Posts Tagged ‘Fingers’

Learning how to play the violin is very rewarding. And probably not as hard as you may imagine at first. The crux of it is it’s a matter of learning finger positions on the finger board and about bow control.

Pressing a certain finger down produce a specific sound when you’re playing your violin. And you have to know when to create a certain note at the right time in the melody you’re playing. The closer your fingers are to the bridge the higher the note you’ll produce. And conversely the further your fingers are away the lower the note you’ll produce.

Adopting the right Bowing technique is important. When you’re ‘Bowing’ it’s important to maintain a 90 degree angle between the bow and the strings. Most of the bowing is done using your lower arm and your wrist. One thing – when you’re bowing near the frog you need to bend your wrist to keep the 90 degree angle between the bow and strings.

Having the correct body position whether you’re playing either standing up or sitting down is very important – if you’re to play well. You must feel comfortable. If you sit down make sure you’re sitting upright. If you prefer to stand have your weight equal on both feet. Hold your violin at a 40 degree angle to the horizontal line of your shoulders. The wrist holding the neck of your violin must stay in line with your arm

Something which is very important is Rosin. This is made from tree gum. You rub it across the ribbon of the bow in order to coat it with a fine powder. This causes the bow to grip your strings, creating friction. And a better sound. Otherwise your bow would slide over the strings without producing much sound.

Raising children can be trying. At times so much so that it even tempts devoted parents to wonder, “How does the world manage to re-populate itself?” So keeping a sense of humor is really important. Here’s some crazy things kids say when taking piano lessons and practicing that parents need to be prepared to laugh at. Let’s start with the whining. Amazingly these are things I’ve heard young, beginning piano students say right after they have played a simple piece of music beautifully?

Student: “But it’s too hard.”

Parent: “It’s only too hard if you think it is.”

Student: “My fingers nails hurt.”

Parent: “We can trim your nails.”

Student: “Why do I have to look at the music?”

Parent: “Do you think I should look at the road when I’m driving?”

Student: “I’m thirsty.”

Parent: “I’m Dad.”

Student: “When can I play Fur Elise?”

Parent: “When you know how.”

Student: “When will I know how to play every song on the piano that I hear?”

Parent: “When you’re 18.”

Student: “Why do I need to play at home when I played piano at my lesson?”

Parent: “Because we can’t afford to play on your teacher’s piano every day.”

Here’s what parents of young children need to get. Kids whine. Everything your child complains about doesn’t mean anything. It’s kind of like my cat. He always stands at the door and whines, even when I just let him out. He will then whine by his food dish even though I just filled it up with his favorite kitty pellets. Why? Because it makes him feel secure to see me open the door for him one more time, and put a few more pellets in his bowl. Will he ever get tired of me opening the door and giving him more kitty pellets that he isn’t going to eat? No.

So don’t take your little kitten in piano lessons too seriously and in a few years they’ll be saying, “I can play the piano better than my parents, because I’ve been taking lessons and they didn’t get to do that.”

Why is it easy to compose piano music?

Because you have to start from where you are. This should be fairly easy; Otherwise you have not started from where you are.

A suggestion is to start writing piano pieces for beginners in a progressive order. The idea is that as the pieces get more complicated for the player they will also become more complicated for you to notate and compose and you will subsequently learn as you write.

How is composing beneficial for your piano playing?

1. Your compositional endeavours will make you more and more aware of intrinsic musical subtleties in the music of other composers. When you start to think and feel like a composer you will also become a better performer as well. Performing is also a creative process similar to composing.

2. When you compose you will become a better sight reader.

I remember an assignment I had many years ago when I wrote the music to a musical. It made me aware of many notational problems I had not taken the time to solve for myself before.

When I started to play my piano music again I was astonished when realizing it was much easier for me to sight read complicated piano sheet music. The reason for this I concluded was my concentrated effort to notate my own piano music.

The process to play something with my fingers and and then try to notate the music on manuscript paper was so to speak a reversed sight reading exercise.

What about manuscript paper?

You can use a notation program or you can write on paper or use both approaches. I suggest that you start writing on paper the way that composers have done for centuries.

Composing piano sheet music by hand on manuscript paper is a cheap and effective exercise to learn the various sheet music symbols.

Very often I jot down musical ideas on ordinary white paper after drawing five lines by hand. It works fine if you can’t find your manuscript paper. You can buy manuscript paper for sheet music or print out your favorite format for free on the site http://www.blanksheetmusic.net

In conclusion, composing piano sheet music can become a natural part of your daily practice routine.

Spend half an hour a day composing your own piano sheet music and you will increase your musical knowledge and become an even better musician!

And remember; Composing piano sheet music is fun!

The best way to learn how to play a violin is to first get an excellent violin teacher. Online instructional materials and instructional videos are available, but a private teacher will enable you to master the violin more quickly, for an actual teacher will know what you should be aiming for, notice problems with your technique, and tailor solutions to your particular needs.

