Are you ready to finally learn how to play piano despite years of lessons? If you’re like many students of the piano, all your lessons and all your practicing have only gotten you so far. Maybe you’ve found that you’ve hit a wall in your piano playing ability, beyond which you just can’t seem to get. The following are some helpful tips for taking your piano playing to next level.
* Learn pattern recognition: Every song ever written follows a pattern, a structure of sections and chord progressions. You need only listen to a handful of songs by The Beatles to hear what we mean. To expand your repertoire and build versatility in your ability to pick up nearly any song you hear quickly and easily, learn the patterns with which all songs are composed.
* Play by the numbers: Every song is written in a particular key – one of but 12, to be precise – and every key has it’s scales, series’ of notes in specific intervals, any of which will sound natural and pleasing to the ear when played in it’s respective key. Every scale in every key has its 1-chord, its 2-chord, etc. Instead of straining yourself to memorize how to play various piano chords by rote, learn instead the keys that chords are played in and the scales they’re built upon. Then you can quickly and easily figure out how to play any chord in any key on the spot, whether you’ve memorized that specific chord or not.
* Listen: This tip is about learning to play by ear. The secret to learning to play by ear is simple – just learn the aforementioned 12 musical keys. By doing so, you can easily transpose any song you hear into any key you like. Learning to transpose, then, will take you to the next level of playing piano, which is knowing how to improvise. Many piano players can read and follow piano sheet music, but far fewer can sit down and start playing along spontaneously with any song they hear – and have it sound pleasing to the ear. Of course, if you don’t yet know how to read piano sheet music, then you may also want to begin studying that skill as well. But not at the expense of learning the fundamentals of music, which is not in writing but in listening. In musical terms, this is called “ear-training”. Learn to recognize the sounds of harmonic and melodic intervals and you’re more than halfway to playing them.
* Expose yourself: No, we’re not suggesting you run naked down the street. What we’re suggesting is that you spend time surrounded by musicians of exceptional quality, professionals and amateurs alike in whose presence you can hear what it sounds like to play how you want to play. The body’s muscles have memory far superior to than our brain’s conscious recall ability. By simply immersing yourself in an environment where your ear is exposed to the sort of piano playing you aspire to, your body has a far easier time reproducing those sounds on the piano yourself.
Most importantly in your piano playing adventure is to remember to give it a little attention every day. You don’t have to practice for hours and hours a day to get good at the piano. You need only devote a small amount of time daily to keep the skills you’re learning present in your mind and body. Even just 15 minutes a day keeps your piano playing ability in tune.
Archive for the ‘Art And Entertainment’ Category
Piano Lesson On Arpeggios Lets Beginners Show Off
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
Learning piano for beginners is not easy. Not just pianists, but for any musician learning a new instrument the beginning is the hardest time. Piano lessons can help big-time, but still the fingers just won’t do what the mind tells them. It takes a while for real dexterity to come along.
I should know, I have been playing guitar for over thirty years, but have just recently started working on playing piano. I haven’t taken piano lessons (who has the time?), but I hope I can work it out myself. I do have a really solid music theory background, which I think makes a big difference. I look at the piano keys and I know what they are and what to do to build chords and scales, and create beautiful music. But…the hands! They just won’t listen. So I play simple piano scales and exercises that sound boring but are useful to get my skill started.
I would like to have something to show for my efforts besides these simple patterns, and I found something today that is just thing: a showy trick that even a beginner can do to give a glimpse of what the future might be like if I keep practicing the piano.
I am a webmaster by profession and recently created a website with a friend who is a piano teacher. His name is Christopher Schlegel, and he has put some great lessons together on the site, which is called PianoTricks.com. One lesson in particular is called “Chord Arpeggiation Trick” and it is available at this url:
http://www.pianotricks.com/lesson.php?input=28.
The lesson includes a video example, and some explanation. The lesson is totally free and available without website registration or anything like that. The great thing about this lesson, and the reason I am writing about it, is this: it takes the simple skills that I as a piano beginner have, and lets me show off a little bit but doing something the pros do: arpeggiate a chord.
Before you get scared, arpeggios are the same as chords, except in an arpeggio, the chord is played one note at a time, instead of all notes at the same time. This makes a very fluid sound, but also very consonant, because the notes flow together (they are part of the same chord “family”). This also makes it a little easier to play, since you don’t have to time all the fingers hitting at the same time (like in a normal chord).
