Learn to play the keyboard

Posts Tagged ‘Piano Sheet Music’

UPDATE: Piano Sheet Music @ myspace.com Just heard Today Was A Fairytale by Taylor Swift yesterday night, I think it’s really cute! It’s from the Valentines Day movie soundtrack, I wanna watch the movie when it comes out. (: Mom went to Ikea so I got some time to record a piano cover of it today (: Hope you all like piano rendition of Today Was A Fairytale! ** I played this by ear so I don’t have any sheet music Some notes for the chords: Song is in Gmajor- only F# to take note of. GBD, CEG, EGB, DAF – verses and chorus revolves around those CEG, EBD, DAF- Bridge Love, Sheryl

Everyone can compose sheet music! You have to start where you are and anyone can do that. You can create your own compositions for piano! Let’s see why you should!
Where can you start?
Maybe you find it difficult to notate sheet music. Well, you don’t have to notate your music. You can record the things you do with a digital recording equipment, maybe your computer or a tape recorder.
But if you want to use sheet music? What can you do?
Let me suggest that you start by writing for piano beginners. Sheet music for piano beginners have to be very simple. Few notes and very easy rhythms. This is the place where you fit in!
If you start to write piano sheet music for beginners in progressive order you will also learn to write sheet music in progressive order. Smart idea, isn’t it!
But…, what benefits are there in writing and composing piano sheet music for your own piano playing?
Here are some of my own thoughts:
1. You own endeavors to create piano compositions will make you more aware of other composers music. Questions will arise in your mind on how to notate the things in your mind and how to arrange and so on. These questions will be in your mind and make you more aware of how other composers have written and notated their music.
You will probably look at other composers musical notation with fresh eyes trying to learn how professional composers write.
2. As you compose you will become more and more sensitive to intrinsic musical subtleties in your own music as well as in other composers music.
3. Gradually you will start to think and feel more like a composer. This will help you become a better performer as well. You will respect other composers music more, trying to convey their hearts intent to your public.
4. As you train your creative muscles by composing they will also help you as you perform piano music. Both performing and composing are creative processes requiring your heart.
5. You will become a better sight reader by composing piano sheet music. Many years ago I had an assignment to write sheet music to a musical. I encountered not a few notational problems. Problems I had not as yet solved for myself.
Afterwards I started to play piano sheet music again. To my astonishment I realized I had developed as a sight reader.
My own conclusion was that my concentrated efforts to notate my piano compositions also was a course in sight reading.
I realized I had experienced a reversed sight reading exercise by composing music with my fingers on the piano keyboard and then trying to notate the music on manuscript paper.
Do you have to buy manuscript paper?
Well, no! To notate sheet music does not need to be expensive. You can use an ordinary pencil and ordinary white paper. Sometimes I use this equipment when I have nothing else at hand. I write five lines, one bar at a time, as I compose. It works!
The musical ideas I jot down this way I can easily work more with in my notational software program on my computer later on.
To compose and write piano sheet music can be a part of your daily piano practice. Spending half an hour with piano composing, making your own piano exercices and more can increase your awareness of music and help you become a better pianist and musician.

