As you practice on your piano there are things that will lead you towards your goal to become a better pianist. Let us first take a look at things that can hinder your progression:

1. You do not have a clear picture of what type of pianist you want to become. This will make it difficult to choose the right exercises that will help you progress. If you do not know your goals you will not be able to prioritize between the many things you could practice.

2. You are not practicing your homework long enough to commit the skills to your long-term memory. You might find it interesting to browse through piano sheet music and play a few notes here and there. This might help your sight reading skills but you will not progress as a pianist and musician.

3. You practice too difficult things! If you practice things above your level of proficiency you might hinder your progression towards a good pianist and performer. It is good to have accomplished pianists as models of what you can become but you are not there yet!

4. Your hand posture is preventing your progress. Bad hand and body posture makes it difficult to play demanding piano pieces with smoothness and in a musical way.

5. You play your exercises at a tempo that is above your technical skills. This is understandable since every pianist wants to hear how things they practice are supposed to sound at the final stages of repetition. However, playing too fast will hinder your progression!

6. You practice but forget that all is about music. Without music in mind and heart you will probably lose interest in playing sooner or later.

7. You do not have any piano pieces to play to your friends. All you have done is practicing exercises and fragments from piano solos. You have never learned to play a melody perfectly from beginning to end.

Let us take a look at how you can eliminate these obstacles and make your piano practicing sessions more effective and maybe even shorter and more joyful:

1. Give yourself time to think a lot about your piano playing. Why you play, what things you like about playing the piano, what type of pianist you want to become and your weaknesses that right now hinder you from becoming what you want to be. Write down some goals and use them as a guide when you decide what to practice.

This will also make it easier to evaluate how well you progress as a pianist. Your goals help to see if you are on the right road. As time goes by your vision of what you want to become will be clearer and your goals will be more and more perfected!

2. When you have choosen exercises and piano pieces to play that will lead you towards your goals I suggest that you practice them long enought to really learn the skills involved. These skills will become building blocks that will help you learn more difficult exercises later on. An absolute condition for this to happen is that you commit your present homework to your long-term memory.

3. Be careful to select exercises and piano pieces that are not too much above your technical skills. Too difficult exercises will be boring as you have to play them in a very slow tempo and they will take a very long time to master and you might as a result actually lose interest in playing piano.

4. Correct hand posture guarantees that you will use your energy in the most effective way and that you will not cause yourself muscle injuries. Correct hand and body posture will make your playing a pleasant experience as you will be able to play with minimal muscle tension.

5. The most effective way to learn new things on the piano is to practice slowly. This will resque you from making a lot of mistakes that can grow into negative habits that will hinder your progression. Practicing slowly will also help you play as relaxed as possible. Practice a piece of music in a relaxed and enjoyable way and this will be the way you perform it!

6. In order to develop as a musician you will benefit from listening to music performed with heart and musical depth. In the long run you will become a much better pianist if you devote some of your time to assimilate musical expressions and manifestations from good musicians.

7. To have a number of well rehearsed piano pieces in your repertoire is very rewarding for yourself and enjoyable to your listeners as you can play them to the best of your ability. Memorizing pieces of music should be a significant part of your practicing schedule. If someone asks you to play you know that you can play piano pieces you are proud of sharing with others!

Peter Edvinsson
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/piano-lesson-are-you-getting-better-all-the-time-424350.html

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Look at the white keys on the keyboard and find a C. If you don’t know how to find a C, then look at the sets of black keys. The black keys are grouped two ways: in a set of two or a set of three. Find a set of two black keys and move to the white key immediately to the left. This is a C. Now that you’ve found a C, learning how to play chords comes easy.

To begin learning how to play chords, start with the C chord. Hold the thumb of your right hand on C. Now skip the next white key and put your middle finger on the white key after that. This is an E. Holding those two fingers in place, skip the next white key and play the white key after that with your pinky. This is G. Play all three of these notes at the same time and you’ll have created a C chord. Learning how to play chords is that simple.

By holding your hand in this position and moving it up and down the white keys, you’ll be able to play chords in the key of C. Just remember the basic pattern: play a white key, skip one, play the next, skip, and play the next key. Move to the right with your fingers in this shape and you’ll be playing D minor, E minor, F, G, A minor and B diminished. A whole world of chord progressions is already at your fingertips. Play chords and hear the differences in each. You may even start to hear songs that you know and love by playing chords in this key.

