Category — Learning To Play Piano

(In Spite Of Years Of Lessons!)

Maybe you’ve found that you’ve hit a wall in your piano playing ability, beyond which you just can’t seem to get. Everybody hits this wall, even the eventual great players.The following are some helpful tips for taking your piano playing to next level.

* Learn song pattern recognition as we discussed in the post on playing by ear. 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.

* In that same "Playing By Ear" post, we started looking at the number system for chord-cuilding; that is, in any key, the chord built on that key’s first note is the 1 chord, on the next note is the 2, chord, and so on. 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.

* 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: 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.

Here’s some words of wisdom about how to move past mental blocks to succeed as a piano player, from the great teacher Ed Mascari

"Would you like to feel more motivated to practice the piano?
Are you struggling to make practicing the piano a priority?
Have you lost your desire to "go for the gold"?

Recently, the mother of a young student told me that she was concerned about her daughter’s lack of motivation to practice the piano.

When I questioned Katy about this issue, she told me that she needed inspiration… and that it was my job as her teacher to inspire her.

You may feel the same way.
But what happens when your goal to improve your piano playing needs daily inspiration?
How will you get it?

Maurice Ravel said that inspiration comes as a result of daily work (practice).
Business guru Michael Gerber, in his book E-Myth Mastery, sheds more light on this subject:
"Organization… is the fountainhead for inspiration….people have a container within which to be their most creative."

But how can you get inspiration and use it to succeed?

Three Building Blocks for Successful Piano Playing:

1. Organization: look at each of the parts of your musical program

• Your Music: Are the books and/or the sheet music for the pieces you want to learn all together in one place as well as clear and easy to read with any necessary place marks in the books? See my article about organizing your music. Your Practice Spot: Do you have good lighting, a comfortable seat or bench, an area free from noise and distractions? How is your energy level? Will you be able to concentrate? Here are some ideas to help you use your practice spot to succeed.

• Your Schedule: Have you set aside times during the week when you plan to practice? This could be at different times on certain days, but you need to have blocks of time (even 15 minute spots) scheduled for each day.

• Your Goals & Priorities: Have you selected the songs you really want to play? Are you practicing difficult sections several times so that you can master them? Do you have a target date for learning each of your pieces? Take a look at these tips for success.

2. Inspiration: Once you have put each of the elements of organization into your practicing routine, you will have a plan to follow. As soon as you start using this success building structure on a regular basis, you will notice an increase of inspiration.

You will start noticing that you are more focused, more confident and more energized.

3 Motivation: When you start seeing results and hearing improvement, you’ll become much more enthusiastic. Organization plus inspiration will give you the motivation to practice more often, more effectively and more successfully. You will amaze yourself which how much better you can play, and as a result you’ll want to practice.

Action Exercises:

Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, create your success structure by putting the organization of your music, your practice spot, your schedule and your goals & priorities into place.

Second, start following your plan and commit to making this new way of practicing a success habit. The longer you maintain this discipline, the more enthusiastic you will become. Inspiration will increase and energize your daily work.

Third, remember that the way to keep the motivation to persevere on your journey to successful piano playing is to create and apply organization to your practicing routine. The more consistent you become with this, the more you will experience inspiration.

If you want to get great results from all of your piano lessons and really succeed, combine the Three Building Blocks: Organization + Inspiration + Motivation.

You’ll be amazed at how quickly your piano playing will sound super! Before you know it, you’ll have plenty of motivation to succeed because you started with organization which gave you inspiration!"

Copyright © 2007 by Ed Mascari ed@edmascari.com

Once again, our friend and great teacher, Ed Mascari offers a super perspective on having continual success in your piano studies, simply by remembering to ask yourself "Why am I studying piano?"

"Are you wondering when you’ll be able to play the piano with ease?
Do you wish you could improve your piano playing more quickly?
Are you struggling to stay motivated to practice each day?

Is so, read on…..

There’s a lot of talk these days about setting goals.
Unfortunately, even if you do set a goal, you may not achieve it.

Perhaps it’s because your reason for accomplishing the goal isn’t important enough to you.

Have you ever prepared to perform at your spring piano recital and put everything else aside during the few days before? Perhaps this is because you wanted to play well. Or you may simply have been motivated by the fear of embarrassment.

In his famous book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill said "The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat."

Think about the day before you go on vacation. Won’t you work like crazy to accomplish all of your tasks so that you can pack your suitcase, change into your casual clothes and get going?