The trick you will see in the video is that Christopher plays a simple major chord with both hands repeating the same chord up the piano octave by octave. The end result sounds like a flourishing move that expert pianists make; only it is so easy to do. Try it yourself and see. It has really made my day as a beginning piano student to try this lesson. I hope you get a lot out of it too.
Terrific And Terrifying Pianos
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
What’s the best piano you’ve ever played on? What’s the worst? Can the quality of pianos that are used for composing and performing seriously affect your musical output? Here are some thoughts.
Two of the most remarkable pianos ever built are the nine foot Steinway and the nine-and-a-half foot Bosendorfer. The Bosendorfer is more of a conversation piece because of its additional low notes, used for extra resonance when playing the sustain pedal. Both brands are of the highest quality, and produce a sound and key action second to none.
There are so many quality brands these days that deserve honorable mention. Heintzman pianos are generally gems and Yamaha are producing wonderful instruments. I could go on, but I’d rather talk about lousy pianos. It’s more fun.
Terrifying pianos are just another name for poorly maintained pianos. Although these types of pianos can be found virtually anywhere, occasionally they are found in schools and in retirement homes. What a shame!
A bad piano in a school supplies students with a lesser music education. Musical demonstrations by an instructor are out of tune and private piano tutoring is a disastrous effort on such instruments.
Retirement homes with bad pianos are truly a tragic circumstance. Just because residents in a home are retired, doesn’t mean that the poor piano has to retire from a life of tuning and maintenance. Yours truly encountered one such piano in a retirement home in Baltimore, Maryland. The year was 1988, and it was the year that I came closest to breaking a finger. While playing a Chopin study (opus. 10 no. 8), my right hand third finger actually got stuck in between two black notes!
Ouch! One of the black keys was too close to the adjacent black key, either through poor construction or through some sort or warping process over time (probably the latter). The otherwise happy Chopin Etude must have had a painful emotional feel to it from about the midway point of the composition until its conclusion. Thankfully, this was the last piece on the program. Suffice to say, there were no encores.
Here’s another gem of a piano. When first arriving at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, I was invited to a house of a friend. After dinner, I was asked by our charming host to perform on their piano for the three couples that were also invited to dinner. On this occasion, I decided to play the Chopin Barcarolle. To my great surprise, the piano was out of tune by more than a semitone. To a composer with perfect pitch, this is a death sentence.
Before going on, no implication was intended in labeling Baltimore and the surrounding areas with an infestation of bad pianos. Two bad pianos in one state is nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.
From the above past experiences, it can be concluded that badly maintained pianos can most definitely have a negative impact on performers. However, can the quality of a piano actually improve ones output? After all, it can be argued that music comes from within and that true emotion will not be subdued, regardless of the instrument that one is composing or performing on.
In the practical world, good equipment is always an asset. If a piano delivers a quality, singing tone, it becomes addictive to play. That, alone, is an extremely positive consideration. Any composer or performer that has incentive to remain at their instrument for greater lengths of time is bound to produce positive results.
Another point to consider is that a singing tone makes ones soul sing. Any performer or composer that is brought to a state of singing is in a very positive creative place.
As a final thought, a well maintained piano makes for a happy performer, composer and piano. The better the instrument is, the better the chance of a successful emergence of profoundly moving performances and compositions from performers and composers respectively.
Yamaha Pianos Dealers – Providing the Best
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008Yamaha pianos are probably the one of the most popular piano brands all over the world. They have a great infrastructure spread over various parts of the world like UK, Indonesia and Japan. Thus utilizing advanced precision engineering they maintain a high quality of product. Most importantly, there is consistency between different models. It is a very common thing for pianos to have noticeable differences in their tonal characteristics between two identical models due to the lack of precision in manufacturing. So the consistency part is very important. The quality of design and build does not guarantee consistency of tonal qualities and, with a range of 88 notes; consistency is not to be overlooked on a piano.
Yamaha pianos have a well deserved worldwide popularity. This popularity is not only due to the global association of more popular products than piano alone. Yamaha is making pianos since 1899 and they definitely have piano design and build experiences which at least equals to other big names in piano. However, the Yamaha pianos were mainly targeted for the American and Asian market as the tonal characteristics there were more preferred to be clinical, percussive and less sonorous than that preferred in Europe. It was only during 1980 that Yamaha pianos started to enter the European market. Since then, the pianos targeted for European market saw a major change in design, though the class of sound was not compromised with. With time these pianos have developed the deep, dynamic and lyrical tone that the European market looks for.
