To start with, the ravaging cause[s] in Piano Playing these days is
FOUNDATION. Many folks out there that plays the Piano can't explain
what they play, just few of them and that's why we will be looking into
somethings in this ebook that makes you a good Piano Player.
There's a misunderstanding people have about a Keyboard player,
Pianist, Organist.
• Pianist is an individual musician who plays the GrandPiano.
• Keyboard can also be called a Workstation/Synthesizer. A Keyboard
Player is a musician who plays Keyboard instruments.
On the otherhand, a Keyboardist uses different sounds in the Keyboard
besides Piano and using
different sounds involves
whole technique.
• Organist is a musician who plays any type of Organ. An Organist may
play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or
accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists. In addition,
an Organist may accompany congregational hymn-singing and play
Liturgical Music. Liturgical music is also known as Church Music, music
written for performance in a religious rite of worship.
It's commonly associated with the Christian tradition. The well known
examples are the Catholic Mass, the Anglican Holy Communion service,
the Lutheran Divine service, the Orthodox Liturgy and other Christian
Services including the Divine Office.
One of the things that makes you a good Piano Player is how well
you're familiar with your technical exercise.
¶ TECHNICAL EXERCISE
To gain dexterity on the Piano, it's a must to learn and practice these
following four(4) scales.
• The Major Scale
• The Natural Minor Scale
• The Harmonic Minor Scale
• The Melodic Minor Scale.
¶ THE MAJOR SCALE
( D R M F S L T D)
Any serious Keyboard Learner should be able to play this scales on all
keys conveniently on both hands with the correct fingerings and the
right finger techniques.
More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means "higher in pitch by
one semitone (half step)". Sharp is the opposite of flat, which is a
lowering of pitch. An associated sharp symbol that resembles the
number sign "#", ♯, occurs in key signatures or as an accidental.
¶ THE NATURAL MINOR SCALE
( Doh Reh Ri Fah Soh Seh tah)
NB: The same fingerings is also applicable from the Major( ie. The
fingerings from the Chart above)
• When notes are flattened, they have an 'aw' sound beside it but when
it is sharpened they have a ‘ ri ‘ sound beside it.
ie.
For Ascending: Doh Reh Ri Fah Soh Seh Tah D
For Descending : Doh Reh Maw Fah Soh Seh Taw D
¶ THE HARMONIC MINOR SCALE
Ascending: D R Ri F S Seh Tah D
Descending: D R Maw F S Seh Taw D
NB: The same fingerings is also applicable from the major
¶ THE MELODIC MINOR SCALE
Melodic Minor Scale is an exemption because the Ascending is
different from the Descending.
Ascending : Doh Reh Ri Fah Soh Lah Tah D
Descending: Doh Reh Maw Fah Soh Seh Taw D
Furthermore, I'll be sharing 8 Tips you need to know as a Musician
before moving to the next phase of the lesson.
I have news for you...
1) If you’re always sitting down and playing only stuff you already know,
it’s not practice... it’s REHEARSAL. It’s PROCRASTINATION.
There are times and places for “rehearsal” but if you want true
momentum, it starts with having a long term vision (purpose) that you
can break into smaller, more digestible chunks (goals) you can work on
during each 30-90 minute practice session.
Having “purpose” and organizing everything around it feels good and is
the first step to effective practice.
2) Planned
There’s another saying... “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Having purpose and vision will only go so far if you don’t take action by
planning your practice.
Research studies actually show that when you carefully plan a routine
activity (like exercising, “laundry days”) and do it as close to the same
time, EVERY TIME, something magical happens.
You “habitualize” the activity and it becomes a part of your life rather
than a “chore” you have to do.
So, if you can (and I realize everyone’s schedule is different), try to pick
a time and make it an “event”... Something you plan and keep and
watch your growth skyrocket!
3) Pushed
Practice must also be “pushed.”
This means you have to get outside your comfort zone and challenge
yourself.
Most musicians want to merely “rehearse” what they already know (as
I alluded to above) rather than push themselves to learn new stuff (like
playing in unfamiliar keys, learning bigger chords or learning new
phrases that are hard to reach or weird for them to play ).
For some reason, there’s just something about “harder stuff” that gets
boring for musicians who fall into the rehearsal trance.
They feel good knowing they can play what they know (remember
“CONSCIOUS COMPETENCE” from the first report?). But when it comes
to playing something that’s challenging, if they can’t do it in 5 minutes,
practice is over.
Does this sound familiar?
4) Pumped
This one may sound foolish but keeping high energy is important.
Have a spirit of expectation and anticipation, knowing that you’re going
to tackle something you’ve never tackled before (...well, that is, if
you’re making your practice “pushed”).
Be excited about practicing.
Don’t look at the 30-90 minutes per day as a mundane task.
Get pumped up.