If you want to stay motivated, improve your piano playing more rapidly and get to the point where you can play the piano with ease, you will need to discover your deepest reasons for accomplishing these goals. In other words, you will need a very strong desire to achieve your piano playing success.

Desire is the powerful fuel in your goal setting process.

But how can you access desire and use it to succeed?
You need to keep asking yourself WHY?

"Why?": The Key Question to Ask and Answer for Your Keyboard Success

1. Ask yourself WHY you chose to play the piano in the first place.

• Were you inspired after watching Horowitz performing on television?
• Do you remember hearing your grandmother tinkling the ivories?
• Did you become energized after experiencing the excitement of a Billy Joel concert?
• Is it because you inherited a piano, and it’s now sitting in your living room?
• Were you forced to take piano lessons as a child? (Hardly your choice)

2.  Ask yourself WHY you now want to play the piano-this is your long term goal.

 Do you want to play for relaxation? o

• Do you want to be able to entertain friends at parties?
• Do you want to play in a band?
• Do you want to play piano on cruise ship or in a piano bar?
• Do you want to compose and record your own music?

3. Ask yourself WHY you are making your piano playing a priority at this time of your life- this is your medium term goal.

• Are you anxious to finally focus on playing the piano now that your children have grown up and moved out?
• Do you really want to be able to play the Moonlight Sonata or memorize five Gershwin tunes?
• Are you eager to learn to improvise or play the blues?
• Do you want to open a fake book and play any song you choose?
• Are you anxious to develop your technique, sight-reading skills or knowledge of music theory?

4. Ask yourself WHY you want to practice the piano today-this is your short term goal.

• Do want to have a good lesson on Thursday?
• Have you had a stressful day today and need to unwind?
• Do you want to feel the satisfaction of playing 4 measures of Misty from memory?
• Are you excited about jamming with your Band-in-a-Box computer music program?
• Do you wish you could master the last 8 measures of Chopin’s Nocturne in Eb?

Action Exercises

Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, ask yourself WHY you really want to play the piano, WHY you want to reach a certain musical level, WHY you want to achieve your specific goals and WHY you want to practice today.

Second, answer each of your WHY questions and write these responses on index cards, in your notebook or in a computer program. The act of writing will reinforce your reasons for staying motivated and focused.

Third, remember that the way to keep fueling your desire to persevere on your keyboard success journey is to continue to ask WHY and then regularly answer your specific questions. The more consistent you become with this process, the more motivated you will feel.

If you want to get great results from all of your piano playing and really achieve your keyboard success, keep asking the key question: WHY?

You’ll be amazed at how quickly your piano playing will sound super!

Before you know it, you’ll have fueled your desire to succeed because you asked and answered the Key Question for Your Keyboard Success: WHY?"

© 2007 by Ed Mascari All Rights Reserved. ed@edmascari.com

Here’s another perspective on inspiration, written by my great musician friend, Paul Mueller

If you have not yet  experienced the joy of improvising in your piano playing, you are missing out on a great experience. Imagine an artist who does not know how to draw or paint without tracing or copying another’s work, and you get the idea.

Yet, many piano players lack the ability to improvise on the piano! This is caused by years of rigid piano lesson/structure and a lack of proper guidance.

Many piano players rely on sheet music to be able to play, which would be like an artist only copying another’s art work and never creating something unique. Improvisation is a fun process. It enables the pianist to bring out the latent potential of creativity and expression inside them.

One thing that will help any piano player to improve on the art of improvisation is to allow unstructured creative time during one’s piano practice hours.

Time to just sit down and make up music on the piano is crucial. No agenda, no structure, no goals to accomplish. This process is extremely important in the world of piano playing.

In order to allow the inner expression to come out, one needs to let it reveal itself. A good example of this is in how young children play piano. If you can observe a child learning the piano do so. Very often, young children are able to reach a creative and fun play "scheme" without any guidance at all. Similarly, any piano player should allow 15-30 minutes of "free play" without worrying about hitting the wrong notes.

Traditional piano lessons emphasize the ability to read notes. Reading ability is no doubt one of the most important skills any piano player can possess. This emphasis, however, has created some "lopsided" players who can only play piano by reading. Eventually this type of player will lose their interest and passion for music.

Many young children drop out of piano lessons as a result of struggling with music reading. Children who are younger than 5 or 6 are discouraged from traditional piano lessons due to the fact that they cannot yet read musical notes properly.