Another way to learn how to play chords is to number the keys. Starting at C, number the white keys up to seven. C is one, D is two, E is three, etc. When you reach the number seven, start over at one. Now that you have each white key numbered, you understand the relationship between each note. A C chord is numbered 1-3-5. These are called the chord tones. A Cmaj7 is 1-3-5-7, while a C7 is 1-3-5-b7. The flat indicates a black key, at least when you’re playing in the key of C.

To make a minor chord, start at C and play the following tones: 1-b3-5. This will be C, Eb and G. Your thumb is on C; your middle finger is on the black key just to the left of E; and your pinky is on G. Congratulations! You’ve learned how to play the C minor chord.

This is just a basic explanation of how to play chords. There are many more chord shapes to learn that make piano music great, but it’s best to start at the beginning. Even the greats have written entire songs playing chords in the key of C.

Duane Shinn
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/how-to-play-chords-on-the-piano-512932.html

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First we might notice that the piano as we are used to play have been around for some time. Around 500 years or more. Playing keyboards is in other words a rather old art. This means that the conventions as to how to play keyboard instruments and how to notate the music have had some time to develop.

As you might know a piano has 88 keys. This means a full sized piano but you will find keyboards with a considerably less amount of keys. however, the order of the white and black keys are the same.

How can you learn to play piano?

Well, as you might know little children don’t have too much problem with this question. The just hammer on!

At least one thing you can learn from children. To learn to play you have to play. That is an important beginning!

Do you need sheet music in order to start playing the piano? Well, the before mentioned children have already answered the question with a definite no!

Some accomplished pianists have never used sheet music at all and play entirely by ear or by reading chords in songs. This type of pianists usually learn songs by listening to recordings or just by playing from memory. It works fine and many very fine musicians and pianist have used this approach.

Other pianist have always played sheet music and would feel very uneasy confronted with a keyboard without their music sheets. Maybe they have learned pieces by heart and have a large repertoire of piano solos but they have never improvised or played by ear. Even these pianists can create great music.

I would suggest that you use the best parts of both these approaches as you learn to play piano. Take time to develop your ear and improvise but also to make a conscious effort to learn to play piano sheet music.

One way to learn to read sheet music with a concentrated effort is to read a piano solo and trying to understand all signs and symbols in the music.

Try to tap the rhythm and as you become more skilled you can try to sing or hear the music in your head. This is a very effective way to really get into learning sheet music.

Here are some symbols you will find as you read a piece of piano sheet music:

You will find vertical lines in the music that divides the notes in groups. These lines are called barlines and the distance between two of these barlines are called a measure.

Sometimes you will find two dots at the end of a section and also a double bar. The two dots are called a repeat sign indicating that you should play the section twice.

The elaborated G is called the G clef and indicates the position of the note G in the treble note staff. It is also called the treble clef.

The left hand notes are mainly situated in the bass clef or the F clef because the two dots indicates the note F.

It will be a great help for you to study the sheet music before you play a piece of music, rehearsing the names of the notes and preparing yourself for a pleasant encounter with the music behind the dots.

Peter Edvinsson
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/piano-lesson-for-piano-beginners-252946.html

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Need speeches for weddings? – check out the father of the bride speech

In this piano lesson you will learn to play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star without the use of sheet music. After this learn to play piano tutorial you will be able to play the melody with both hands!

As you know Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star is a popular nursery rhyme. The melody is from France and the lyrics from an English poem by Jane Taylor.

The English lyrics are as follows:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are

In this piano lesson we will use a form of tablature instead of sheet music notation.

Tablature is a type of musical notation which will tell you where to place your fingers to play a melody on your piano. The first thing we will do is to locate the note C.

The middle C on a piano is the first white key that is to the left of two black keys. It is called middle C because on the piano keyboard it is right in the middle, near the keyhole.

In our piano tab notation the keys are numbered instead. This middle C in our type of piano tab is called 1.

This means that when you see the number 1 you are to play the middle C once. The white key to the right of C we call 2, the next 3 and so on.

Let’s play some piano tab notes:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Now you have played a scale with the actual notes C D E F G A B.

Now we will start to play the melody Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

1 1 5 5 6 6 5

Now you have played the notes C C G G A A G.

