On May 12 2010 09:13 phosphorylation wrote: maga33: i think you have the right attitude and approach but i hope for your sake that you eventually get into -- pardon my elitism -- real music
for the technical drills, i recommend that you look into hanon exercises people rag on them all the time, but it's still the best tool there is (brahms' and liszt's exercises would be too difficult) sometimes, i play through the whole book in one sitting (takes around 1-2 hours) and my technique gets a +2 upgrade
Wooord, drills cannot be skimped, good fundamentals is better for your playing than anything. It's also a good idea to at least learn from a person at some point so you can correct any bad habits. When self-learning, it is easy to learn and practice inefficiently and incorrectly.
My advice (I've played the piano since I was 4, my dad's a music teacher/musician) is if you're interested in actually learning the instrument, i.e. really learning it, not just teaching yourself to play a love song for a girl, get a teacher. Learning the piano has a lot of pitfalls, and the things you learn the wrong way in the beginning are going to haunt you forever.
There are just SO many things you won't know how to do in the beginning. Correct hand placement, correct fingering, good song selection (playing things that are too difficult for you is terrible for your learning), and many other subtle things that a good teacher's going to notice instantly but you'll never realize by yourself.
I am a piano teacher, and have taught many beginners, both children and adults. As you might expect, my no. 1 suggestion is that you take a few lessons but even without that, this is my advice:
a) the person who mentioned finding one piece you really want to play and focusing on that is very wise. I recommend that to all of my older beginning students. It is a great way to motivate yourself, much more fun and interesting than slogging through all of the boring pieces in beginner books. That said . . .
b) In the long run, for most people, what will make playing most rewarding is being able to learn music quickly and easily. There are two ways to learn a piece, by reading the notes or by playing by ear.
To learn to read music, the best thing to do is **play a lot of easy stuff**. "but nothing is easy for me" you say - well then, what you need to do is find the easiest books you can - method books aimed at adults, but those aimed at children are good too. A lot of the pieces will be stupid/boring, but that's okay, you are just using them for reading practice. I can recommend some books along these lines if you are interested. Having a background in this kind of reading practice will makes things far, far easier when it comes to playing what you really want - no matter what that happens to be.
To learn to play by ear, pick songs you know well. Nursery songs are good. Pick a starting note and try to sound it out. Depending on where you started, you will probably have to use some black keys. Thats good too. Depending on how good your ear is it might be hard - if you are having trouble, ask yourself these questions about very note: "is it higher or lower than the note before it?" and "is it nearby, or far away?" then just use trial and error. Unless you have a pretty good ear, it will be difficult to learn much beyond simple melodies without some theory knowledge, but there are many books that can help you. Most piano methods aimed at adults contain at least a little theory instruction to get you started.
As far as technique goes, I will probably be flamed for this, but my advice is not to worry about it. I say this because without good instruction, you won't know what good technique is, and if you don't now what it is, thinking about it will probably just make you more tense than playing "naturally" would. Hanon is a very good thing to do, but you will get way more out of it with a teacher. The songs you will play in the beginnging will probably be playable even with very poor technique anyway.
If you want to see perfect technique (in the sense of the *way* things are done, not in the sense of fastest, loudest, most accurate, etc.) you can watch videos of rubinstein on youtube.
On May 12 2010 09:39 HCastorp wrote: I am a piano teacher, and have taught many beginners, both children and adults. As you might expect, my no. 1 suggestion is that you take a few lessons but even without that, this is my advice:
a) the person who mentioned finding one piece you really want to play and focusing on that is very wise. I recommend that to all of my older beginning students. It is a great way to motivate yourself, much more fun and interesting than slogging through all of the boring pieces in beginner books. That said . . .
b) In the long run, for most people, what will make playing most rewarding is being able to learn music quickly and easily. There are two ways to learn a piece, by reading the notes or by playing by ear.
