Taylor Sappe

BMI affiliated published songwriter since 1979
Private Music Instructor at DeMelfi School of Music and "in-your-home" instruction

Photo by Ken Gallagher

My Blog

I can't

6/24/10: So often I hear the words "I can't" when teaching a student. My take on that is that if you believe that you can't, then you can't. I put this to the test several years ago with a keyboard student when I was teaching out of my home in Hazleton. I gave him something that I had heard him play well often, and told him to think to himself "I can't" while playing it. He did and he messed it up.

The whole point is that if you believe that you can't do something and are unwilling to try to do it, then you will never do it. But if you believe that you can, although maybe not at the moment, you will eventually do whatever it is that seems difficult to do.

The only way to break your limitations is to eliminate "can't" from your vocabulary.

New discoveries in music

7/29/10: I have been involved in making music for 57 years and I still find myself learning something new about music. Not a day goes by that I don't make some new discoveries, insignificant though they may seem, and a year doesn't go by without discovering something really significant. This year alone, I have made these discoveries, although some of you will probably already knew of these:

1. Standard tuning on a guitar is all of the notes of the Pentatonic Minor Scale.
2. A minor 11 chord is all of the notes of a pentatonic minor scale and can be played against any note of the pentatonic minor with the same root as the minor 11.
3. A 6/9 chord us all of the notes of the pentatonic major scale and can be played against any of the notes of the pentatonic major scale with the same root.
4. This past week I learned the proper way to use the damper pedal on a piano.
5. The key of C has no sharps or flats in it's key signature. If you start at C and go through a cycle of perfect 4ths above, the major scale starting with each new root adds one flat to the sequence. For example, F is a P4 above C and has one flat in it's key signature; Bb is a P4 above F and has two flats; Eb is a P4 above Bb and has 3 flats and continues all the way to the key of Cb, which as 7 flats. If you move in a cycle of 5ths above C, you add one sharp with each scale built on the new root. For example, G is a P5 above C and has one sharp; D is a P5 above G and has two sharps, A is a P5 above D and has 3 sharps, etc., all the way to the key of C#, which has 7 sharps.