The next step is to study your violin fingering chart, or if possible, study music theory so that you will comprehend the structure of music. As you study the fingering chart, you’ll understand where to place your fingers as you play each chord.

Before you begin playing your violin, remember to rosin your bow. If you haven’t learned how to do this, request for someone from the music store or your violin teacher to rosin it for you. If you do not have rosin on the bow, this will cause very little noise; however, if there is too much rosin it will cause a scratchy sound.

When the bow is ready, you must next tune your violin. This must be done once a week, or more often if you play your violin frequently. Using a shoulder pad is helpful for beginners. This will make it possible for you to hold your violin between your chin and shoulder without raising your shoulder. That way you can move your left hand without restriction.

The last yet far most important step is to practice– not just practice your violin playing, but to strive for improvement. As you practice, you repeat the same action or same ways of playing, so if you have bad habits while playing the violin, you practice committing them over and over until they become ingrained.

Therefore, it is important that when you practice, you must first have your mistakes corrected, so that the subsequent time you practice, you will not be repeating the same mistake again. This does not just apply to violin playing, but also to playing other instruments.

That’s all for now! Now, go and study those fingering charts!

When playing the piano, a good sense of rhythm is essential. Here are the top five ways to develop you piano rhythm:

1) Learn the basic rhythms.

As one of the top 5 ways to develop your piano rhythm, learning the basic beats found in any kind of music will help. The more rhythms that you listen to in fact, the easier they are to identify and emulate. We have for example, the standard four-beat rhythm that counts out to four beats per measure. Pretty common. Then we have the three-beat rhythm that counts out to three beats per measure. Again, pretty common. We also have the two-beat rhythm which is half the four-beat rhythm, but as you delve deeper into the world of piano, you’ll discover some rather interesting (albeit, a little tricky) beats to play. The five beat rhythm is an example. This pattern counts out five beats per measure, commonly found in non-European music.

2) Practice rhythms with your hands (clapping, clapping on lap, tapping foot).

Speaking of tricky rhythms, we find that clapping our hands or just tapping our feet is an effective method in developing rhythm — especially when the music that we play gets a little complicated. Bear in mind that music doesn’t have to be foreign to be complicated. Sometimes, music can be so “full” of “stuff” (notes, flags, sharps, and other twists and turns), we can get lost in trying to play it. Taking a few moments to clap out a rhythm however, helps us associate notes with a unique time signature — a time signature that could at any moment, change right in the middle of a song!

3) Count out loud if you have to.

This strategy follows the hand clapping and foot tapping strategy above, except that counting aloud helps strengthen the concept of rhythm in our minds. When we repeat 1 -2 -3 -4 over and over, that pattern sticks and flows from our fingers. It’s best to count aloud while looking at the music you’re playing. The relationship between the notes you see and the beats that they represent will become clearer as a result.

4) Use a metronome.

Metronomes are pretty much standard staples when it comes to playing music. You would be hard pressed in fact, to stay on beat without one! A metronome is programmed to produce a steady beat for a prolonged period of time, so they make perfect tools for strengthening adherence to certain beats.

5) Play the piano in your mind while doing something else.

Just for fun, you could use the sounds in your environment as a basis for a new rhythm. Imagine the sounds created in the office environment. A person typing… someone walking down the hall… a printer grinding out 20 sheets of music… you get the point. Pick any one of these songs and then play your imaginary piano to the rhythm of the sound that you’re hearing. Even if the rhythm speeds up or slows down, the goal in this little exercise is to keep playing the music on time, no matter how much the beat sways.

Learning how to play acoustic guitar is one of your dreams? If so, there are a few basic methods you can try that will definitely get you on the right track to learn acoustic guitar fast. The acoustic guitar is a very unique product. The sound they produce play an important part in any group or band.

The first thing you need to know is that playing the guitar is quite simple. However, and this is true foe a lot of new things, you need to apply the right techniques right from the start so that you can make quick progress. For instance, you need to make sure you respect the correct amount of fingers on the strings. This is actually one of the most common causes of poor sound quality.

Guitar players very often practice chords and finger placement- Even when they are not with their guitar. They practice their finger placement to be really efficient when playing the guitar. They often do it in front of the TV.

Learning how to read guitar tabs is also an essential component of learning how to play acoustic guitar. In any guitar book you can access guitar tabs. You can also lookup a particular song on the internet and look for the corresponding tabs. Reading guitar tabs is simple. 5 lines put horizontally represent the five strings of the guitar. The vertical lines are for the frets and the numbers are placement indicators for your fingers on the strings.

You will find that once you get used to the basics, you get more comfortable and can move on to more complicated pieces of music. Learning how to play the acoustic guitar is a fascinating journey. Undertaking that journey brings you closer to who are, as a musician, as playing the guitar is the most natural thing you can ever do.