Study Piano

study piano now and then

2010-04-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

Disclosure: I am not a professional reviewer but I receive a compensation from the companies whose products I cite if you buy them through my links. This is not influencing my judgment, but I have to tell you first
When you study piano with a teacher, you can go with your own pace, at least if you have your own teacher, otherwise your group will either go as slow as the slowest student or as fast as the fast one. If you learn piano using a DVD course you can go as slow as you want, you can "ask" the teacher to repeat something as much as you want. I used to have a piano teacher that individually followed six or more persons during an half-hour course but I wasn't playing alone with him, he just followed me for a couple of minutes, then he went to the next pupil and then he came back to me later. I didn't like that, but I was young so I didn't know what was better for me. The only nice thing about that teacher was that I was able to ask him whatever came to my mind. If you are like me and have some stupid question to ask, a DVD course is not the easiest solution. Hopefully this has been solved with the use of forums and other online support tools. This is even better than asking to a teacher, since you have to think twice before asking and that could only help. Another positive thing is that you can have more people reading your question and answering it. Sometimes teacher don't understand the problem you can have as a beginner, so if another beginner read your question, you have more possibilities to read an helpful answer.

Don't study piano alone!

Study Piano | Learning and memory

2010-03-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

Disclosure: I am not a professional reviewer but I receive a compensation from the companies whose products I cite if you buy them through my links. This is not influencing my judgment, but I have to tell you first.
I once read somewhere a study about the best method of learning a foreign language. They said that to learn a new word you should first repeat it a couple of times. Then after 3-4 minutes you'll get asked about it again and you should tell it. This happens again after 10 minutes and again after a day. The idea is that we need help the brain transfer the information of the foreign word from the short-term memory to the long-term one. Asking the work after longer and longer intervals helps that. Note that you don't have to read the word, but you have to ask yourself that word. To get back to the study of music, you should think that the word is a chord and the English translation of the word is the name of the chord. So if you study the C major chord and play it a couple of time after 10 minutes you should ask yourself what notes are on that chord. Try again after half an hour and then write down somewhere that you have to ask yourself that same chord tomorrow.
The next day you should start asking yourself about them to see if you remember them.

Note that sometimes you don't remember the chord, but your hand does! You don't have only a word and concept memory, you have also a position memory for your whole body.

Try next time you study piano. Learn to ask yourself some chords.

Study Piano : a course for Intermediate (and beginner too)

2010-03-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

You stopped studying piano 5/10 years ago because you did not like the way it was taught to you.Now you listen to music and dream to play it but you are afraid of starting again. Maybe you don't even have a piano anymore.Apparently this does happen quite often; not only to me.

The good news is that playing piano is like riding a bike: you will never forget how to do it. Instead, you will lose a bit of agility and your finger could be a little bit weak in the beginning. The best thing to do if you want to start back studying piano is..to get a piano. I did not have one anymore so I bought myself a digital piano so I can play it whenever I want without disturbing my neighbors (even though they still disturb me :( ).

There are loads of courses and DVD that teach how to play piano. It's not a rare instrument or something uncommon like a left handed guitar player.

The problem with such courses is that they are mostly for beginners. Some for experienced users, but I still have to see a clear help for people like me that want to refresh some latent knowledge.

I can't say that I used to be an excellent player but I used to play well enough. What I missed were the ability to improvise and the knowledge of chords. That's an usual problem if you study classical piano only. What I wanted to learn was a “modern” way of playing piano, something that will help me improvise or try to replicate songs by ear. I am able to do that right now, but only for the main melody. This shouldn't be an issue for any person who studied piano for more than a couple of years (actually it's also true for guitar players). With that in mind I started to wander on internet trying to find out a course that would have helped me in doing that.

At some point I read this:

Gain a solid foundation of musical understanding ranging from reading music to basic and advanced chord construction and improvisation.

..and I thought “I've found it!”.

