Posts Tagged ‘Piano Lesson’

We all need to dream and to believe that one day our dreams will come true. But without a plan for success, our dreams are unlikely to materialize. The dream of learning to play the piano is no different. Even young students, however, can learn to set goals and take responsibility for their success. Helping your child keep a piano journal is an easy way to start them thinking about how they will bring their musical dreams to life. Follow the guide below to help your child in piano map out a simple plan for success, and see how easy and beneficial keeping a piano journal can be.

Example: I want to play the piano like my grandpa. He’s awesome!

How do I want to see myself in one year?

Example: Playing well at my Spring Recital.

In Two years?

In Five to ten years?

What can I accomplish toward my piano dream this week?

Example: Learn the new piece my piano teacher assigned G Major.

Are there specific goals that will help me achieve this objective?

Examples: Memorize Five-Finger Hand Position in G; Name each note; Identify difficult passages and; Play over these areas in the music many times.

What are some good habits I need to develop that will support my piano goals?

Examples: Set aside a specific time to practice each day; Avoid distractions while practicing, such as television; Tell friends I can play after I finish practicing my piano lesson; Attend my piano lesson with my teacher each week.

Planning to follow through with good habits that support our goals is how dreams are achieved.

Piano improvisation in a classical music way is an interesting complement to ordinary piano improvisational practicing. Let me suggest a way to practice!

Piano sheet music is a means and not an end. It’s a way to notate what to play on the piano.

You can find a lot of interesting passages in classical piano solos. These solos can help you collect improvisational material to work on to make your piano improvisations more interesting.

How to develop your classical piano improvisational skills?

May I suggest that you begin with an easy piano solo with just one voice in your left hand and your right hand.

Learn a phrase with a few bars by heart. Play the melody over and over again as you try to change the melody slightly without losing the classical touch.

One advantage of using classical piano music in piano improvisation exercises is that you will find many interesting and melodic basslines in counterpoint style that you can use to enchance your piano improvising.

The use of playing separate melodic lines together in this way to create music is called counterpoint. Counterpoint is a musical technique involving the simultaneous sounding of separate musical lines.

Classical piano compositions are filled with wonderful licks that you can incorporate in your playing.

What can you do with a classical piano composition to improve your piano improvisational skills? Here are some examples:

1. Study differents ways used to play left hand bass patterns. Play around with the patterns and try to transpose them into different keys.

2. Study interesting chords. Experiment with them, change keys and positions.

3. Find chord progressions to develop.

4. Find interesting passages with unusual musical material.

5. Many more things.

As I can see it there are two differents approaches to learn and work with the before mentioned material:

1. You can memorize the classical material and start a growing bank of chords, unusual melodic phrases, chords progressions and other classical piano oriented material you’ll find in the piano compositions for further use in your piano improvisations.

This approach will of course develop your skills but it will also be very time consuming and maybe overwhelming if you can’t devote all your time to piano playing. Who would that be?

Another drawback is that you might lose interest in this type of piano skill development because of the stress involved in learning so many different skills and maybe the joy of playing piano will diminish.

2. Another approach is to use the before mentioned methods in a more laid back way without learning everything by heart. Let me give you an example from my childhood:

When I was quite young I used to read a lot of books on popular science from the public library. I had a bunch of books laying beside me as I lay comfortably on my bed with pillows and just having a good time.

I never felt compelled to read a book from cover to cover or to read in a certain way. The only thing I did was to read the things I was interested in, looking at pictures and enjoying what I did.

I know I learned a lot from these nice reading experiences. If I had a goal it was to feel good and I was reading because of curiosity.

I think you can do the same with the classical music you play. As you enjoy to discover the secrets in the piano sheet music the way I have mentioned you are sowing seeds that will sooner or later manifest themselves in your playing.

The classical music will creep out in your fingers and you will feel new ideas coming up in your piano improvisational endeavors!

Piano tab notation will help you learn melodies without knowing sheet music. In this piano lesson you will learn to read easy piano tabs. You will also learn to play Happy Birthday To You!

If you do not know how to read piano sheet music I suggest that you try to learn it. If you start with very easy melodies with just a few notes you will not get too frustrated. Learn the names of the keys of your piano. Also, learn the names of the notes as they appear on an easy music sheet, focusing on just a few at a time.

To read sheet music well you have to have the patience and devote time to practicing. This practice time will pay off as you will have an immense amount of sheet music waiting to be played. Until you have mastered the art of playing sheet music you can use piano tabs to help you play melodies.

With the help of piano tablature you can easily learn melodies, chords and other music on your piano. Tabs cannot replace sheet music but you can notate much musical information even with this type of notation.

What is piano tablature?

Piano tab notation is an established system for reading and writing music. Actually there are several systems, some with numbers and others with letters but we will use a simplified form of the most common system on the net.

Sheet music notation shows the actual notes to play but not how to play them on your piano. This task you have to perform yourself. Piano tablature on the other hand is a way of showing which keys to play on your piano. When you have learned the system you will find it easy to play melodies. But, first you have to learn the note names.

The note names

We will use the note names on the piano as the basis for the notation. You will have to learn the names of the notes on the white keys of your piano. The first note we will learn is the middle c. It is easy to understand that the middle c is at the middle of the piano but exactly where?

You have probably noticed that the black keys on your piano or keyboard are organized in groups. You will find groups with two and with three black keys all over the keyboard.

If you take a look at the two black keys at the middle of your piano you will find middle c immediately to the left of these black keys. This middle c is sometimes called c4. The number 4 shows that it is the c in the fourth octave.

What is an octave?

Octave means eight and if you play the note c and the following notes until you come to the next c you have played eight notes. This c note is to the left of the next two black keys one octave higher.

The notes after middle c are d e f g a b and then comes c again. When you play these notes from c to the next c you have played a c-major scale. The next c is sometimes called c5 as it is in the next octave which is the fifth octave of a piano keyboard. The c in the octave to the left of middle c is called c3.

Now we will take a closer look at the piano tablature we will use in the song Happy Birthday To You.

The rules

In this article we will use a simplified version of the piano tabs you will find on the Internet. Here are the rules:

1. Lowercase letters show the white keys. That is, c d e f g a b.

2. Uppercase letters show the black keys. The note C means that you shall play the black key to the right of c. This note is written as c# in traditional sheet music language.

3. A number after a note name shows in which octave to play the note. The note c4 means middle c. The following notes to play will not have a number until you change octave.

Happy Birthday To You

Now it is time for you to read the piano tabs to Happy Birthday To You! I will write down the lyrics, one line at a time with the corresponding piano tabs below. It is written in the key of F-major.

The chords to play if someone wants to accompany you are written in brackets before the appropriate syllable. If you already know how to play chords with your left hand you can try to play them yourself as you play the melody with your right hand.

Happy (F)Birthday to (C7)you, happy birthday to (F)you

c4 c d c f e c c d c g f

The number 4 after the first c shows that you are to play the notes in the fourth octave until you find a new octave indication.

Happy (F)birthday, dear (Bb)”Liza”

c c c5 a4 f e d

(Bb)Happy (F)birthday (C7)to (F)you

A A a f g f

Remember, uppercase A is the black note to the right of a.

Remember, the note A is the black key to the right of a.

I suggest that you memorize the melody one line at a time so you do not have to rely on the tab notation. These piano tabs are an introduction to the little more advanced tablature system on the Internet.

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It is also a comprehensive and easy to master technique that will have the student who implements the lessons playing better and better each day with greater quality music than before. It really does accelerate the already accelerated learning process.

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Article Written By J. Foley