Classical Piano

In my current WIP, one of my main characters is a classical piano player. For the sake of character research and story details, I'm trying to listen to lots of classical piano.

I don't know what her favorite musical era is or who her favorite composers are yet. I'm keeping this pretty broad for now. A friend of mine gave me a great list of classical pieces, but I'm running out and want more.

For those that play classical piano or enjoy listening to classical piano - what are your favorite pieces? And what do you enjoy listening to outside of classical piano (symphonies, other instruments, singers, etc.)?

Thanks in advance!

Speaking as someone who played classical flute for three years and sang classical, gospel, and traditional songs in a large choir for four years... What kind of music would your character want to listen to?

The type of music that a musician listens to usually has almost nothing to do with what instrument they play. Actually, a lot of classical musicians enjoy a ton of modern music, too, to the point of composing or re-arranging some of their favorite classical pieces to be more modern or to merge the original style with a more modern one.

What kind of music would your character listen to? What kind of music would she have been raised on? What kind of music was banned or frowned upon in her household growing up?

I was raised on rock and roll. My mother listened to classic rock, hard rock, glam rock, glam metal, hair metal, shock rock, goth rock -- we're talking the works here. Her favorite musician is Alice Cooper, often considered one of the founding fathers of shock rock, being a rock musician since the early 60s.

I was raised on disco and soul. My dad loved anything to do with disco, even as dead as it was when I was a kid, but he might have loved soul even more. By the time I was 5, I knew Aretha Franklin like the back of my hand; he didn't like Mom's hard rock as much, so if he had to make a compromise, it was usually either soul or the Beatles.

The only type of music that was banned in my house was hip-hop, which is why I've had a harder time getting into that genre; I was never really allowed to listen to it as a kid. But to this day, I love rock music, I love alternative rock, I love pop, I love jazz, I love anything you throw at me.

And I'm a classical musician who loves listening to choir pieces, who enjoys listening to classical instrumental pieces, who adores classicized modern pieces or modernized classic pieces, and has done so since before I was really into choir. The point being, it doesn't matter that I'm a classical musician, because my music tastes exist outside of my hobbies and interests.

Let me bring in another example: pop-punk band Green Day's front man, Billie Joe Armstrong, was raised on Broadway, musical theatre, and classical music performances. You can see those influences in some of the melodic lines of Green Day's original works, but that obviously doesn't mean that they're a classical band, does it?

To look at it like classical musicians are extremely affected by classical music alone... Well, you're ignoring the character for the sake of "but classical music!" -- you're trying to make your character fit others' responses, rather than putting in the time to figure out the character. To put it in writing terms, what you've asked is similar to saying, "My character writes short stories. I don't know what other genres of fiction she'd enjoy reading, fantasy, sci-fi, anything -- to other writers or readers of short stories, what other genres do you like?"

@Arkhaion of course she listens to things other than classical. I want to listen to more classical to get a sense of what I can envision her playing. For her, it's often a coping mechanism. I want to be able to include things like in this scene she plays x piece. Or y piece is her favorite. Or z piece is her brother's favorite. Or this composer is her favorite. But I don't know any of that because I'm not very familiar with classical piano.

Sorry if that wasn't very clear in the original post. I'm mainly looking for a list of pieces people like/have played/enjoyed listening to/etc. so I can listen to lots of things and get a better sense of who she is because playing piano is such a big part of her life. She lives and breathes it, so I want to know more.

For example, in If I Stay, the MC in that book is a classical cellist with Julliard aspirations. When writing the book, Gayle Forman listened to tons of classical cello for character research and so she could include little things like who Mia's favorite cellists are, what her favorite pieces are, what she's playing, and that type of stuff. I want to do that, only with piano

Then your recourse is to listen to classical music. Go on YouTube, go on iTunes, go on the Google Play store (they have some free music each month) -- listen to a lot of classical music, from all sorts of eras and periods. It's not going to help you to ask about them if you don't know, intimately, what these composers or pieces actually sound like, what motifs they have, what your character might latch onto emotionally.

You're still asking short story writers what "other genres" they like to read. If you're so interested in doing this research, go at it yourself -- google "classical piano music" to get started listening to it, google "classical piano sheet music" to see how it looks on the page, google "classical piano composers" to get your list of composers and music.

Be proactive about your research. Find classical music that you love to listen to; find modern classical music you love; find Baroque music, find Romantic music, find contemporary music that you love and that your character might love. If your character lives and breathes music, you have to live and breathe it, too, even if only for a while.

Expanding your knowledge of music is a lot like expanding your knowledge of languages: Immerse yourself in it. Listen to it whenever you feel like it, whenever you have free time. If you really want to portray the inside-and-out knowledge a musician has of the music, then I recommend getting started now. If you skim over someone else's list of favorites, it's extremely unlikely you'll find something that fits your tastes or your character's. Everyone has different tastes, and classical music is so broad it's impossible to encompass in just one composition or composer.

Here's why we can't tell you what your character would like: everybody likes pieces for different reasons, and when you're dealing with a musician, these reasons get incredibly exact and technical.