Music is commonly referred to as a "language." There are many ways of learning language. Young children master the language skill by frequently talking and interacting with their peers and care-takers as well as imitating other people. The ability to read comes a little later in their life. A similar approach needs to be taken to foster the love of piano music among young children. Sometimes by just allowing young children to make up music on the piano without placing emphasis on playing the correct notes can be just as important.

 We talked in earlier posts about the simplicity of early Western music, so simple at one ancient point, with just single notes chanted in church, that no chord-playing instruments like the piano were even needed. Even after harmony-based music appeared, and the elements of melody-plus-chord music grew, early music was still restricted to very stringent rules and used only the most conservative chord patterns. Many of the chord and melody choices commonly used in Chopin’s works would have been considered musical heresy in Telemann or Handel’s day, Similarly, the free-form, impressionistic musings composed by Debussy and Ravel, with their purposeful disregard for strict meter and cadence, might have shocked Chopin.

After hundreds of years of this ever-widening musical evolution, a true American art form was born in Jazz, in the early 20th Century. Jazz gave rise to many subset musical forms throughout the 1900s – New Orleans jazz, jazz standards, swing, be-bop, straight-ahead and avant-garde – each one ever more free-form in its definition of what music could be. We’ll look at some of the great eras and types of jazz, and their gifted exponents, in a later post.

But one of the main freedoms and styles jazz gave ultimate permission for, was improvisation. Improvisation simply means you use the written melody and chords as a starting point, but then play other notes and chords not in the original written composition. On piano, you may keep the same chords in your left hand, and simply add extra notes, runs and flourishes to the melody in the right hand. Or, in more experimental jazz forms, you may take license with the whole structure – melody, chords, even meter and tempo, ending up with something that most listeners would be hard-pressed to say still resembles the original.
 

In a lot of swing and straight-ahead jazz, it’s common for the band to play once through the main structure of the song’s chords & melody, as it was originally written, then take off for anywhere from a couple verses to 20 minutes worth of improvisation on that structure. Most of the improvisation is built on the basic blues structures – the 1, 4, 5, 6 chords with lots of added 7ths – that jazz grew out of. But it doesn’t sound anything like the simple blues of Muddy Waters or B. B. King. That’s because it’s only based on those blues structures. Then the improvisers go wild, adding a lot of diminished, augmented and modal sounding chords, with lots of extra 9ths, 11ths and 13ths (both major and minor.) The resulting chords and melody, often with both the natural and sharped-or-flatted form of a note in the same chord, can have a very angular sound, and for some, it’s an acquired taste.

But even straight-ahead blues players like B.B. King and Eric Clapton do a lot of melodic improvising, as do so many accomplished piano players like Errol Garner or Oscar Peterson. The accompanying chords stay close to the original chords, but numerous solos are taken on top of that basic structure, with slow or rapid, leaping or crying strings of notes and flourishes, until these solos become the more interesting and dominant aspects of their versions, over just the plain melody.

Coming off of the recent post about learning to play by ear, improvisation is the obvious next step. Once you can play any modern song, fully knowing its original chord and melodic structure, you are invited to take off on flights of fancy and enter an entirely new musical world. Try keeping the left hand chords the same, but experimenting with "riffs" above the normal melody. Try an upward or downward run of chromatic and other scales, or playing some cool "licks," quick or long combinations of bluesy notes that sound good as a nice flourish.

How do you know which riffs and improvisational choices are good or bad? Well, there are many books available that cover entire libraries of commonly used riffs, licks and solos. And there’s my favorite source, listening to other well-known piano players, either live or on CD, over & over, savoring and learning their improvisational choices, and adding my favorites to my own memory bank.

But in the end, it’s about just experimenting yourself, to your heart’s delight! That’s why it’s called improvisation! Because you are experimenting, technically, you can’t make a "mistake." So don’t be shy, just try tons of different things – different chords, different runs of notes – and see what sounds best to your ear. You might even discover a whole new music form. Either way, you’ll definitely have fun! Set aside some time in every piano practice session for some improvisation. Your playing will grow by leaps & bounds!

As mentioned before, most popular songs are built on the root, dominant and subdominant chords, or the 1, the 5 and the 4 chords, respectively. Some songs have just these three chords in them, and some add just a few others like the 7th, or minor chords built on the 3rd and 6th note of the scale.