Change the association your mind has to practicing. In fact, it’s the
same thing as exercising.
If the mind links the part of your exercise where you feel like you can’t
go on (...you know... that part at the “tail end” when you’re thinking
about giving in)... well if the mind links that to “pain,” then the
experience will be gruesome and you probably won’t stick with it for
long.
But if your mind links that part of the exercise to “triumph” and
“overcoming this last part of the battle,” then what was seen as pain is
now a meaningful goal to reach... a battle to conquer.
5) Patient
I know you’ve heard this one before but it’s true. Practice must be
patient.
Results don’t come overnight. But one thing that doesn’t fail, is that
they do COME… if you’re patient.
The master musicians didn’t get there overnight. We see their “glory”
(as I always say), but don’t understand their “story.” And that story is
usually a story of patience. And patience takes faith. You have to be
able to keep practicing - and even though you may not see immediate
results - you have to be able to know they will come.
Faith is believing something that isn’t there. Patience is key in
everything we do, not just music (and you already know this... but just
REMEMBER it.)
6) Persistent
With your patience must come persistence.
You gotta stay on the course. This also goes hand-in-hand with
“planned” practice. If you schedule your practice for everyday at 7 pm,
then stick with everyday at 7 pm because when you break the pattern,
then your mind will tell you to break it again… and again.
But something supernatural happens when you become more and
more persistent. The mind almost does the opposite.
For example, let’s say you’ve exercised nonstop for 100 days in a row
without breaking one single day. I mean the same time (6:30 am)
everyday… rain, cold, or hot — what does the mind tell you when you
have the slightest thought of not exercising the next day?
It says, “You mean to tell me you’ve done this nonstop for 100 days and
you want to ruin everything and start all over?” (maybe your brain
doesn’t sound like that but mine does).
So compounding persistence works for you where inconsistency works
against you (the more you break commitments, the more your mind
tells you that you’re not reliable and that you’ve broken tons in the past
so why not this new one). If that’s you, BREAK THAT CYCLE TODAY.
John F. Kennedy said: “We Choose To Go To The Moon!”
You have a moon too! Nothing is impossible. You just have to “choose”
to go there. ☺
7) Perfect
They say “practice makes perfect.”
They’re right and wrong.
Practice does make perfect.
If you practice sounding bad, you’ll be perfect at sounding bad.
If you practice bad habits, you’ll be perfect at bad habits.
So I guess, they are right. Practice does make perfect.
But I prefer “PERFECT PRACTICE.” That way, I get perfect results.
Perfect practice makes perfect.
And the only way you do this is by slowing stuff down. SLOW IT DOWN!
One of the biggest frustrations I hear is from folks saying they can’t play
it exactly like “this” or “that.” Then I ask them if they’ve slowed it down
to TURTLE SPEED. They say “no.” I say, that’s the problem.
When you see players ripping up and down the board, much of that is
muscle memory.
They’ve done it so much their fingers have a mind of their own (that’s
called “UNCONSCIOUS COMPETENCE” from the last report).
The problem is the fingers can’t memorize something that keeps
happening a different way each time. And that’s what happens when
you attempt to mimic something at the same speed you hear it. It
always leads to frustration.
So slow it down. Get a metronome at the local music store and put it at
60 beats per minute (the same speed your clock moves at). Go as slow
as it takes for you to play whatever you’re learning PERFECTLY. To go
fast, you must first go slow.
Heck, do like Michael Jordan and turn this thing into a game. Attempt
to play what you’re playing 20, 30, 50, or 100 times with PERFECT
ACCURACY. If you mess up --- even if you’re at 99 about to finish --start over.
Once you’ve mastered it at one tempo, speed it up.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Wanna see growth? Do this kinda stuff.
8) Partitioned
This is the last “P” and I saved it for last (not because it’s a big word...
but) because it leads perfectly into the next part of this report.
Practice should be split into easily “digestible” sections.
If you have 60 minutes, you shouldn’t look at it as a full block of time.
You should look at it as
smaller chunks of time that combine together to make up your full
session.
For example, if I’ve allocated 2 hours for practicing (notice I said
“allocate” because practice should be “PLANNED”), it may look
something like this:
Essentially, with this plan, we’re giving 15% (18mins) of our allotted
practice time to the fundamentals... 20% (24mins)to deepening and
reinforcing our understanding of chords... another 20% (24 mins)to
doing the same with patterns... 25% (30 mins)to systematically learning
songs... and 20% (24 mins)to building and using our ear skills to
enhance and alter songs and patterns.
If it is 1 hour just slash them into 1/2
Of course, you don’t have to sit there with a stop watch, making sure
you don’t go a second
over 18 minutes. It’s just a general rule. But this is the idea.
And of course, expounding on each one of these sections is what we’ll
turn to next.