Does she like the vibrations of low pieces? High notes? Is she soothed by highly complex chords? Are her go to pieces the simple melodies she first started learning? Does she have large hands or small hands, and how far is she willing to stretch those hands to relax? Does she prefer pieces that involve a lot of pedal work (making the notes longer) or does she like sharpness?

How about the rhythm itself? Smooth and steady or picked off and sharp? Is she going for a sensual feel or a childish feel or a sad, almost numb feeling? How about the "edge", so to speak, of the pieces— does she prefer heavy beats or light and airy? Does this change? Does she have a set of preferences she always reverts to, or does she cycle?

Does she stick to pure piano pieces, or does she prefer to pretend she's part of an orchestra? Does she like more unusual pieces that are basically the hipster equivalent of classical pianists, or does she prefer "mainstream" pieces everyone knows?

How much do her teachers encourage her to explore? How much does she explore on her own? Is she the type who sticks to the "classics" of centuries-old music, or does she treat old composers like rockstars whose music was just as edgy then as rock music is today? Does she mash up modern and old pieces (like David Garret did with Smooth Criminal and the Turkish March), reinvent new pieces for a complexity that they don't have in their current incarnations, reinvent old pieces so they sound modern and fit in present context, somewhere in between?

These are just a sampling of questions you have to ask yourself when writing a musician. Musicians look at music in a very different, very detailed way, and it's a combination of how their own minds work, their technical ability, and their attitude towards what they play as a whole.

We can't tell you what the answers to those questions are. Only you can.

Since you asked for some different types of classical music, I have a few suggestions. As a ballerina, I know a /lot/ of ballet scores. There are some really good ones, and then some reallly reallllyyy bad and repetitive ones (like the score to Cinderella, for instance, sucksss).

Some of my favorites are the score to the ballet Romeo and Juliet, and the score to the ballet Don Q. The score from Romeo and Juliet is absolutely stunning. I would listen to it over and over again just for fun. The score to Don Q is very sassy and spanish, so if your character is sassy or enjoys listening to more upbeat music, that score is perfect for her.

I've learned that people tend to like classical music that echoes their personality, just from a listening stand point. I've never played a classical instrument, but I've been around classical music my whole life and I've found it's much easier to enjoy it if it's something more upbeat and in your face. With the exception of the scores from Giselle and Romeo and Juliet, I tend to like the classical music that is loud and proud, for want of a better phrase. When selecting music or a composer for your character's favorite, consider this when you consider all the other musical things.

Also, don't forget contemporary composers. I choreograph a lot, and I'm a big lover of violins and strings for my music for choreography. I listen to contemporary composers a lot, as a result. There are some great ones out there. Lindsey Stirling comes to mind, for a brilliant violist. Yo Yo Ma, The Wires... There's so many amazing contemporary composers out there. Don't box yourself into only classical stuff because she's a classical pianist.

I have actually reviewed the first chapter of your novel, or WIP, so I think that I know who you are talking about. I won't try to copy what others said above, but I would take Ark's wise advice to heart and implement that into your novel.

You have to literally step into your character's shoes (and eyes ...) and hear what type of music that they like to listen to. There is a broad spectrum of musical instruments and musical genres, and you never have to stick with just one obviously. Because that's just too confining for your character's taste, (and your taste I'm sure.)

If you don't understand music, and what kind your character does and doesn't like, then how are you supposed to write accordingly in your chapters? Especially since your MC is first person point of view, so you really need to know this general field before you continue farther. She might like to broaden and improve her musical taste throughout the story, and that's great because it's showing improvement to her personally.

Noone is giving you examples, or YouTube links(and I'm not going to either, for this simple reason:) Everyone has a different favorites list. And what songs I love, you might really hate or dislike. And vice versa could happen if you gave me a list of your songs. It just doesn't work out that way. That's why, although I could recommend you some of the best favorite songs of mine, you have to search and find them yourself. You have to get pushed out of your comfort zone of genres and sound and types of music, and look broader into the horizon of music.

You might have heard this one hundred times, and this might look cliche but I'm going to say it anyways. Search youtube. Really find that music that clicks somewhere inside your soul. Watch movies about bands. (like the Hillsong Movie that is coming out soon-Google it). Find a band, a musical artist that you love and listen to every single one of their songs on repeat until your memorize them word for word. Usually, in my experience, if I find a specific band, or album, or singer that I really like the sound of, I love all of the other songs that they make/play/create. YouTube usually has playlists of whole albums, so that is very easy to access.

Before you started writing your novel, or during it (now) you should be learning just the basics of music. You should have a general orientation, so that what you write, concerning notes and rhythm and melody etc,.so that you don't make your character seem mistaken or clueless about these musical technicalities. After all, if they have a band then they should be some type of an expert. Make sure that it makes sense and is accurate to the more music oriented reader of your novel. And the only way to do that is actually sit down, get your laptop open, and invest time into reading quality articles about the topic that you are going to write about.

If you pour your heart and mind into this novel, you want the music to be beautiful,right?