So as our first example, we’ll listen to "Silent Night." A very simple song, and a great place to start.

Hopefully, you’ve followed the previous instructions for picking out the melody notes. If not, revisit the last post and use your ear’s memory of all the notes and small or large spaces between the notes (intervals) to hunt down and pick out the correct notes to "Silent Night’s" melody.

The first accompanying chord is the 1 chord, built on the first note of the scale. For this example we’ll say the song is in the key of "C". It fits perfectly under the repeated melody of "Silent Night…holy night". But then when the melody jumps to "all is calm…" you can hear that the accompanying chord also jumps to another chord, the "C" chord no longer matches. Can you tell what chord it jumps to? It jumps to 5 chord, built on the fifth note of the scale, or G, as in G, B, D. It comes back to the "C" or 1 chord for "all is bright…" But then it jumps away from C chord again to accompany the next part, "round young virgin…", but not to the 5 chord, which if you try it, will not fit. Try some of the other chords in the scale to see which one does fit. Eventually you’ll hear that the best match is the 4 chord, built on "F" as F, A and C. It goes back and forth between the 4 chord and the 1 chord a couple times, under "mother &child…holy infant so…tender and mild," then jumps back to the 5 chord on G under "sleep in heavenly…" and the 1 chord for "peace…" Then it ends with one more quick turn-around of the 1-5-1 chords under the repetition of "sleep in heavenly peace."

So "Silent Night" can be played with just 3 accompanying chords, the 1, the 5, and the 4 chords…that’s it!

But what’s really amazing, as you’ll discover, is that that simple structure underpins many modern songs, and the ones it’ not sufficient for need only a few extra chords, and you’re done!

Let’s check that out by looking at the chord structures to a few other popular songs:

"The Music Of The Night"  from Phantom Of The Opera                                                                                                           

    1          5       1                         5

Slowly, gently, night unfurls it’s splendour,

    1          5               4                   5

Grasp it sense it, tremulous and tender

   4                       1                   4                    1

Turn your face away from the garish light of day, turn your

      4                                                  1

Thoughts away from cold unfeeling light

          5                                      1

And listen to the music of the night

"Daniel" by Elton John

    1                                              4

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane

 5                                           3 maj.       6 min.

I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain

   4              5                          6                  4

I can see Daniel waving goodbye, God it looks like Daniel

    5                                     1

Must be the clouds in my eyes

As you can see, a song as grand as "Music Of The Night" is built primarily on these 1, 4 and 5 chords. Elton John’s "Daniel" adds just two others, the 3 and 6 chords, both which are very common extras in popular 1,4,5 -patterned songs.

Start now, listening to all your favorite songs with a keen ear for picking out the chord patterns you hear. And regularly practice picking out these patterns on your piano. In short order, you will get quite good at finding he correct melody notes and accompanying chords for any popular song…and you’ll be able to declare, "Yes, I can play by ear!"

In our last post we confirmed that so many people would love to be able to "play by ear." And we also confirmed that any person can learn this, regardless of being born with "an ear for music" or not. All it takes it learning, through repeated listening, the basic patterns that make up virtually all of contemporary songs in Western music.

Obviously, most piano players would not try to pick out and play classical pieces by ear, as that requires properly reading the exact notes written by the composer. Once you’ve become very good at picking out songs by ear, you probably could also pick out a simple Chopin Waltz, playing some chords in the left hand, and his basic melody in the right. But it wouldn’t sound nearly as beautiful as reading the precise changes he wrote.

But for modern songs, playing by ear is fine. Anything from the 1800s "Oh, Susanna" through the standards, show tunes and popular songs of the 20th Century will sound fine as long as you pick out the correct melody and accompany it with the simple, correct chords. Remember the 3 critical things you must learn in order to do this:

• Learn basic music theory: rhythms & tempos, the cycle of fifths, and the notes in every scale

• Learn the chords built on each note of a scale: The major and minor triads (three-note chords), and the sevenths

• Learn how to hear the patterns of those chords in any song your listening to

Mastering the first of these allows you to master picking out the song’s melody.  Once you’ve learned the notes that make up every scale, you will notice you can hear which notes are used in the melody. You may have to hunt & peck through a lot of trial & error your first few melodies you pick out, but soon you will hear when the melody moves to a note very close to the last note, or when it jumps a larger interval, and you’ll start to find the right notes.

