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Beginner Piano Music - What’s the Best Approach?

January 13th, 2010

When you are first starting out on the road to learning to play the piano, you will have the lessons and work your way through them — but at some point you will want to play music that isn’t part of any lesson. Perhaps you want to know just how far you have progressed, or perhaps it’s just for fun. What is your best approach?

It is admirable wanting to play one of your favourite pieces of sheet music, but if you are still a beginner you may not realize at first how difficult popular music often is. The writers of even some of the simplest popular music have usually had a lot of experience with writing music, and they put that into their compositions. I would suggest that you have to start with simpler pieces of music in order that you do not become frustrate and disillusioned, and hence give up.

However once you have begun to work with the simpler sheet music, you must ensure that you continually “raise the bar” — stretch yourself consistently and your skill will improve consistently. You may want to start to move on to some of the simpler classical pieces to start with.

Another important point that the piano beginner must understand is that you have to keep practising regularly. Make a piano practice time-table and try to follow it at closely as you can. Only with regular practice can you start to acquire the feel for piano music that will eventually enable you to play the piano by ear. Remember, though, that while regular practice is important, you should not practice too much — it is the quality of your piano-playing practice that is important as a beginner rather than the quantity, and too much piano practice can start to numb your musical side and you will begin to lose focus.

When learning as a beginner, piano music should be “chunked” — that is, treat the piece of music as a set of smaller pieces, not as a whole. If you learn the music a piece at a time you will find the music a lot more amenable. That is not to say that you will be able to play it perfectly in a few days — you have to realize that there is no quick way to learn to play the piano. Set yourself a time-table as we discussed earlier and stick to it. Make sure your practice time is recognized as such by those around you — tell them you would prefer not to be disturbed during that period. Set yourself realistic targets for the weeks and months ahead, and you will reach them.

Some beginners struggle in the early days because they are not using a method of learning that fits with their personality or style. For example some learners work best with a human sitting next to them, some work better from a book, and others do best with a combination of videos, books, and audio samples.

Patience and determination are the keys for a beginner who has just begun learning how to play a piano. Take your time and you will be rewarded. Very soon you will be able to take beginner piano music and play it easily, and be ready to move on to the more complicated pieces — and imagine to yourself how good that will feel!

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Pop Music is Flexible

December 8th, 2009

Pop music, on the other hand, has primarily come into usage to describe music that evolved out of the rock ‘n roll revolution of the mid-1950’s and continues in a definable path to today. Pop music is not usually written, performed and recorded as a symphony, suite, or concerto. Pop music gets something of a tough time these days.

Music

Music is one of the most basic experiences for human beings. Musicians are offended by this because we think music should engage you. The definition of pop music is purposefully flexible as the music that is identified as pop is constantly changing. At any particular point in time it may be easiest to identify pop music as that which is successful on the pop music charts. For the past 50 years the most successful musical styles on the pop charts have continually changed and evolved. However, there are some consistent patterns in what is identified as pop music. This would include an extremely wide range of music from vaudeville and minstrel shows to heavy metal. Pop music, on the other hand, has primarily come into usage to describe music that evolved out of the rock ‘n roll revolution of the mid-1950’s and continues in a definable path to today. This means the music that sells the most copies, draws the largest concert audiences, and is played most often on the radio.

Jazz

It’s not serious or straightforward enough to be called jazz. These often were by piano trios, playing light classics and sanitized jazz and featuring titles like, “Cocktail Time” and “Cocktails, Anyone. It derives from the Blues, in its essence, and has had more contaminations with pop music than Jazz. This style has become rich of musical subgenres: Soul, Funk or funky pop (not to confuse with the jazz funk developed from Miles Davis in `60s and ‘70s), until arriving to Hip Hop, belong to it. It conciliates pop melodies with jazz and above all with blues sounds and rhythms. Dance rhythm and blues piano album “Modern jazz dance “Piano Fender Rhodes improvisations on rhythm and blues anddance rhythms. His jazz improvisations bring you to the magic, spiritual and mystic sense of music based on Gurdjieff ’s teaching. It was not terribly difficult to decide how to separate jazz music from pop music. The idea is that you should read this book first, then the history of jazz music and the history of rock music. Latin music started working its way in even as early as the Forties and Fifties in jazz.

The definition of pop music is purposefully flexible as the music that is identified as pop is constantly changing. At any particular point in time it may be easiest to identify pop music as that which is successful on the pop music charts. However, there are some consistent patterns in what is identified as pop music. It is tempting to confuse pop musicwith popular music.

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Play Piano! Learn Quickly and Correctly

August 10th, 2009

Imagine being a proficient musician, not just able to play piano but able to play any piece of music you want to play. Sound like a pipe dream? If you have always had the itch to perform but don’t want to invest a lot of time into lessons, I have great news: you can learn to play songs on the piano in relatively no time at all.

Pop music, for example, can be played in a simple chord-based method. You could teach yourself to play some Top 40 hits in a matter of minutes once you understand the basics.

Now, some genres will take longer than others. Jazz and Classical piano music, for example, requires the greatest amount of discipline, talent, and commitment. These arrangements tend to be complex, note heavy, and expressive. Yes, you can learn to play classical piano, but be prepared to invest your time into learning to play it correctly.

That said, you will find how easy it is to accelerate the learning process and reach your goal as soon as possible. Depending on what kind of learner you are, and any prior background you have in music, piano is one of the easiest instruments to learn.

Why? Because hitting a piano key is a lot like pressing a button. If you can dial a phone, operate a vending machine, or type on a computer keyboard, you are using the basic skill required to play piano. All you have to do from there is learn a few rules about how to put together combinations of notes and you’re ready to break into song!

Here are my tips for you:

1) Think about how much time you can devote to practice and set up a schedule that you know you can stick to. You never want piano lessons to become a chore. As soon as you resent the time commitment, you will likely give up entirely.

2) Try to practice for some time…any time…every day. Even 10 minutes a day works better than one hour once a week.

3) Be patience with yourself. Allow yourself to make mistakes and stumble as you learn. Trust that you’ll amaze yourself - and your friends - soon enough.

4) HAVE FUN!

With your practice schedule worked out, a musical genre, and an instruction method, you’ve got all you need to move forward with your exciting, new talent. Can you learn to play piano? What’s stopping you?!

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