This text was taken from Learn and Master piano. At first I read the whole description and found a lot of interesting points. You can see them on Learn and Master Piano's homepage here. The first thing I noted was that they explain that the course is also for intermediate players. There are other interesting things but since I don't usually trust 100% people, especially if they have to sell something (yes, it's not free :) ), I asked in my favorite forum about it. It turns out a forum-friend has it and started to use it. Since we know each other well, he lent me the first DVD. He said “You are more experienced than me, so I hope you'll give me back the DVD before the end of the week so I can go on. I just watched the first session”. I gave him back the DVD two days later, only because I wasn't able to find him the day before! I literally ate the DVD in a couple of hours! Since I'm not a beginner this is normal. I decided not to skip any lessons since in some ways I can be considered a beginner. I feel like I'm learning German. I'm not a beginner in German as well, but like with this language, I have some gap that beginners doesn't have. That's why studying piano from the beginning DVD seems like a good idea to me.

Study piano with this DVD seems very easy and it's not stressful. I have never studied anything using DVDs, but I feel comfortable with this one. I don't know why, maybe it's the relaxed way it's filmed or maybe it's because they are very professional but not boring.

I will update this blog with my quest on studying piano with Learn and Master Piano.If you have questions, leave a comment here and I'll answer next time I'll be online. Studying piano takes time, you know.. :)

Study piano | learn piano technique

2010-02-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

Disclosure: I am not a professional reviewer but I receive a compensation from the companies whose products I cite if you buy them through my links. This is not influencing my judgment, but I have to tell you first.
To Study piano you don't really need a teacher. You can learn playing piano using online piano courses or a dvd to study piano.
What is really important is to decide which tool to use is to assess your knowledge of music and also your ability to keep up with studying. The last seems stupid to say, but as in other hobbies, the biggest obstacle is the pessimism that people have when seeing (or hearing in this case) how difficult is at the beginning.

Study piano

Learning to play the piano can be hard sometimes. It's not important if you are a beginner or if you used to play for years; it's just that sometimes you have the feeling that you are not going anywhere and you don't improve.
It's important for a player, either beginner or experienced, to find the technique that will help him or her to learn better and to feel the improvements.

The basic tips that should be the same for every piano player (or any other musician in general) are very generic.
Set your goals. A Goal is very important, especially during those hard times when you feel that you are not making improvements. If your goal is to play “The entertainer” in a year, you should get its music sheet or a mp3 of it and listen to it or read it to help you visualizing your goal.

When I study piano I always have at least a couple of songs that I use as “sub goals”. Having a digital piano helps because I can use the demo songs as goals. :)

Don't forget the basics. When you start to learn, your teacher (or virtual teacher) is usually telling you how to read the notes and how to practice (ie. Start with your right hand only). Do not forget that when you study difficult piano pieces. Sometimes you think you can skip steps just because it's too boring. Don't do that.
Have fun. Play with your keyboard. It's like a toy, you have to have fun. For example while you wait for someone or if you are bored, you can go to your piano and start to play with it. Old pieces, music by ear or whatever you think you want to do.
I use to play old pieces that I already know when I want to make a pause during a difficult exercise. That will help me remove some stress and I'll also learn better the old piece.

Remember those easy steps they will be useful while you learn playing piano, either with online piano courses or using piano lessons on dvd. Check my site often if you study piano

Study Piano: improve technique

2010-02-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

Disclosure: I am not a professional reviewer but I receive a compensation from the companies whose products I cite if you buy them through my links. This is not influencing my judgment, but I have to tell you first.
Study Piano, Learn Piano, Improve Piano technique and so on. I spent a lot of time online looking for those things, but I've never found a good site about studying piano or to improve piano skills. I used to play piano when I was younger. Not play piano online but playing a real piano, 88 keys and stuff :)
It's not easy to improve tecnique if you don't have a teacher (or even an virtual piano teacher). That's why I stopped studying, other than not having access to a real piano to play with, and play piano online wasn't surely my idea of playing a piano. Yes it's always a keyboard, but I want to use a 88 keys keyboard not a pc keyboard :)

Finally one day I saw a couple of interesting piano courses and I decided to give them a try. Well...first I bought a piano and then I started to spend some time to find a good course.

There are 100s of online piano courses, some good, some bad. At least that's what people say, so there is no real way for me to understand what to do. Online piano curses are of varying types. Some are just guys on youtube ( try to search in youtube something like "free piano lessons" or "learn piano free"). Some others are piano teachers that decide to put their skills online freely or for a fee. There are also some very organized courses made by professional piano players that try to share their knowledge, usually for a fee. Those are usually the best.

Next time I'll speak about my personal experience and I will show some lessons I've found online for free.
If you want to Study Piano, Learn Piano, Improve Piano technique do yourself a favor and follow this blog.