Next, learn the chords built on each note of a scale. So in a song in the key of C major, the first, or 1 chord is made up of C, E and G, the second or 2 chord is D, F and A, the fourth (sub-dominant) chord is F, A and C, the fifth (dominant) chord is G, B and D, and so on. As a beginner, just build each chord on the note that corresponds to its number in the scale. Later, you can invert these chords, that is, use the same three notes, but in different orders as to which is on the top or bottom.

Now play all the chords in the key of C: the 1 chord, the 2 chord, the 3 chord and so on, over and over again, and listen to how they sound. You will begin to form a memory of what each of these chords sound like, and then you are well on your way to picking them out of an actual song.

Start by listening to some simple songs with fairly basic chord structures. Christmas carols are great. So are many of the songs by Elton John, or show tunes like "Memory" and "Music Of The Night" from Andrew Lloyd Weber. Play these songs on any device – CD player, iPod – that allows you to keep pausing. While siting at your piano, listen to just the first few measures of a song, pause it, and try to find the right melody of just that section. Through trial & error, you will find the repetitive melody to the whole song.

Now start the process over, listening to just a few chord changes at a time, trying out one of the only seven chords available by building on each note of the scale. That’s right, if you learned the chords built on each note of any scale, you discovered there’s only seven possibilities. Keeps it simple. Now try those chords, one at a time, with the melody you picked out, until you find the chords that sound exactly like those on the recorded version.

In our next post. we’ll look at the basic chord patterns in a few songs. You’ll see how basic they are, and how you can later embellish on them to add more variety and musical richness.

As mentioned in the last post, many wish they could drastically improve their sight-reading abilities, so they could read any new piece of music they desire quickly, and start playing it fairly well in just a few run-throughs. I hope the instructions provided were helpful.

But many decent sight-readers also yearn for the ability to pickout, by ear, any song they recently heard on the radio, their iPod, or anywhere else…somehow “hear it” again in their head, go over to the piano, and find the right melody notes and matching chords, without need to go out and buy the sheet music. In my travels, I find this skill to be the more rare of the two. Many piano players and students can read music fairly well, but it seems the ability to “play by ear” is granted to only a select few.

I was one of those few. At seven, I heard a song on the radio, “The Look Of Love” by Burt Bacharach, and really liked it. So I went over to my piano and traced the melody with my right hand. I found the correct notes fairly easily. Then I searched through various chords in the left hand till I found ones that sounded like those on the record. There were some odd chord changes (It was Bacharach, after all) but no wierd demolished 5ths or perverted 7ths:), mostly major and minor triads. So I found that I could, by trial and error, find the same chords he used, and voila, I could play a simple version of “The Look Of Love!”

The next day I heard another cherished song, “Going Out Of My Head” by Little Anthony and The Imperials, and repeated the same trial and error note-and-chord finding till I was able to play it fairly well (I later met its songwriter, Teddy Randazzo, who told me he lived entirely off that song’s royalties for a decade!) My Dad was astounded. My mother declared me a gifted prodigy (sorry, Mom.) But the truth is, I was simply clear about three musical basics – basic music theory, basic chords, and common chord patterns – and that’s what enabled me to do it.

The bad news is that I can’t walk around claiming to be musically gifted or prodigious. That’s tough. Perhaps my only gift was “getting” these three connections at a very early age. The good news is, anybody can master these three elements and learn to play songs by ear, just like me.

You see, Western music, especially the simple, short and repetitive motifs of popular songs, aren’t very complcated. Almost all popular songs written since the late 1800s follow very similar simple patterns, in both their structure and their chord progressions.

If you are already a piano player, even a relative beginner, you already have some training in basic music theory. You need to understand all the notes of any scale in any key, all the basic types of chords – major, minor, 7th, diminshed, etc.- that can be built on each note of the scale, and their relative relationships to each other. Learn the cycle of fifths if you haven’t already.

Next, understand that all popular songs are built around  the root, dominant and subdominant chords, or the 3-note chords built on the 1st, 5th and 4th note of any scale, respectively. Many songs have just these three chords in them – “Silent Night” for example -  while most add just a few others – the 7th, and minor chords built on the 3rd and 6th note of the scale.

In our next post, we’ll go through this more thoroughly.

