When we talk about influential composers of ragtime music, we have to talk about “the big three”. With jazz, the musical landscape changed even further in the advent of musical recordings. It had this in common with Classical music.īut the sound of ragtime was evolving away from the Classical sound, and could be seen as a precursor to jazz. It was popular before recorded music became available, meaning it was mainly distributed via sheet music – and you’d hear it performed at bars and clubs. fiddle music/dances from the British Isles, like jigs syncopated styles like the cakewalk (predecessor) banjo playing (playing the piano like you would play the banjo) Precursors of ragtime musicīut since music is an ever-evolving beast, with one genre leading into the next, what forms inspired the creation of Ragtime? You wouldn’t be rolling in the dough, perhaps, but you’d make enough to get by. Louis was a popular center for ragtime – since it’s located in central USA, it was a hub for travelers of all kinds, and as a piano player you could make a living there. If you haven’t heard of Scott Joplin yet, we’ll be talking about him soon, since he’s the most famous name of ragtime. There’s an annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, because Joplin lived and taught there for a while (in addition to living in St. Though ragtime music spread across America, its central hub was Missouri. The idea was to play with machine-like precision. Ragtime is also very technically demanding to play – if you’ve attempted to play Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, you will understand. It has that in common with Classical and Romantic music. Unlike some jazz, the way ragtime music was written on the page was exactly how it should be played – without embellishment or modification. For example, if you were in the key of C, you would be playing mainly C and G chords. Ragtime harmonic patterns are fairly simple, doing a lot of tonic-dominant movement. In ragtime, the left hand usually plays a bass note on beat 1 and 3, with a chord on beat 2 and 4. They music is fast and syncopated (“ragged”), with the right hand doing all the crazy rhythms and the left hand played steadily. Today we’re going to talk about what ragtime music is, its origins and precursors, and the main composers of ragtime music – with a few listening examples. It enjoyed about 25 years of popularity, until the jazz genre took over around 1920. Ragtime music (“ragged”, or syncopated), originated in the southern USA at the end of the 19 th Century (late 1800s). We’ve talked about a lot of musical genres that have their origins in Europe, so today I wanted to switch gears and talk about a genre that has its origin in America – ragtime music.Īnother reason I was itching to talk about ragtime is that it’s a piano genre, which is obviously what I like to highlight on this channel.
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