FLUENCY & FREEDOM
THROUGH DAILY CREATIVE PLAY ON PIANO
sparked by Paris
🤍
Life, Love, Art,
& Café Culture
BONJOUR & BIENVENUE—
MUSIC MAKER & DREAMER OF CREATIVE DREAMS
CHORD FLUENCY IS YOUR PASSPORT TO
UNDERSTANDING THE MUSIC YOU LISTEN TO, LEARN,
PLAY, & CREATE
PLAYING AND IMPROVISING WITH COOL CONFIDENCE & EASE IN EVERY KEY
CONNECTING WITH AND CULTIVATING YOUR INNER WORLD & MUSICAL VOICE
MAKING NEW MUSIC MAGIC EVERY DAY IN YOUR HOME & YOUR LIFE
Whatever your musical dreams are,
Internalizing the language of music
through creative exploration on the piano
will transform your musical life—for Life.
YES, MUSIC IS A LANGUAGE.
And it is made from simple elements we have all
experienced and responded to
since before birth.
melody, harmony, rhythm
Yet it is common
for musicians, at all levels,
with years, or even decades, of formal musical training
(and endless scale practice)
to lack the practical understanding of harmony
to just sit down
at their instrument
and express a simple thought or feeling,
instantaneously, and without apology.
To just play.
The way we do with words.
When we just — talk.
As a human,
there is music in you.
There is infinite music in each of us.
Just as there are infinite thoughts and ideas.
And we are meant to express, and connect with, ourselves musically.
Daily.
With our own original musical thoughts.
Not on a stage.
Not to impress friends or teachers.
And the pull we feel to just play,
to just make musiс,
(not just practice),
is only natural.
HOWEVER:
As the music education culture largely consists of teaching music through and for the purpose of,
ultimately, reciting other people's musical creations,
music making feels like a spectator sport,
even when we are totally alone.
For many of us, learning music, or just living, in a performance-driven culture causes us to diminish
our original musical utterances, judging them as silly or childlike.
Often, we hold back, or choose silence.
Even when we are alone, we end up sticking to the script—other people's musical ideas.
But this is not
what music was made for.
Just as learning to perfectly recite Shakespeare sonnets
or lines from The Tempest
is not what language was made for.
These are worthy pursuits you can take on if you like.
But if you aren't fluent in English yet,
these won't just feel impossibly frustrating,
Shakespeare's genius will be lost on you.
The wordplay, meaningless.
Even if you can perfectly mimic the iambic pentameter.
And no amount of decoding and tediously memorizing
even more Shakespeare
will result in your fluency in English.
(Alack.)
But what it can do—
is make you feel like learning and understanding English is insurmountable.
Something that will always evade you,
forever out of your reach.
Something other people just seem to get, almost effortlessly,
but you...just don't.
Obviously, learning Shakespeare as a young child, or before one is fluent in English or has any life experience, is out of whack.
Yet, this can happen in music study, and maybe it has happened to you, as children often begin at a young age to climb the ladder toward playing the great musical repertoire and to work to gain technical and music literacy skills needed for it, without being given space to explore music for themselves, to play with it and mentally work it out in their time—the way they play with toys and mud, with sticks and rocks, and with their first language.
On the flip side, music being taught by pure rote—watching and copying (even long classical pieces)—which is now the norm in online music instruction is creating a similar result as people learn to play the notes—but without understanding why the belong together.
Music theory (understanding music) is deemed hard and unnecessary if you just want to play songs you like for fun.
But again, reciting, copying, & mimicking if it is done without understanding, does not lead to fluency or freedom.
It's a trap.
And the longer you are in it, the more you feel like music is something you just don't quite get.
And it’s simply not true.
Like language— you have to understand it to speak it.
Our thoughts are not formulated with our vocal cords, or with our mouths,
but in our minds.
Likewise, we don’t play music with our hands, or even by ear.
We play music with our minds.
CONSIDER THIS:
In Language,
you are considered fluent when you are able to freely and clearly express your original thoughts and—equally—understand what you hear when you are spoken to,
and respond easily.
Spontaneously & with zero hesitation or googling!
And with Music,
also, you are fluent when you can express your original musical thoughts cohesively with ease, and, equally, easily understand the music you hear and how the
musical elements are organized to communicate meaning and emotion.
Also—on the spot—no hesitation, googling, or cheat sheets.