Sight Reading and Playing By Ear

As a player, tuner and technician, I talk to people everywhere, every day, about their own piano playing…what genre of music they like to play, what level they can play at, what types of playing they cannot currently do well, but hope to eventually acheive. By far, the biggest topic that comes up is not whether they can improve their playing skills overall – they all know that with more practice they’ll play much better – but how to effectively improve either their sight-reading or their ability to “play by ear.” We’ll discuss these in the next two posts

Sight-reading, just like it sounds, is the ability to read the music notation on the page with the same quickness & fluidity one could read the words of any book. Specifically, sight-reading refers to being able to read a formerly-unseen piece of music so fluidly that you never need to stop the flow of your playing in order to “figure out what note that is” or “what these symbols mean,” you just keep playing without pause. Many players can do this with very elementary-level songs (like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,) but fall apart when a piece with lots of quick-succeeding notes for both hands is placed before them (like a Chopin Waltz or a Bach Invention.) They feel they must pick the piece apart, one note at a time, so they get bored, frustrated, and give up.

But the solution to painlessly increasing anyone’s sight-reading ability is fairly simple.

When you were young, there was a point where reading the words in a book was just as tedious. You had to sound-out each letter, put it together with the other sylables, and make an intelligible word and sentence out of each line. Now you don’t even pause for a second when reading. How did that transformation happen? Simple – you built your reading level S-L-O-W-L-Y.

The problem is, many are enamored with certain lovely but difficult pieces of music and want to be able to play them NOW. It’s only natural. I wanted to be able to read through and play Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu” since I first heard it, at age 8. It’s stunningly beautiful (hear it soon if you haven’t) but quite challenging – lots of fast moving notes and long stretches in both hands, lots of “accidentals” (extra shaprs & flats.) The first few times I tried it, well, I just flat out gave up.

Here’s what I had to do, and what you must also do. Get a metronome that will keep any speed of timing you set. Now get some books of pieces you’ve never seen or played before, from really easy-to-play levels (Grade 1 – 3) up to the more difficult pieces. Start playing the easiest pieces, at the indicated metronome speed, without looking down at your hands…just keep your eyes on the music. If you find you pause or drop out of playing at that speed, because you can’t recognize the notes fast enough, that’s your current highest level of sightreading. Important: if you do recognize the notes but simply made a few mistakes in playing, don’t stop, keep playing; that’s still acceptable sight-reading.

The trick is pick pieces at just the level where you can keep your eyes on the music, not look down at your hands, and keep going without pause, at a speed close to the piece’s recommended speed. Once you can do that fairly well with Level 1 pieces, try Level 2, set the metronome a little slower, and keep going even when you make a mistake or even drop out on of your hands for a full measure or two.

So let’s say you can read through Grade 2 pieces at full speed,  with no pause or glance at your fingers, but you start to pause and stumble with Grade 3 pieces. Simply spend 20-30 minutes a day playing only Grade 3 pieces, slowing the metronome down just to the point where you won’t pause or drop out. Soon you’ll be able to read all Grade 3 pieces at full speed. Now go onto the next grade level and repeat the process. It will take several months, perhaps more than a year, but soon you will find you read through even the most densley-packed, full of 8th and 16th note two handed pieces, that you’ve never seen before, at speed or nearly up to speed, with virtually no drop outs or mistakes. Now you are a very good sightreader, which vastly increases your music choices and level of enoyment!

Learning Piano Withour A Teacher From an Online-Purchased Course

As mentioned in past posts, in this fabulous era of electronic communication and everything available on the web, it’s only natural that a whole new crop of piano teaching programs would show up online.

There are many reasons why someone would choose to learn piano at home, without a teacher, from one of these boxed sets. Many adult piano learners have schedules and business obligations that simply don’t allow for consistent weekly lessons with a teacher. Or perhaps, they simply desire to learn at home, practicing and progressing at their own pace,
without any teachers’ expectations hanging over them.

Since the shift, now more than ever, is towards learning to play only at the pace, and to the level, you desire, just enough for your own piano-playing enjoyment, this trend towards online book-and-video-based courses is a great thing.

As we covered in previous posts, very few students of the piano will go on to be full-time musicians and professional piano players, either in the classical or popular genres. Those who have the talent and drive to desire, and possibly reach, that goal, should definitely work a live teacher, actually several of them over the course of their training.
 

But for someone who just wants to learn to play for their enjoyment and the enjoyment of their family and friends, one of these online courses could be quite sufficient.