How can you use your left hand? Let’s make this piece a little bit more difficult and also more rewarding to play by using your left hand for bass notes.

The notes from C to the next C is called an octave. The keys are grouped this way on the whole keyboard.

You also have these notes to the left of the middle C. We can call these notes the left octave.

If you use the notes 1-7 in the left octave to play bass notes with your left hand we can notate the melody in the following way:

1/1 1 5/3 5 6/4 6 5/3

The note to the right of the slash is the bass note. 1/1 means that as you play the first 1 with your right hand you simultaneously play number 1 in the left octave with your left hand.

I guess you have noticed that you only play bass notes together with some of the melody notes.

Let’s continue this piano lesson with the next line:

How I wonder what you are

4/2 4 3/1 3 2/5 2 1/1

What fingers should you use as you play? You can and maybe you use your index fingers on both hands to play but it will be easier to find your notes if you cultivate the habit to use all your fingers.

On your right hand you can use your thumb to play number 1 and your index finger to play number 2 and so on.

The next piano tab looks like this:

Up above the world so high

5/3 5 4/2 4 3/1 3 2/5

If you want to use fingerings on your left hand you place your little finger above key number 1 and your thumb on number 5 and the other fingers accordingly.

On the next piano tab the melody is identical:

Like a diamond in the sky

5/3 5 4/2 4 3/1 3 2/5

Now you only have to play the beginning of the song again:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

1/1 1 5/3 5 6/4 6 5/3

How I wonder what you are

4/2 4 3/1 3 2/5 2 1/1

Congratulations! Now you can play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star as a piano solo with two hands!

This type of piano notation is probably best used as a help to find the notes until you know the melody by heart. I suggest that you memorize one line at a time until you know the whole song as this will enable you to play the song anywhere and anytime!

Peter Edvinsson
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/piano-lesson-learn-to-play-twinkle-twinkle-little-star-without-reading-sheet-music-26020.html

Reading piano notes may seem daunting at first, but it really isn’t if you ground yourself in the basics. The first step is learning the names of the notes. The great thing is that you only have seven to memorize.

All music is the result of combinations of these seven. These notes, named after letters in the alphabet, are A, B, C, D, E, F and G. Specific keys on the piano, associated with these notes, comprise your piano playing toolkit.

These seven notes sit on lines and spaces, called a music staff. Piano music consists of two staffs or staves: the Treble Clef and the Bass Clef. The notes from the upper portion of the piano keyboard sit on the Treble Clef. The notes from the lower portion of the keyboard sit on the Bass Clef.

Usually, the right hand plays the notes in the Treble Clef, while the left hand plays notes in the Bass Clef. The key to reading piano notes is in knowing what key relates to what note on the sheet music.

The note A on a piano is a white key. The A on the music staff corresponds to where the A note is on the keyboard. The notes on a keyboard repeat themselves:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A

Each of these notes is a key on the piano. It’s that simple, all along the keyboard.

The first A sits on one point of the music staff. As you play along the keyboard, the second A you play sits further up the music staff. As your fingers run up to the upper portions of the keyboard, the higher the notes sit on the Treble Clef. The further down you play on the piano keyboard, the further down the notes sit on the music staff, running into the Bass Clef.

You can group notes together on a music staff vertically. These vertical grouping are chords. A chord is a group of three or more notes played simultaneously. If you play the C, E and G keys at the same time on the keyboard, you play a chord known as a triad. On a piece of sheet music, you will see these three notes as such:

G
E
C …piled on top of one another so-to-speak.

If the composer wants these notes played separately, he would write them out horizontally on the music staff as such:

C E G …moves along the music staff.

Of course, these letters do not appear on the music staff; instead oval notes replace the letters.
When you first begin to read piano sheet music, locate the reference point note of each staff. This allows you to determine the rest of the notes on the staff.

The Treble Clef has the G note as its reference point. This note is on the second line from the bottom of the five line Treble Clef staff. The Bass Clef has the F notes as its reference point. This note is on the second line from the top of the five line Bass Clef staff. Every other note on either staff is easily located from these points.

Reading piano notes will be easier when you study the fundamentals. Learn the Treble and Bass Clefs and where the seven notes sit on them, and your reading skills will improve.

Duane Shinn
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/how-to-read-piano-notes-527773.html