(And it is NO big secret: it's all numbers!)
To become fluent in language,
one needs:
repeated exposure to real, relevant, comprehensible language with
time & space
to absorb, ponder, experiment and PLAY creatively with the language,
expressing thoughts, feelings, and desires
without scrutiny or pressure to perform or say anything profound
within a living, breathing, authentic, and responsive environment.
This is the experience
language educators strive to create to foster
real-world fluency in second language learners.
Does this sound like the learning environment of your childhood music lessons?
Or your children's now?
Is this what your daily music making in your home feels like?
And, if you teach music, does it feel like this in the space your create
for those in your care?
These are questions I have asked myself, and that, for decades, have haunted me, and for which I have taken myself to task to reconcile in my teaching studio, in my home life with my child (now 15), and in my own musical trajectory.
Hi! I'm Hollie.
The Paris Creative Piano Café is the continuation of my Austin, Texas independent piano studio, and is also the confluence of my lifetime of experiences and experimentation (so far) as a composer, classical and pop pianist and as both an English language teacher (maybe this is not surprising after my BIG language/music analogy rabbit hole) and a music educator for the past 30 years.
When I opened my piano studio in 2003, I knew that unconventional and creative music backmy studies in Language Acquisition and my decade of teaching immersive English would be instrumental in bringing forth the music within my students, but I never imagined how so very much.
As my studio grew, my own musical opportunities expanded as a pianist, and over the next ten years, I played, recorded and toured with music creators across genres, from modern chamber and ballet music to cabaret to pop & rock. (Almost none of which included notated, written out piano parts—it was up to me to create what I would play :).
As I took on these adventures, thoughts would taunt me: Could my students do what I do in a day, confidently and easily? Would they be able to play in a band, work out the chords and create their own parts to a song on the spot, or could they compose and arrange their own music?
No, not assuredly.
If they were going to be able to go in any direction they wanted musically in life, they needed radical chord fluency, far beyond what they got from scales, playing repertoire, and chord charts.
More than I could give them in the one hour a week we were together. They had to develop their own insatiable curiosity for tinkering and experimenting as a way of being at the piano.
And as I began to create open space and time in each lesson for what may. have seemed to my students just wandering around together on the piano, their own independent ideas and musicianship emerged.
I learned, over and over (and am still learning), to teach by not really teaching at all, but by emanating and modeling a living, breathing relationship with music, one that asks questions, nerds out on a clever spot of harmonic wizardry, and finds nothing wrong and everything right with adding a blues ending to a Bach piece, or an ironic picardy third at the end of a Radiohead song.
And from this, the Paris Creative Piano Café, now emerges as an experimental music learning laboratory, a test kitchen, of sorts (which will always be in "beta" as I live and breathe, I mean how else can one go about it?).
If you are here to grow your chord fluency and connection to music with us, it would be my great pleasure to have you!
Welcome to the très nouveau
Daily exploration and creative play on piano,
in every key, for everyone.
Slowly, artfully, & delectably!
for as many years as you like!
FIRST THINGS FIRST:
ABOUT PARIS CAFÉ CULTURE
historically, & as une métaphore parfaite (a perfect metaphor!)
Since their emergence in the 17th century, Paris Cafés have evolved as places to think, connect with others and exchange ideas, and equally connect with oneself, observe and reflect on life, art, culture, the world, plot revolutions, and, of course, nourish body and soul with hot food and one's creative mind with coffee!
By adopting the Paris café culture and the role it plays in Parisian daily life as a model and metaphor, the Paris Creative Piano Café's mission is not just to grow and deepen your understanding of music, but also to transform your relationship to how it feels to simply be at the piano, exploring harmony, with curiosity similar to how you might also wander the streets of Paris on a sunny spring afternoon with no destination in mind, and in no hurry to be anywhere else in the whole world.
Whichever way you go, you find something beautiful or intriguing you had never noticed before. (Like your next Paris Café crush).
And through this, learn music from the inside out. (And Paris, too!).
What
the Paris Creative Piano Café
is exactly. And why.
The Paris Creative Piano Café is an vibrant, responsive online piano studio where you can develop your chord fluency as well as explore your musical voice and thoughts on piano, the way you first developed language fluency:
naturally, slowly, expressively,
with time to tinker, ponder, and explore freelymaking your daily life a culture of music making joy.