By doing all these you keep it fun for yourself and to wrap it up...
always FIND TIME TO JAM(REHEARSE/PLAY SONGS) WITH FRIENDS..
This helps you to develop a good style of musicianship, playing
together as one, playing as a band
Moving on to the next…..
 HARMONY & DYNAMICS ( They are Key to Music)
The term *Harmony* derives from the Greek ἁρμονία
(harmonía), meaning “joint, agreement, concord”, from
the verb ἁρμόζω (harmozo), “to fit together, to join”. In
Ancient Greece, the term defined the combination of
contrasted elements: a higher and lower note.
Harmony is two or more notes played together at the
same time. As soon as there is more than one pitch
sounding at a time, you have harmony. Even if nobody is
actually playing chords, or even if the notes are part of
independent contrapuntal lines, you can hear the
relationship of any notes that happen at the same time,
and it is this relationship that makes the harmony.
Once you can make the correct harmonisation... your
choir/band will always sound good...
It is important we understand Dynamics in music as the
LOUDNESS AND SOFTNESS in music... you can choose to
make your music softer at some point and make it louder
at another... it becoming more pleasing to the hearer
More reason why most we wont stop listening to some
music even from now till years to come...
You should apply DYNAMICS to make your HARMONY
sound great too...
CRESCENDO - going from SOFT to LOUD
DIMINUENDO - going from LOUD to SOFT..
TRY THEM WITH YOUR HYMNALS TOO.. YOU'LL LOVE THE
OUTCOME
And there are times the Choir needs to sing in UNISON
(all in one voice, same sound) by the time you switch it to
your harmony it sounds so pleasing... YES!!!
That's where Fractions of Music Comes in
FRACTION IN MUSIC, TEXTURE and MELODY
Now FRACTION IN MUSIC does not mean you should
start to calculate ,divide or multiply... NO!
I call it CHECKING THE METRE... Yes METRE!!
In music, METRE refers to the regularly recurring
patterns and accents such as bars and beats. Unlike
rhythm, metric onsets are not necessarily sounded, but
are nevertheless expected by the listener...yes they
expect to ear something over and over... it is your duty as
the music manager (MUSICIAN) to keep the flow
It is generally called TIME SIGNATURE.
There are 3 types of TIME SIGNATURE
1) Simple Time signature
2) Compound Time signature
3) Complex Time signature
The SIMPLE TIME SIGNATURE has another subdivision of
3
A) Simple duple (2)
B) Simple Triple (3)
C) Simple Quadruple (4)
1. Start by playing over a simple chord progression
2. Breathe life into your melodies with interesting
rhythmic stressing and accents
3. Pay close attention to your melodic contour
Melodic contour is overall shape of the line that your
melody traces as it moves up and down.
Melodic lines can move in a few different ways.
Motion by step (or stepwise motion) is when a melody
moves by consectective notes in the scale.
4. Outline the harmony where possible
5. TRY AND TRY AGAIN
Basically, we have talked about Scales & Harmonies in details;
the necessary one ought to know as a Piano player. The next
one in line is the Chord Formations and how it connects.
We’d look at Triad Chord first, but before then, What is Chord
itself?
A Chord is two or more notes played together at the same time.
An example of a chord is the one I mentioned earlier which is
Triad Chord.
Chords are built from a root note (also known as the starting
note).
The root note is the basis for a chord and it is generally the note
with the lowest pitch. The rest of the notes are determined by
the type of chord that is being played. This is also known as
chord quality.
Examples of which include:
-
Major
Minor
Augmented
Diminished
Major Seventh
Minor Seventh
Dominant Seventh
TRIAD CHORDS: A three-note chord which pitch classes can be
arranged as thirds . Which is the common type of keyboard or
piano chord.
It basically contains a root note and two other notes, most
often the notes that produce the intervals of a third and fifth
above the root note.
To be able to play these chords well, one has to have the
knowledge of Piano Intervals.
The distance between piano notes, called an interval,
determines how they sound when played together.
Intervals are measured in half- steps and whole steps.
~ Half- steps: A half-step is the distance from one key to the
next key immediately to its right or left.
~ Whole-steps: A Whole-step is the distance of two half-steps.
~ Common Intervals: A common interval used in piano chords
is the major third, which is the distance of whole-steps or four
half-steps.
How To Play A Major Chord On The Piano:
To play a major chord, begin by choosing a root note, which can be any
of the keyboard notes.
From the root note, count up two whole steps. This note is the ‘third’
named for being the third note in the key beginning with the root note.
From the third, count up one-and-a-half steps, or three half steps. This
note is the “fifth.”
When you play these three keyboard notes together, you hear a major
triad, which is soothing to the ear.
