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Cam Taylor Music

Audiation and Education at the Piano

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About Me

I have been teaching piano since 2010 both privately and through Belmont Music Centre and Lewis Eady in Auckland. I am excited to learn more every day, and thoroughly enjoy exploring the ins and outs of music with my students.

My main areas of interest at the moment are audiation - hearing, understanding and thinking music, improvisation - being free to create, change and explore with music the same way we do with language, and microtonality - seeing how tuning informs music theory and practice, both on traditional and new instruments.

While I have background in jazz, classical and pop, both studying and performing, I love connecting with students' interests, digging deeper into music that is meaningful for them, and using music as a form of self-expression.

After studying Music Learning Theory for some time, I realise how strong the music-language analogy is, and I stress the importance of sound first, only introducing notation when there is a firm foundation in audiation, and only getting into music theory as an explanation of what we already audiate, sing and play.

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A tour of functions in minor tonality
05:48
Cam Taylor

A tour of functions in minor tonality

The second video in my new series of improvised performances taking the listener/viewer on a brief tour of the tonality. The first one, for major tonality, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gpg1ahK5TQ Partially inspired by - Edwin Gordon, MLT and the music teaching work I do with harmonic audiation. https://giml.org/mlt/about/ - Eric Rasmussen's demonstrations of all this in young kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb2DtjbsUew - Eric Ederer's amazing videos a few years back where he "walks you through" the makams and explains what's going on during the performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s202xFm53YE - Sami Abu Shumays' amazing videos acculturating, singing, labelling and analysing melody in terms of maqam, ajnas, function and context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTsDwwPFREA - Mike Battaglia's Categorical Experiments on SoundCloud many years back comparing the same extracts of music and performances in many tunings in the usual diatonic range, with fifths from 4 steps of 7-equal (686c) through to 3 steps of 5-equal (720c), and occasionally beyond. https://soundcloud.com/mikebattagliaexperiments/sets/the-categorical-experiments There is A LOT of in-video text, and editing the text in took much longer than recording or editing video or audio, but hopefully with it there this video can be used - as aural tonal acculturation for major tonality (without any labels), in which case, just listen, and I'll probably end up making an audio-only track on my archive site - to teach harmonic audation, tonal functions and how to move around chords "by ear", including labels for each unique sound (the primary purpose for all the text) - how to play simple melodies, chords and voicings on the Lumatone in C (and, because it's a generalised keyboard, now you can play in every key!) - as a comparison between tunings. Here I'm playing in 31-equal, but I'm also planning on retuning the performance to other tunings across the diatonic spectrum, so one can hear tonal function stay exactly the same, while intonation changes subtly or dramatically. Comparing meantone (narrow fifth), pythagorean-like (near pure fifth) and superpythagorean (wide fifth) tunings should prove interesting. Those new to microtonality might find the piano sounds a little strange, but hopefully 5-6 minutes is enough for your ears to start hearing the added richness of major and minor harmonies in meantone. Yes, the tuning is very intentional. And perhaps piano is not the best timbre for this tuning, but I find it makes for an interesting comparison. I would love to compare this in 26, 19, 31, 55, 12, 29, 41, 17, 22 and 27-equal. Phew, that's enough text for now. Let me know what you think of the video.
A tour of functions in dorian tonality
05:23
Cam Taylor

A tour of functions in dorian tonality

The third video in my new series of improvised performances taking the listener/viewer on a brief tour of the tonality. This one features many less "outside" modulation, and spends more time acculturating the listener to "pure" dorian. The first one, for major tonality, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gpg1ahK5TQ The second, for minor tonality, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cQQ0d3X88M Partially inspired by - Edwin Gordon, MLT and the music teaching work I do with harmonic audiation. https://giml.org/mlt/about/ - Eric Rasmussen's demonstrations of all this in young kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb2DtjbsUew - Eric Ederer's amazing videos a few years back where he "walks you through" the makams and explains what's going on during the performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s202xFm53YE - Sami Abu Shumays' amazing videos acculturating, singing, labelling and analysing melody in terms of maqam, ajnas, function and context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTsDwwPFREA - Mike Battaglia's Categorical Experiments on SoundCloud many years back comparing the same extracts of music and performances in many tunings in the usual diatonic range, with fifths from 4 steps of 7-equal (686c) through to 3 steps of 5-equal (720c), and occasionally beyond. https://soundcloud.com/mikebattagliaexperiments/sets/the-categorical-experiments There is A LOT of in-video text, and editing the text in took much longer than recording or editing video or audio, but hopefully with it there this video can be used - as aural tonal acculturation for major tonality (without any labels), in which case, just listen, and I'll probably end up making an audio-only track on my archive site - to teach harmonic audation, tonal functions and how to move around chords "by ear", including labels for each unique sound (the primary purpose for all the text) - how to play simple melodies, chords and voicings on the Lumatone in C (and, because it's a generalised keyboard, now you can play in every key!) - as a comparison between tunings. Here I'm playing in 31-equal, but I'm also planning on retuning the performance to other tunings across the diatonic spectrum, so one can hear tonal function stay exactly the same, while intonation changes subtly or dramatically. Comparing meantone (narrow fifth), pythagorean-like (near pure fifth) and superpythagorean (wide fifth) tunings should prove interesting. Those new to microtonality might find the piano sounds a little strange, but hopefully 5-6 minutes is enough for your ears to start hearing the added richness of major and minor harmonies in meantone. Yes, the tuning is very intentional. And perhaps piano is not the best timbre for this tuning, but I find it makes for an interesting comparison. I would love to compare this in 26, 19, 31, 55, 12, 29, 41, 17, 22 and 27-equal. Phew, that's enough text for now. Let me know what you think of the video.
Cam Taylor in FRED

Cam Taylor in FRED

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FRED - Rollercoaster (Official Music Video)

FRED - Polyamorous

House of RA - FRED

Cam Taylor with Jesse Sheehan

Cam Taylor with Jesse Sheehan

Partner teacher

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Natsuki Nomichi

Piano teacher

Natsuki has been teaching piano since 2016 both privately and Lewis Eady Music School in Auckland since 2016 after moving here from Osaka, Japan. She is a strong advocate of music education and currently teaches students ranging from 3 to 70 years old, having taught over 200 students over the last few years.

​"I believe the potential of music has a great effect on the learning of all subjects, and has many influences on personal growth and well-being. My hope for all my students is that music will enrich their life, and will be a wonderful way for them to express themselves."


​Natsuki and I have been holding joint end-of-year Student Recitals for our private students since 2018.

Visit her website here:

Contact Me

Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

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