Over the years, the demand for Yamaha pianos has increased considerably. And the pianos have developed accordingly too. The cabinet styles have undergone a lot of change specially to meet the requirements of the European market. More importantly there has been a change in the tone too. There are over twelve upright and twelve grand pianos in its range along with the Silent series and the Disklavier series hybrids. Although the range is huge, some of the models are just variations having a difference in price but hardly any in case of performance or quality. The only difference is the aesthetics. So if you are looking for a good piano from the makers who have enough experience to provide the best, do not forget to pay a visit to the Yamaha piano dealers, because they can provide you the best.
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12 Piano Quotes to Celebrate National Piano Month
Saturday, December 13th, 2008This month is National Piano Month and what better way to celebrate than with some inspiring piano quotes? The ability to make a piano come to life is an art form that few ever truly master. These 12 piano quotes sum it up beautifully.
1. “No other acoustic instrument can match the piano’s expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.” ~ Kenneth Miller
2. “The piano is the social instrument par excellence… drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment.” ~ Jacques Barzun
3. “The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air.” ~ Kenneth Miller
4. “One man gets nothing but discord out of a piano; another gets harmony. No one claims the piano is at fault.” ~ Author Unknown
5. “I’ve never felt anything that moves me as much as my piano. I’m an emotional player. I don’t really like people. I prefer my piano to people. It’s totally reliable and it’s alive. I can hear what it’s saying.” ~ Tori Amos
6. “When you play music you discover a part of yourself that you never knew existed.” ~ Bill Evans
7. “Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.” ~ Igor Stravinsky
8. “To play without passion is inexcusable!” ~ Ludwig van Beethoven
9. “Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” ~ Frederic Chopin
10. “I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o’clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.” ~ Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky
11. “Pianos are such noble instruments – they’re either upright or grand.” ~ Author Unknown
12. “It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer’s iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
So whether you play for fun or play for passion, meet with the keys every day or just dust them off when company comes over, let’s take a moment to remember the importance of the piano in our history and in our daily lives. These twelve piano quotes are a wonderful way to do so.
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Piano Lessons
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008Introduction
Piano lessons are for both the beginning piano student and the student who wants to review their skills. The piano and piano lessons are fun easy and a great way to enjoy making your own music. Piano lessons are the foundation of learning music, especially for very young children. Forget all of what you have heard or remember about piano lessons. Piano lessons don’t need to be hard or take a long time. Piano lessons can help you realize your true potential.
Music
Music is a wonderful way to express yourself. Music should be fun, playful and enjoyable. Music consists of repeating patterns of single notes and hand formations, which are combined in different ways to produce different sounds. Music truly is a universal language and one of the most powerful forces on the planet. Music also contributes to the development of self-confidence, creativity, imagination, long and short-term memory, social skills, coordination, and self-discipline.
Learning
Learning the piano is an excellent way to start playing music for all ages, from toddlers through adults. Learning to play the piano or electric keyboard can be a natural and enjoyable experience. Learning to play the piano involves use of a variety of segments of the brain including areas housing spatial reasoning skills, emotion, creativity, and motor skills. Learning to play the piano doesn’t mean you have to be born with talent nor do you have to be as young as your niece or grandchild. Learning to play the piano is great for all ages.
Online
Online Music Lessons are an ideal way to fit music into your schedule. Online piano lessons are a simple way to dig in again and are cheap and easy to follow. For those that do not have a teacher at all, look for online piano and keyboard lessons that begin from step one. You can actually find some free online piano lessons, you should look into this first. These lessons take people on a journey from beginner to advanced in their piano playing skill by fast-tracking their piano playing, while covering every aspect involved in learning to play piano.
Practice
Most people know that if you take any sort of music lessons, you must practice. To attain a new skill such as playing the piano, it is important that you make time for daily practice. Practice for at least half an hour everyday or about 4 to 5 days a week is one way to teach yourself to play piano easily. In these beginning stages of learning how to play the piano, it is very important that you do not skip days of practice. Establishing a routine is best because it builds the practice habit.
Conclusion
Piano lessons are offered to beginning and intermediate level students of all ages–from children age 6 and up, to young and older adults. Piano lessons can help you or your kids increase your ability to focus and concentrate, and are a great way to teach kids that perseverance and practice pay off. All you need is a piano or a keyboard to get started. The benefits of piano lessons are numerous and can last a lifetime.
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