Through rich, meaningful and authentic musical offerings on the "menu" (daily improvisation, listening, and creative challenges), the relationships and connections between the chords in the context of each and every major and minor key are internalized.
In your hands, in your ear, and in your mind.
So that—in your life, no matter how you encounter or learn music—by listening, reading notation, playing from chord charts, or even making it up yourself—you can unlock it, get inside of it, and it can then become part of your ever-expanding inner musical universe. Your own harmonic language, your musical voice, will emerge.
(Am I exaggerating, or romanticizing? No. This is music I’m talking about.
Big magic.)
What this isn't.
The Paris Creative Piano Cafe offers:
No copycat, "watch me and learn", playing.
No chord hacks or cheat sheets.
There is also no music notation or roman numeral analysis.
Also, there will not even be any Circle of Fif the charts "showing" you which chords are in a key.
No pre-made/pre-recorded/self-study classes or lessons.
Au Contraire—
everything in the Paris Creative Piano Café is crafted daily and weekly,
in collaboration with your own creativity, questions, ideas, and thoughts,
the seasons, the weather and Paris itself.
Mais bien sûr!
This is modeled after a Paris Café, after all!
No Costco danishes (or music classes) here.
No!
Instead,
Viennoiseries baked early in the morning
while you and yours are still in dreamland!
Is it a drizzly day in Paris?
Then our piano day will be extra cozy.
You will daily grow your understanding of harmony, your piano skills,
and your ability to understand the music you hear,
by
LISTENING
exploring, wondering about, experimenting with, playing, playing with, and creating
MUSIC
connecting what you hear to what your hands play.
(Notice how I am saying "you" and "your" a lot here.
Ultimately, to gain freedom and fluency, you have to declare your independence—
against reliance on being shown and told what to play.
Put away the maps, the apps, and take a long walk daily with your ears and mind wide open!)
How it works.
YEARLY
Each year, in the Paris Creative Piano Cafe,
we will travel around the Circle of Fifths
through every major and minor key,
with time to hang out in each key for two weeks.
(And room for a few holiday side quests that might entice us off our path!)
FORTNIGHTLY
The Café offers a balanced "menu" of
structured and open, creative play and challenges across the 2 weeks we spend in each key to progressively help you build your fluency and ease in your hands, mind, and in your ear.
DAILY
Just as we always somehow find time to stop by our coffee spot when it calls,
your piano is a mecca for you throughout your day.
As we explore the chords in each key creatively, we will also explore the arrondissements in Paris, adopting a weekly Paris Café as our “home base” from which we will venture. The city, the art, the culture, and events happening in real time will spark our daily musical fare, as food for our musical imaginations.
Everything happens in my studio’s private social space (not another facebook group) where you can connect with me daily or fellow café patrons sitting at the next table (if you feel social), ask questions, or just share something cool you discovered, day or night.
PLEASE TAKE NOTE:
The Paris Creative not a SCHOOL, ACADEMY, or
INSTITUTION OF EDUCATIONAL INSTRUCTION.
It is a CAFÉ!
You can come, nourish, caffeine up, sit and stay, or grab and go.
There is not a wall of daily classes you need to attend to build your fluency,
but instead, one weekly lab and creative weekday short challenges,
with fun weekend specials to excite & entice your musical imagination!
No overwhelm, no "practice plan" to make sure you are "using your time at the piano effectively".
Come and play.
With time and space, you will find new things you never realized about music, and about yourself.
Here you may view
The Basic Fortnightly Menu
which will grow and evolve without doubt.
Times listed are Austin/CST (where I am now), but more can be added if this means you can only attend the Monday Labs at 3AM.
They will also shift some when I am in Paris.
DESCRIPTIONS
WHEN YOU POSSESS MUSICAL FLUENCY
THE RESULTS
ARE LIFELONG.
And you have a long, beautiful, musical life to live!
Everything gets easier.
When you easily understand the music you listen to and play, and how it is constructed — it's thrilling!
From Bach to jazz and pop, everything is crafted with chords within a certain key, at the core, and it is a great WEATLH in life to be able to explore the creative minds of music makers, and to be able to trace their steps and follow their trains of thought.
Again, am I romanticizing? No, I contend, there is no greater romance than this.
Everything locks into place when chords are at your command.
You will start to "just know" things.