The important thing is to purchase one that is well-reputed, successful in its design and approach, and easy to follow. I’ve checked out some of these online piano learning courses, and found many that offer a comprehensive course of note & rhythm training, music theory,  sightreading, finger training and sometimes even ear/pitch training. Here’s five of my most worthy contenders:

Learn and Master Piano
Rocket Piano
Piano Wizard For Children   
Piano By Pattern
Piano For All

Virtually all of these feature hundreds of hours of audio lessons, video lessons (some featuring excellent filmed shots of the teacher’s fingerwork) and books, enough to take any piano student from rank beginner to competent mid-level (at least) player in contemporary styles and even many classical pieces.  Some even give you a fair introduction to the world of jazz voicings and runs.

I suggest you take a few hours to research these five and other online piano programs, read unbiased reviews, and view samples of their materials. Most are very reasonably priced (costing hundreds or thousands less than comparable live-teacher lessons,) and many offer a money-back guarantee…if the course is not a good fit for you, you can return it and lose nothing.

Happy hunting, and learning at home!

The biggest gap in the quality of tutoring from all the piano teachers out there is that most are very good at playing the piano, but not necessarily good at teaching piano, or teaching at all.

Teaching is a very special skill set, reuiring a excellent balance of clear communication, encouragement, experienced discrimination of how much to ask of each student, and that special ability to transfer knowledge. Few people have all that.

Therefore it’s essential that you use two barometers to test whether this or that teacher will be best for you.

The first is to get recommendations from others you trust. Don’t just pick a name out of the yellow pages. Find out if they have a shining and long-established track record, and then find others who have taken lessons from them and ask their honest opinion of that teacher’s strengths and weaknesses.

The second gauge is your own personal compatability. We’re all so unique in our personalities, the way we think and the way we learn. You may find a teacher who’s crystal clear in their directions and explanations, but for some reason, you just don’t get their languaging style, and you have trouble following them. Or maybe the personalities don’t line up. And of course, some of us are more visual learners while others are auditory, kinetic or informational learners.

So what do you do. Simple. Tell any teacher, up front, that you want to try them out for a while and see if your styles & personalities match up. Don’t be afraid to state this right up front, and don’t be afraid to “divorce” them if the marriage just ain’t working out. If they’re a long-experienced, high-quality teacher, they know all this already, and won’t be offended in the slightest if you need to move on and try someone else.

To be sure, give it a fair amount of time to see if the match is good. As long as the teacher is quality and relatively kind and clear, 3 or 4 lessons just isn’t going to be enough to gauge it. Commit to at least 3 months – about 12 lessons, and then assess.

Once again, as in our earlier discussions, the key is enjoyment. You don’t have to take piano lessons. You want to enjoy learning and playing piano, in your own time, at your own pace. So find a teacher with whom you so thoroughly enjoy the learning process that you really look forward to meeting with them each lesson, and even look forward to diving into the work they give you each week. And if it takes a few hit-or-misses to find that, don’t feel any concern. Get what you need; it’s your  piano-playing “career” at stake, and if you force yourself to stck with someone you don’t enjoy, eventually you’ll quit altogether and miss out on the joy of actually being a piano player.

 In the old days, learning to play piano was a one-choice prospect, and that choice was to find a decent teacher nearby, take lessons from him or her at least once a week, and practice for at least 45 – 60 minutes each day between lessons. Most teachers taught classical-only styles from regimented curriculums built around the succeeding grade-level books of well-established course guides like Michael Aaron or John Thompson or Jane Bastien.

I’m old enough to remember those days, and that’s precisely how I got my start. I had an endearing teacher I nicknamed Aunt Alice (even though she was not related to me,) and those were the materials she used, along with finger-exercise books and occasinal separate sheet music pieces. Since it was the 60s, the era of pop’s explosion with the Beatles and the Stones, Aunt Alice was patronizing enough to occasionally throw in a “pop” song or standard from a Broadway musical, to sweeten the deal. Not all teachers of the day were that kind. Some insisted on a strictly classical approach, and rapped their students fingers with a stick if they didn’t come prepared with an excellent performance every week.

Today (thank God) the list of methods to study piano are almost endless, and while having a real teacher can be invaluable, there are many excellent courses in books and on DVD that you can tackle at home, and still turn out quite competent.

Personally I would say, if you wish to play Carnegie Hall, you’ll need a top-notch human teacher who will refine your skills and help keep you on track. But if you’re self-disciplined enough, and can make sure you get to your piano with your choice of home-study course in front of you, at least a few times a week, you’ll see steady progress. This home teaching advancement will be further enhanced if you keep an accurate journal of your weekly progress, with honest notes about where you’re good, where you’re stuck, what you need to work on, and so forth.

