Featuring four pieces from the collection “Cool Beans”, by Ben Crosland.
This work is published by Editions Musica Ferrum and can be purchased here as a digital download.
- The Road Back Home
- Under the Sun
- Prelude to an Autumn Day
- Sunday Evening
This week on the Piano Pedagogy Playlist, I dive into Cool Beans by English composer Ben Crosland — a fresh, pop-inspired collection of 12 graded pieces for early to late intermediate pianists. After years of hearing good things about this collection, I finally bought the digital download of Book One, sat down at the piano, and couldn’t stop playing — I immediately went through the whole book twice!
Transcription
“Cool Beans. I remember the expression back from junior high in the 1980s. I have no idea where it came from.
But it stuck in my mind, it’s probably what led me to first take notice of this collection of piano pieces called Cool Beans by Ben Crosland. I’ve been curious about it for years, and after hearing many good things, I finally ordered a digital download of Cool Beans Book One just this past week. Upon downloading it to my iPad and loading it into Fourscore, I sat down and immediately played straight through the book, beginning to end.
Then after that first playthrough, I flipped back to the beginning with the intent of narrowing down to a short list possibilities for this week’s podcast, and I ended up playing through all 12 pieces again, start to finish. Suffice it to say, I really like every piece in this collection. I don’t think there’s a weak one in the bunch.
“But before we get to the music, I’d like to welcome you to the Piano Pedagogy Playlist. My name is Luke Bartolomeo, and each week I play a few of my current favorites from the Piano Pedagogy Repertoire written by Living Composers. Cool Beans is a graded collection of 12 pieces, with the first couple of pieces at about an early intermediate level.
The bulk of the book is suitable for solid intermediate pianists, and there’s a couple at the end that I would definitely say are leaning more into the late intermediate category. We’ll start with the third piece in the book, titled The Road Back Home. You’ll notice that, like most pieces in this collection, it borrows heavily from popular music with regards to just about everything, melody, harmony, syncopated rhythm.
But the forms of the pieces seem more put together from a classical mindset, and the works themselves are very pianistic. Playing them feels more like approaching a work from the standard repertoire than an arrangement of a pop song.
“So sweet, so simple sounding. But students will be hard at work on some certain technical aspects. There’s finger substitution, parallel thirds, voicing, legato pedaling, and it’s all packaged very concisely into something with a modern appeal.”
The Road Back Home“Next up is something a little more uptempo, with a little more heft to it. It’s called Under the Sun. Again, you’re going to hear strong ties to popular music, but you’ll notice that none of these pieces really have the typical verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus form that a lot of pop songs do.
In this particular case, we’re going to have two strong, independent themes, with the first theme making a partial return at the end, so I guess we could call this a sort of rounded, binary form. Now, the second theme that you’ll hear presents some very specific challenges, in that the right hand is playing two voices, and the melody alternates from being on the bottom, with accompanying figures above it, and then moving to the top voice, with accompanying notes below it. Anyway, you’ll hear it for yourselves in just a moment.
It’s the second theme to listen for.”
Under the Sun
“As I mentioned earlier, I just bought this music last week, so I’ve never taught this piece before. But I can already imagine students banging out all of the notes of that second theme with equal force, and how it’s gonna be a struggle, a worthwhile struggle, for us to decide together which notes need to be brought out as the melody, and how exactly we’re going to accomplish that. We have a prelude on deck for piece number three today.
It’s titled Prelude to an Autumn Day. Very fitting as at the time of this recording, a lot of us are experiencing our first breaks from the summer heat. This prelude has a jazzy feel to it due to all of the dominant seventh harmonies, and free expressive melody in 12-8 time.
It’s true to its name, and that you really feel like it’s just a prelude, it’s not the main event. It’s merely setting the stage for something to come after it.”
Prelude to an Autumn Morning
“That piece is just so lush and luxurious. And so short. Many of the pieces in this collection are just one page, which I find to be very useful when students are getting comfortable with new technical challenges, to just feed it to them in bite-sized morsels.
There’s a lot to navigate for an intermediate student in this piece, but it’s only eight measures long, so it’s gonna be manageable. It will push them in their technique. For instance, in this particular piece, there’s a lot of arpeggios with wide intervals, something they might not have encountered before.
But it’s short enough to allow the students to be successful. I really could feature all of the pieces in this book, and we just might over the coming months. But for now, I have time for just one more.
I’m going to close with another chill piece. This one’s called Sunday Evening. It’s very syncopated, but in a gentle way that just feels really good to play.”
“As you listen to the beginning, if you’re not looking at the score and seeing where the bar lines are, you might be tricked into hearing changing meter between 4-4 and 3-4. But it’s all in 4-4 time. It’s just very interesting use of syncopation between the right hand and the left hand.
I’ll admit, I messed up the first couple of tries sight reading. There are some actual changes in meter between 3-4 and 4-4 at the very end, but they happen in a very natural way and I don’t think they’ll cause any problems. Enjoy how this piece expresses the calm and joy of a Sunday evening.
With also a nod to acknowledging another weekend is almost gone.”
Sunday Evening
“Ben Crosland is an English composer and sound engineer. His pieces are published by Editions Musica Ferrum, a great little independent publisher, also located in the UK. I’ll post a link in the description to where you can find Mr. Crosland’s collection, Cool Beans, as well as the many subsequent books that he has since published as part of the larger Cool Beans collection.”
“If you have trouble locating the links, head on over to pianopedagogyplaylist.com and search for Episode 6. And just like that, we have to close the lid on this week’s episode. It’s so exciting for me to discover new pieces of music that we’ll soon find homes with my students.
It’s really the motivating factor driving this podcast. It keeps me searching and discovering, rather than solely relying on the repertoire that I’m already familiar with. And we’ll do this again next Monday, when I’ll play for you some more of what I’ve found out there.
As for you, keep nurturing the music, and have a great week.”
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