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Learn Classical Piano

August 18, 2010 By Crissy

Playing classical piano can be a challenge. Honestly, mastering any instrument is going to take an awful lot of practice. But the piano is very different from many instruments in the fact that there are some ways to play the piano that don’t require perfection. It’s much the same with the guitar. You don’t have to be a virtuoso in order to play good chord music with the piano or guitar. However, playing classical piano is an entirely different thing altogether.

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If you really want to know where to begin practicing classical piano, the answer is really much simpler than you might think. Yes, your practice time needs to include more sight reading, and you should also send more time practicing sections of a piece of music as opposed to entire pieces of music so that you master one little part at a time, but there is another element that you should absolutely add to your practice without fail. This one practice tip is used by almost every concert level pianist in the world to begin their daily practice routine.

It’s called Hanon and it was written quite a long time ago, but it will never go out of style. Hanon was written to help concert pianists master the fingering for the note runs in some of the world’s most challenging classical music. It will increase finger strength, dexterity and even muscle memory for those very difficult note runs that even give the very best pianists fits.  A concert pianist will begin his practice sessions by playing all the way through the entire book. While that is not entirely necessary for the amateur pianist, it certainly wouldn’t hurt you one little bit.

Practice is all about learning and improving what you happen to be practicing on. And the best way to improve certain aspects of your classic piano ability is to use Hanon to master the most difficult scales from the most difficult music in the world. If you can master Hanon, you can play just about anything.

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Easy Piano Lessons

August 18, 2010 By Crissy

Easy and piano don’t always belong in the same sentence. I’m not going to pull your leg here, mastering the piano, which is one of the more difficult instruments to learn to play, is going to take a while. However there are a couple of easy piano lessons that you can keep in mind when you are first beginning to play. You’ve heard of people wanting to learn to play the piano by ear, but that’s probably just going to hold you back later on. It’s better to do the hard work up front and then the rest will just be practice.

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So let’s talk for just a little while about developing feel when playing the piano. Having a feel for where your hands are on the keyboard means that you’re not looking at your hands all the time to know where to place them. If you can master feel you will be able to read pieces of music and play them without having any idea what this song is supposed to sound like when you play it. Playing piano by ear is actually a handicap and you really should learn how to read music, but you can start with just learning how to play without looking at your hands.

Most piano teachers will have you begin your lessons by finding middle C. and working on a C. major scale. They do this because middle C. is the easiest note to find on the keyboard and the C. major scale is the easiest to play. By learning the C. major scale you can learn a little bit about reading music, a little bit about fingering, and a touch of music theory when it comes to scales and octaves.

But since the C. major scale doesn’t contain any of the black keys it is also a terrible place to start because it the black keys on the piano are much easier to find. Every octave as five of them. One group of three and one group of two. Each of the black keys since has two white keys on either side of it, if you begin with a scale that uses the black keys instead of C. major you will learn a much better feel for where your hands are on the piano. It won’t take very long before you will be able to feel all of the notes by knowing where your fingers are in relation to the black keys.

You may have seen professional pianists who tend to play with their fingers closer to the black keys, almost playing the white notes in between the black keys. The reason for this is that it makes certain finger combination’s and locating your hands on the keyboard much easier. Probably the best scale to begin with is B natural instead of C. major. By learning a few major scales your fingers will begin to develop a feel for where they are on the piano.  It turns out this little piano lesson was easy after all.

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Learn To Play Piano Part 2

August 18, 2010 By Crissy

If you’re scared of learning to read music, don’t be. It’s really not that hard. But whatever you do, don’t open up a piece of sheet music with complicated piano parts. That will scare you. The hardest thing a pianist has to do is read both the bass clef and treble clef at the same time. Bass clef is usually played with the left hand and treble clef the right. If you don’t even know what I’m talking about when I say “clef” don’t worry about it. I had no idea how to read music or what a clef was when I started either.