The good news is, the pressure’s off. And since I’m a firm believer that everyone who wants to play, should play the piano, at any level, then this is a good thing. The truth is, the number of serious students who are going to wind up as virtuosos who actually play professionally (and make any kind of living at it,) are few and far between. Even within the hopefuls working their poor little fingers off at fine conservatories like Juliard and Peabody, or at contemporary-playing institutions like The Berklee School, those who will actually graduate to any level of renown in the music business isnunder 15%.

So, driving yourself crazy trying to be the next Rubenstein or Horowitz or Art Tatum (who was blind and self-taught) is only for the over-serious. Start with the goal off just wanting to play nicely enough to really enjoy yourself and entertain some of your friends and family. If you find you have an extraordinary gift and really want to go “all the way,” find a master mentor and give it everything you’ve got.

Otherwise, the choice between a live teacher and a home study approach is totally up to your taste and temperament. In either setting, you will have to practice with some regularity and application, to make any progress. But there’s no timeline except the one you place on yourself, so make progress but make it enjoyable

In our next post, we’ll break down some of the actual methods and approaches out there.

Starting with this entry, we’re going to break away from describing piano history, makers and construction, and talk a little bit about piano lessons. Assuming you got a lot of valuable information from our last 6 months of posts, including the entries on buying a new or used piano, you now have one in your home, and may need help learning to play it well.

How many people adore the sound of the piano?  And yet, how many shy away from the thought of ever learning to play the piano themselves. Much of their reticence comes from an unneccessary concern about being perfect, and a certainty that, without that “born-with-it” gift of talent, they could never approach the level of fluidity they hear so often on their favorite recordings. “I’ll never play like that,” they conclude, and give up before starting.

I’m well aware of this attitude. I have been a victim myself of this addiction to perfection, this paralysis by analysis. Even as a naturally gifted player from childhood, I always compared my playing to those even better (there’s always someone better, no matter what your field,) and consequently, I never felt I was good enough. Depending on your temperament, this neurotic, constant comparison to your “competition” either makes you practice harder than ever, or just give up. Many times I fell victim to the latter attitude, and said, “The hell with it.” Bad idea, and really silly.

You see, the piano produces such lovely tones that even a beginner level student playing a very elementary piece can pour out something quite beautiful and touching. Many times, the simplest pieces I’ve played brought much more adoration from my audiences than those highly-accomplished expositions featuring a complex flurry of notes.

But perhaps the even more important lesson I learned – and believe me, it’s taken me most of my life to learn it – is that the joy of playing the piano isn’t just about being able to play a piece perfectly. It’s about the process. The learning and discovery of all the little nuances of the piece. The rewarding growth in your skills and abilities that each piece demands of you, just so you can play it. It’s as much about the journey as the journey’s end.

If your left-hand fluidity, and coordination between your two hands, is still somewhat stiff, and you decide you are so in love with Chopin’s “Revolutionary” etude that you just have to able to play it yourself, you’re either in for a descent into hell, or the treat of your lifetime…depending on your attitude. That piece requires the fingers of your left hand to be quite nimble, flying like the wind up and down the scale, and precise unison of both hands in the fiery intro.

But set aside any concerns of time or worries about perfection, and with no pressure or agenda, just work at a small portion of the piece at a time. You’ll unfold an entire world of discovery about how to best finger each run, as well as which finger exercises (those of your own invention or the perfected studies of Hanon and Czerny) grant you the fluidity you need.

Take a year or two just to master one beautiful piece – there really is no hurry, and you’ll discover just how satisfying the learning and practicing parts of your piano playing journey can be. There’s a great book that perfectly portrays this no-push attitude to your growth as a pianist. It’s called, “Piano Lessons,” a true chronicle written by the soft-voiced All Things Considered radio announcer, Noah Adams. He beautifully describes his choice of an upright Steinway for his New York townhome, and his timeless but pleasing blossoming from a beginner to a very fair interpreter of one piece for his wife, Debussy’s “Claire De Lune.”  If you ever catch yourself stuck in pefectionism, give-up-ism, or frustration with your piano-playing journey, reading this book will turn you around.

In future posts, we’ll look at some of the best current methods out there for learning piano at any age. There really is a method for anybody, and “pre-born talent” is not a requirement.