What is called "boring" or complex by some, music theory comes alive when you internalize it as you create and play with music in each key. Things like:
- what sharps and flats each key has
- what chords belong innately to each key
- chord symbols.
- what the underlying chord progression is in the music you are playing and listening to (in numbers!), as you start to hear, predict, and play, without having to think
- what is happening when a chord pops up that is NOT part of the key in that Beatles song, or Bach Prelude. (it's not random!)
- how to transpose easily, and the right way
- how playing and thinking in each key feels, like when you learn a language and your thoughts AND YOUR DREAMS start shifting to your new language.
All of these results will happen organically as you explore music truly as a language. But,
THE TRUEST THING I CAN SAY IS
MUSIC WILL BUBBLE UP
INSIDE YOU.
As we open up to our creativity, as I said, big magic is waiting. It's already inside of you.
When you have clear KNOWLEDGE and UNDERSTANDING of music within you,
your battle station becomes fully operational.
(This is a Star Wars quote, and btw, May the Fourth is one of our favorite holidays in this music studio.)
Your imagination and the opportunities that it brings are not limited
when music doesn't seem hard to understand.
You can take on unexpected musical paths with confidence.
I've never once had any teacher (music or otherwise) talk exactly about creativity or music like this,
(it is always about mechanics, practice, and the fastest path to technical accomplishment--all external and measurable. Testable).
But I am here to talk about it, explore it,
and to experience profound and fantastically fun music making with you.
Count Me In!
LOVE FROM
STUDENTS & COLLABORATORS
CHELSEA SMOCK
AUSTIN, TEXAS
Hollie is an absolute genius with all ages.
She understands deeply
pedagogy, technique, theory, child development, art, craft, discipline and fun.
She mixes all these elements together into an experience that
draws forth pure magic.
SARAH TEALE
NEW BRAUNFELS, TEXAS
Louis would sit at the piano for several hours a day tinkering with how different notes and chords sounded.
It wasn’t long before we traded our old piano for a better one because his playing was quickly becoming the soundtrack of our family’s life, and the quality of his creations were outpacing the quality of his instrument.
Because of Hollie, Louis will grow up not only knowing how to play music, but what it looks like to be a creator and a lover of music for the rest of his life.
ROBERT HARRISON
COTTON MATHER | FUTURE CLOUDS & RADAR
I met Hollie when she joined my band Future Clouds and Radar in 2006.
Straight away, she set the standard for what I wanted henceforth in collaborators.
Her knowledge of music is surpassed only by her enthusiasm for it.
I doubt I’ve met anyone in my life who loves music more--or is more the committed to sharing it.
I invite you!
GRAND OPENING
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2024
Follow your curiosity. Let music fuel your life!
Feed your soul. DAILY.
(as you rock every chord in every key & grow your musicianship exponentially)
NOTE FROM HOLLIE
This is not a membership, but it does happen responsively in real time, live, with me and a vibrant private community of creative music makers. If you join anytime in this first year (2024) you receive lifetime access to the café, as it grows and changes for many years to come.
(It will always be in “beta”; always adapting) .
Life is busy, and I want you to always be able to drop in and make music,
and not feel like you need to "pause" a subscription until you have more time.
You are always welcome. You won't be behind.
If this program and the approach to learning music is not a fit for you at this time,
let me know within 7 days of purchase,
(or by November 9th, if you join before the Grand Opening)
and you will receive 100% of your money back. No questions asked!
QUESTIONS?
What ages is this class for? Is it for children or adults, or both?
In this program, are we learning just the basic chords, or jazz chords?
What musical level should I be at in order to do this?
So what's so wrong with learning music by reading, or by watching someone and copying? Everyone has different kinds of brains.
Do you actually live in Paris, or is it just a dream?
MUSIC
(like Paris, and even more so)
IS A MOVEABLE FEAST.
Hemingway (altered slightly by me, with permission, of course)
Music is meant to feed and fuel your soul, imagination, and your life, daily.
And not just as a consumer/spectator of other people's music making.
It was made for you.
And I invite you to STOP starving yourself.
(Like, stop getting by on mass-produced fast food, musically.)
YOU HAVE TIME
to develop your musical understanding AND your connection with your creativity,
as you grow your piano skills.
Once you possess chord fluency,
you can truly go any musical direction you dream of, freely.
The PARIS CREATIVE PIANO CAFÉ is here for you!
I can't wait to hear the music you make.
xo, Hollie