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So learning to play the piano is actually learning music in general as well.  But don’t get overwhelmed. Baby steps, remember?

So, once you’ve mastered those nursery songs in your beginner’s music book, it will be time to start learning some chords. You will need to practice every day so that each chord imprints itself into your mind and your muscle memory. If you practice every day you will be able to play any chord in your sleep.

Learning chords has a lot of benefits which will be expanded on later as you learn more complicated songs.

Generally speaking, chords are played with the left hand and the melody is played with the right. This doesn’t fit every song, by far, but usually that is the case. Still, both of your hands will benefit from your learning chords, because lots of melodies use chords as their base. Melodies have the tendency to follow chords in a certain pattern that may or may not be slightly varied in some way.

After chords, you will need to learn octaves and chromatic scales. Once you master these, you start to become an actual musician. The secret to an awesome piano solo is really the chromatic scale. Experienced pianists can sit down and play a completely on-the-spot piano solo simply by knowing what key the rest of the song is in. They don’t write the solo beforehand and then memorize it, they use the chromatic scale and combine it with their knowledge of chords and octaves to create unique and beautiful solos without any rehearsal. All they need to know is the key.

This is the point that is truly the most enjoyable about playing the piano, or any instrument for that matter. This is when you will be actually making music, rather than performing from rote memory. You can do this too, if you follow the small steps, if you have the determination to do the boring things like learn chords and scales, and if you have the tenacity to learn to read music.

See why that practice schedule is so important?

My inspirational picture of Fats Domino helped me get to where I am today.  Even though I never had any desire to be a rock star or famous musician (I still have my same old day job) I can rightfully call myself a musician because I can make music come right out of my hands with the piano.

In my opinion there is no instrument that is more rewarding to play. It was a long road to get here, but it’s not impossible. Just keep at it, and you can be here too. Let me tell you, it was all worth it.

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Learn To Play Piano Part 1

August 18, 2010 By Crissy

Playing the piano is a great hobby to have. It is the perfect creative outlet that can relieve stress. It is a pastime that anyone can be proud of, and playing an old favorite on those ivory and ebony keys is a wonderful party trick. But, no matter what your motivations for learning to play the piano are, you’re going to have to take it slow.

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Yes there are those rare people who can sit down at a piano having never played it before and play Beethoven, but statistically speaking it is very unlikely that you are one of those people. Those people have some kind of natural gift, but that doesn’t mean you will never SOUND as good as they do. All it means is that your road to becoming a piano virtuoso is going to be long and filled with lots of little baby steps.

Just like anything that takes a lot of abilities to do, learning to play the piano is going to take a lot of practice. Learning to do anything that’s worth learning is going to take daily devotion, disciple, and self-motivation. If these are not your fortes, then learning to play piano can have the side benefits of improving your self-discipline.

The thing is, you will have to learn icky, boring songs in the beginning because they are easy to play. Playing “Hot Crossed Buns” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb” a thousand times doesn’t sound like fun, but if you want to sound like Elton John or Billy Joel, you’re going to have to start with those old nursery songs to help get your mechanics down right.

So, make yourself a little schedule. Actually writing it down and hanging it up by your computer or work desk or kitchen table is best. Put it somewhere you can see it every day to remind yourself to practice. Put an inspirational picture on it. My practice schedule (I still keep one after playing the piano for 12 years) has a picture of Fats Domino on it because Fats is awesome.

Also, you’re going to need to be able to read music. There’s just no way around this part of learning to play the piano. Rock star wannabes don’t really need to learn music to play the guitar because of guitar tablature. Guitar “Tab,” as it’s also called, just shows what fret your finger needs to be on for any given string for any given note. Since there are only five strings on a standard guitar, this is a much easier thing to read than actual sheet music.

For budding pianists, however, there really is no substitute for reading music. If the piano was a guitar it would have 88 strings! And since piano players use both hands to play rather than using one to hold notes while the other one picks or strums.

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