Common Major Piano Chords include:
1. C major (C) . C – E – G
2. C# major ( C#). C# - E# - G#
3. D major (D).D – F# - A
4. Eb major (Eb). Eb – G – Bb
5. E major (E). E – G# - B
6. F major (F). F – A - C
7. F# major (F#). F# - A# - C#
8. G major (G). G-B - D
9. Ab major (Ab). Ab – C – Eb
10.
A major (A). A – C# - E
11.
Bb major (Bb). Bb – D – F
12.
B major (B). B –D# - F#
This will move us to Chord Inversions….
CHORD INVERSIONS:
A chord inversion occurs when any note other than the root of
a basic chord is played down at the bass.
For example, a basic C major chord include the notes C, E and G.
C, the chord note name and root, is placed at the bottom of the
chord.
Piano Chord inversions are the different ways you can arrange
the notes in a chord. For instance, if you play three notes (a
triad), there are three inversions you can play for that chord. If
you play four notes, there are four chord inversions. If you play
five notes, there are five possible chord inversions.
A Piano chord inversion helps you play the piano in a pleasantly
flowing manner without making the music sound too choppy.
They give you more freedom to move your hands while playing
instead of needing to stick with the root position for each chord.
The root position is the starting piano chord inversion. This is
also known as the parent chord, or root inversion, where all the
other inversions start. There are typically three keys to a chord.
Sometimes you may have four notes/keys or five notes/keys at
a time (four notes mean four inversions; five notes mean five
inversions).
An example of a root chord inversion is the C major chord C, E
and G. The C note is the lowest keynote of the root inversion.
This rule also applies to other root inversion chords. You would
do the same for four-note and five-note chords as you would a
three-note (triad) chord.
What is the first inversion of a chord?
The first inversion of a chord is when we switch the bottom
keynote of the chord to the top note. For example, with the
previous C major chord we would move to the next C key and
play the C at the top so that it plays as E, G and C. This will give
the chord a slightly higher tune than the root position. This
inversion is often interchangeable with the root inversion.
What is the second inversion of a chord?
The second inversion of a chord is taking the bottom note from
the first chord inversion and playing it as the new top note.
From the previous example of the first chord inversion, we had
E, G and C. Now we would move to the next E key on the piano
and play the chord as G, C and E.
For more understanding, the get your inversions is as simple as
this:
Chord inversions are simply different ways to rearrange a chord.
Some believe root position (how the chord is normally played
with the keynote or title on the bottom) is not an official
“inversion.” Others don’t make that distinction.
I’m more with the latter perspective and prefer the easy
definition: The number of notes in the chord equals the number
of inversions (or ways you can play/rearrange the chord).
Simply put, if the chord has 3 notes, it has 3 inversions or ways
to rearrange it. If it has 4 notes, it has 4 inversions. 5 notes, 5
inversions.
Chord Inversions – Root Position
Take a C major chord. Here it is in root position.
chord inversions root position
Root position is what you get when the keynote or root of the
chord is the lowest note.
Remember my definition: The number of notes in the chord
equals the number of ways you can play/rearrange the chord.
3 notes – 3 ways.
We’ve already covered the “default” root position so that
leaves 2 inversions.
Chord Inversions – First Inversion
To get the next inversion, simply take whatever note is on the
bottom and move it to the top.
In our example, taking “C” from the bottom and moving it to
the top leaves us with “E” on the bottom.
When you do this, the chord is in first inversion.
First inversion is when the third of the chord is on the bottom
If you look at C major, C is the root, E is the third (major third;
see chord guide), and G is the fifth.
When the third – or E in this case – is on the bottom, you’re
playing it in first inversion.
Chord Inversions – Second Inversion
Take the third off the bottom and put it on top and you’re left
with the fifth on the bottom. In this case, G.
Again, as long as the fifth is on the bottom, you can voice the
chord however you like.
This is how you will apply it to all your triad chords from C to B
in alphabetical order.
Root Chord - First Inversion – Second Inversion
1. C E G – E G C – G C E
2. D F A – F A D – A D F
3. E G B – G B E – B E G
4. F A C – A C F – C F A
5. G B D – B D G – D G B
6. A C E - C E A – E A C
7. B D F – D F B – F B D
The fingering also remains the same for the inversions.
For the Left hand, we have 5 3 1
For the Right hand, we have 1 3 5
With all these well explained in the First Module, With constant
practice and being diligent to it, it will prepare you ahead for
the next Module which is more Advanced than this.
Hope to see you there, Best Of Luck!
For formality sake,
My name is Moriyonuoluwa Emmanuel(Etunes), a Music
Enthusiast, a Prolific Music Producer with interests in a wide
range of music genres, a young and versatile Mixing Engineer,
adept at maintaining computer softwares.
NB: These are essential things to know before going to the
Advanced Phase of the Lesson, These are things needed
to know as a Musician and what builds you up as a
Musician.