Learning Piano...

Dave!

FYI, some more good sites for sheets

http://jeanies_home_studio.tripod.com/id9.html
http://pianofan.blogspot.com/
http://pianomusicsheet.blogspot.com/

I got my piano It's fantashtic. Bargain for €400 tbh!

Nevyn

DeVore wrote: »

Wait, Thead, I just reread your post. You think I/we could be playing that by NEW YEAR??? I thought you wrote "within a year" and even then I was fairly shocked. Are you taking the mick?! If I *ever* play like that I'll be happy. You are kidding... arent you?

The first movement of the maple leaf rag ain't that hard.
Depends on how hard you want and how much time you put in

froosh69

hi there,

I've been playing since I was 5 yrs old...and fair play to you!
The key is to enjoy it...you'll never put in the work if your not arsed...and there is some really sound advice here-play the stuff you like, music is meant to be enjoyed...

One more little thing, if you can play piano, you can play anything- if you understand keys, time sigs, how to read music...you know, really UNDERSTAND music, you could pick up guitar, for example, much easier than anyone with no understanding of music...

Congratulations, and keep it up!

DeVore

One of the things I have found the MOST fun about learning the piano (and you will all laugh at me) is the maths behind the music. Its awesome! There's sh*t going on in there (particularly Mozart) that is just whacked out, some of his stuff is similar to how molecules of various proteins are formed etc (a kind of cyclical group theory as far as I can see). *
I know. I'm a nerd.

Also I am absolutely *amazed* at how totally cheaty some bits of quite famous music are... The Eastenders theme is nothing more then the scales and a few tweaks (and I always disliked it ).

Playing The Moonlight Sonata really opened my eyes to it, he's just rotating notes like a sequence of numbers, rarely changing more then one note in any 3 note rotation but by changing a different one each time he produces a simple but elegant piece of music. I think I could "design" a piece of music without ever hearing it be played (after a lot more study of music of course! Perhaps I should write "someone could design..." )

DeV.

*if that pickles your guerkin you'll love this: I showed a friend of mine who is a professor of astronomy in UCD the graphs of the logs of Boards.ie and apparently she says they are an exact match for the graphs from a gamma ray burst (thats a sun exploding for the likes of you and me )

Kareir

I played piano for.. well.. about 5 years.

The thing for me (and still is) is not to worry about grades (never did them) or how difficult a song was: once you know the basics, you can kinda see how they're made up. (as DeV just said) And that makes them easier to play.
Of Course, there's still the motor skill element, but practise makes perfect :P


_Kar

splitrmx

I had piano lessons for a few years when I was a kid, then gave it up when I started college. I recently decided to start learning a few classical pieces again though.

My main advice would be to practice either on a real piano or a proper sized weighted keyboard. The weighted part is very important as you won't develop finger strength playing some crappy light plastic key cheapo thing.

I don't own a real piano any more but I'm currently using an M-Audio Keystation 88 Pro midi controller. As it's just a midi controller it doesn't produce any sound itself, so I'm using it to play Native Instruments Akoustik Piano software which sounds pretty good in my (amateur) opinion.

Other advice: get proper lessons. Things that don't seem important (scales, theory etc) are actually important, I always hated sight reading but now that I'm teaching myself I realise how important it is (nobody here to tell me which note is what!). Practice a bit every day.

We're lucky nowadays to have Youtube (and the internet in general) where you can hear other people play things, download tracks and sheet music. I was six years old when I started lessons, I don't think Arpanet had videos up on it back then.

Nick_oliveri

This will be my teacher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFLF-gh4C2M

Nearly have the rythm down without looking at the keyboard. Trying to wrap your head around the timings of different hands is annoying.

Also using Guitar Pro for "reading tabs" is a bit stupid too. But its so handy.

DeVore

God, I'm such a cheat at this. I come here and post when I'm all happy and have good news to report but not when I'm sucking hard and cant tell the white keys from the black ones.

So, after a total abandonment over the xmas when I hardly practised once and surprise surprise I went into REVERSE... I have gotten back on the horse and cracked Fur Elise (parts 1-4, not the mad stuff!).

Now, when I say cracked..... I can now, with patience and time, hit all the right notes in more or less the right sequence, close to the correct time (provided I'm not changing hands at the time ).

It feels terrific. It sounds horrendous but it feels great!

I picked Fur Elise because I like the piece. Ok, I USED to like it. I'm sick to the back teeth of it now but I hope that will fade

Also because it was tricky enough (I learned the proper beethoven sheet music, not a cut down beginners piece because I wanted to learn the piece as I knew it). It was a struggle, I wont lie to you. But inside a weeks HARD practising and much lecturing of my errant little finger, I feel I've cracked it. Holding it all in my head is hard, but much of it is now transferring to muscle memory and the lovely feeling of simply hitting the right key and then thinking "hey, I didnt think about that" has started. About f***ing time, lol!

So, next I want to master this piece and after that I am moving on to She's Always a Woman to Me by Billy Joel, because I want to accompany my singing. I joke with my mates that I will be able to sound TWICE as out-of-key now.

Its either that or Home by The Secret Garden which is a beautiful piece of music.

I might see if I can get time to do some more video stuff so you can see where I have gotten to (and not gotten to!)

DeV.