If you play the organ then you are probably familiar with bass pedals. They are also available as separate units and are known as MIDI bass pedals and you can use them with any keyboard that has MIDI ports. Just connect a MIDI cable from the MIDI out on the keyboard to the MIDI in on the pedal board and you can play any of your keyboard sounds from the pedal board.
Playing the pedals can be a bit daunting at first. I remember when I first attempted to play the pedals when I started to play the organ. I had learned to play the piano for fifteen years before I started on organ so music ability wasn’t the problem, but I could not get the hang of these pedals. Part of the problem is playing style; with a piano, you have a moving right hand and left hand, so to suddenly expect your left foot to start playing a pedal keyboard is asking a lot.
Ideally, you want your bass foot to be an extension of your left hand. So when you play a chord with your left hand, you play the root of that chord on the bass pedal. For example, play a C chord with your left hand and play a C bass pedal with your left foot. Of course, this is the simplest method of playing the bass pedals but a necessary start. You will want to graduate towards playing alternating bass and walking bass.
So here are five simple exercises to help you play the bass pedals.
1. Play a C scale with your left foot. Starting with the bottom C pedal, play to the top C and down again. Make sure to start slowly. These exercises are teaching you distances between pedals. It’s more important to be slow and accurate to start with. Speed will come later.
2. Play this sequence of notes on the pedal board. Bottom C, G, top C, G, bottom C repeat a minimum of ten times.
3. Play this sequence of notes C, E, D, F, E, G, F, A, G, B, A, B, C repeat as above.
4. Play a chromatic scale starting with C, up and down the pedal board. (If you know it, play a section of flight of the bumblebee with your left foot)
5. Finally play a chromatic scale with chords and bass pedals, up and down.
With all the above exercises, you can look at the pedals your are playing when you first attempt the exercises. After a few weeks practice, you should be able to play the pedal board without looking at all.
As I said above, I had problems with bass pedals when I changed from piano to organ. After using the above exercises, I was able to play bass pedals very naturally and without thinking about what pedal comes next. It’s a bit like learning to drive. Once you’re used to your cars pedals and gear stick you don’t think about it, you just drive.

Are you ready to finally learn how to play piano despite years of lessons? If you’re like many students of the piano, all your lessons and all your practicing have only gotten you so far. Maybe you’ve found that you’ve hit a wall in your piano playing ability, beyond which you just can’t seem to get. The following are some helpful tips for taking your piano playing to next level.
* Learn pattern recognition: Every song ever written follows a pattern, a structure of sections and chord progressions. You need only listen to a handful of songs by The Beatles to hear what we mean. To expand your repertoire and build versatility in your ability to pick up nearly any song you hear quickly and easily, learn the patterns with which all songs are composed.
* Play by the numbers: Every song is written in a particular key – one of but 12, to be precise – and every key has it’s scales, series’ of notes in specific intervals, any of which will sound natural and pleasing to the ear when played in it’s respective key. Every scale in every key has its 1-chord, its 2-chord, etc. Instead of straining yourself to memorize how to play various piano chords by rote, learn instead the keys that chords are played in and the scales they’re built upon. Then you can quickly and easily figure out how to play any chord in any key on the spot, whether you’ve memorized that specific chord or not.
* Listen: This tip is about learning to play by ear. The secret to learning to play by ear is simple – just learn the aforementioned 12 musical keys. By doing so, you can easily transpose any song you hear into any key you like. Learning to transpose, then, will take you to the next level of playing piano, which is knowing how to improvise. Many piano players can read and follow piano sheet music, but far fewer can sit down and start playing along spontaneously with any song they hear – and have it sound pleasing to the ear. Of course, if you don’t yet know how to read piano sheet music, then you may also want to begin studying that skill as well. But not at the expense of learning the fundamentals of music, which is not in writing but in listening. In musical terms, this is called “ear-training”. Learn to recognize the sounds of harmonic and melodic intervals and you’re more than halfway to playing them.
* Expose yourself: No, we’re not suggesting you run naked down the street. What we’re suggesting is that you spend time surrounded by musicians of exceptional quality, professionals and amateurs alike in whose presence you can hear what it sounds like to play how you want to play. The body’s muscles have memory far superior to than our brain’s conscious recall ability. By simply immersing yourself in an environment where your ear is exposed to the sort of piano playing you aspire to, your body has a far easier time reproducing those sounds on the piano yourself.
Most importantly in your piano playing adventure is to remember to give it a little attention every day. You don’t have to practice for hours and hours a day to get good at the piano. You need only devote a small amount of time daily to keep the skills you’re learning present in your mind and body. Even just 15 minutes a day keeps your piano playing ability in tune.