This is Duane. Today I’d like to cover the subject of Occam’s Razor and what it has to do with piano playing and music.

First of all, what is Occam’s Razor? It’s the scientific and philosophical principle that the simplest answer is usually the best, not always, but it’s usually the best. Any scientist, any philosopher will tell you that.

What does Occam’s Razor have to do with piano playing? Watch. When you start taking piano lessons. I started taking piano lessons when I was about six or so. Thousands or probably millions of kids have done the same. What do you do? You learn where middle C is on the keyboard. Then you learn D and then you learn B and you learn E and then you learn A and then you learn F and then you learn G. You learn a whole scale. You learn that a scale looks like that. It’s got eight notes based on a formula of half steps and whole steps.

Then you have to learn how long to hold each note. It’s not just a C, but it’s a C quarter note that gets one beat, as opposed to a C half note that gets two beats, as opposed to a dotted half note that gets three and a whole note that gets four. You have to keep all of those straight.

What’s true of C is also true of D. In other words, you can play D as a quarter note or an eighth note or as a sixteenth note or thirty-second note and so on. You have to learn all that. Then you have to learn where they are on the staff, not just where they are on the piano, but you have to be able to read music and know where middle C is. It’s on that little ledge line between the staffs. You have to learn what a staff is and the lines, E, G, B, D, F and the spaces, F, A, C, E. In the left hand you have to learn the space, A, C, E, G and the line G, B, D, F, A.

That takes time to learn all that. After you learn that, then you can play things a little harder. You’ll learn to play like that and then you’ll learn to play like that. Finally you play together. Then the whole subject of black keys comes up and you learn what in the world is that and what in the world is that and so on. You learn that that’s a sharp sometimes and that is a flat sometimes. We’re getting pretty complex already and we’re still in grade one.

Finally, after you’ve learned where the notes are on the keyboard and all of the keys and how to read that on the music, then you’ll learn simple songs such as (piano playing) and so on. Then you get more and more advanced, more and more complex until finally maybe someday you can play (piano playing) … you can play prelude in C sharp minor or Moonlight Sonata or Fur Elise (piano playing) and so on.

That all takes lots of years. By then, out of every hundred kids that started the piano, 91 or so have dropped out. There’s eight or nine kids left. They get a little more advanced and so on. Even out of those nine or eight that are left, what happens when they don’t have any music in front of them. Somebody asks them to play Happy Birthday, well they don’t have the music for it. Somebody asks them to play as an accompaniment at church and they don’t have the music or they have the music but it’s in the wrong key and the singer needs to sing it lower. What do they do then? If they’re playing and the music’s on the stand a wind comes up, somebody opens the door and the music blows off on the floor. What do they do then?

The answer is they don’t have a clue. They don’t have a clue. The reason they don’t have a clue is because the teacher has violated the principle of Occam’s Razor. What is Occam’s Razor? We said the easy solution is probably the best solution. It certainly is in music. You can see you can know a thousand facts about music or more, you probably have to know 10,000 facts about music by the time you are a little more advanced.

The simple solution should have been taught from the beginning that despite that complexity, there’s only one melody at a time, only one melody. I shouldn’t say at a time because there can be more when you get more advanced, but there’s only a melody. In other words, there’s only a tune of a song. (piano playing) That’s true whether you’re playing Mary Had a Little Lamb or Fur Elise or whatever.

Kids that play the piano need to know that there’s only a melody and there’s only harmony, that’s two or more notes playing together like that, and that includes intervals like that and cords like that and so on. The third element of music is rhythm. There has to be some rhythm. In other words, (piano playing) those are three consecutive notes, probably quarter notes, but they could be syncopated (piano playing). There’s lots of variations to that but that’s rhythm.

Kids need to know ahead of time that there’s only melody, harmony and rhythm that make up all the complexity of music. That’s the simple solution. If teachers would teach that first, that there’s only melody, harmony and rhythm and then break down each section into its components and then gradually get more and more advanced, then students would understand what they’re doing. When the time came that the music blew off the piano, then they would know the cords that would take the place of the music up there or they could improvise to some degree because they’d understand the concept. In other words, they’d understand the overall concept of music and how it works.

That’s how the principle of Occam’s Razor applies to music and piano playing. We’ll see you again tomorrow for another tip like that. Bye bye for now.
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Here is an article about Occam’s Razor on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor

Here is the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGHXKSvg7lg
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