To learn to read music, the best thing to do is **play a lot of easy stuff**. "but nothing is easy for me" you say - well then, what you need to do is find the easiest books you can - method books aimed at adults, but those aimed at children are good too. A lot of the pieces will be stupid/boring, but that's okay, you are just using them for reading practice. I can recommend some books along these lines if you are interested. Having a background in this kind of reading practice will makes things far, far easier when it comes to playing what you really want - no matter what that happens to be.
To learn to play by ear, pick songs you know well. Nursery songs are good. Pick a starting note and try to sound it out. Depending on where you started, you will probably have to use some black keys. Thats good too. Depending on how good your ear is it might be hard - if you are having trouble, ask yourself these questions about very note: "is it higher or lower than the note before it?" and "is it nearby, or far away?" then just use trial and error. Unless you have a pretty good ear, it will be difficult to learn much beyond simple melodies without some theory knowledge, but there are many books that can help you. Most piano methods aimed at adults contain at least a little theory instruction to get you started.
As far as technique goes, I will probably be flamed for this, but my advice is not to worry about it. I say this because without good instruction, you won't know what good technique is, and if you don't now what it is, thinking about it will probably just make you more tense than playing "naturally" would. Hanon is a very good thing to do, but you will get way more out of it with a teacher. The songs you will play in the beginnging will probably be playable even with very poor technique anyway.
If you want to see perfect technique (in the sense of the *way* things are done, not in the sense of fastest, loudest, most accurate, etc.) you can watch videos of rubinstein on youtube.
This is very sound advice. However, I disagree with some minor points. I simply don't recommend learning to play by ear. To me, this is a just a temporary solution and is doomed to be limiting. While i agree technique isn't very important at the earliest stages, once you are slightly better I find it critically important to do the hanon exercises. And I strongly recommend that you get some feedback (from a pianist, a teacher, or, hell, even upload a vid and show us) at least once, so that how you are practicing is roughly correct and helpful
I taught myself to play 2 things on the piano(electronic keyboard) as a fad at the time the film The Piano came out. I basically could play the theme piece which I learnt from sound and trial and error repetition. Its not anywhere the same as learning to read sheet music or using the pedals but I was impressed I could play the tune quite well. Though over a decade later I can't remember the 1st key to the theme if I look at a piano.
I don't know if I would have wanted to stick with it and learn to read sheet music properly or learn what the names of the keys where. I think it did help me to have fast fingers for streetfighter though. And I went from the worst at streetfighter of my friends to the joint best/probably best.
Its tunes like that that make we really want to learn to play the piano properly or the guitar when I hear an awesome solo in a song i.e. soothsayer is a song a contemplated learning to play by trial and error on a real guitar but then some other games came out and I lost interest as I didn't have a guitar of my own to learn it with.
1. Learn chords and how to play songs with chords on 4/4 beat or whatever the song is in. 2. Learn how to play melodies, and add the bass chords in with them.
If you practice both of these skills eventually you will be able to get to the point that you can integrate the two into one.
I second the notion of picking songs you like though -- really master it. Learn to play it several different ways. That way you get more adept at hearing how to improvise and add in melodies/harmonies of your own.
I had a couple years of lessons but didn't really care about those.. never did anything advanced. I learned the rest of what I know through the above methods. If I see the chords of most songs I can tend to pull out the melody and song within the first few attempts now which is nice.
I started piano when i was 5 years old, my parents forced it on me (oh the joys of an asian family). I quit around 10, and started to get back into it recently though i don't remember anything lol. Biggest issue I currently have is keeping yourself motivated, I have so much trouble because I don't motivate myself enough to practice on a weekly basis (I have a really apathetic nature). Don't be like me and get stuck in the cycle of "ehh I can practice later no big deal" or "It's ok if I don't play today". It's fucking horrible and you'll get nowhere. Make a set weekly practice schedule and keep it, don't ever cut it short or you'll end up like me. this is the largest obstacle in self-learning an instrument
After thinking on this matter a little more and reflecting back on how I got where I am now, while I would like to maintain what I said so far, I would like to add perhaps the most important point. People on this thread have already said to focus on things you enjoy. This is single best way to keep yourself motivated and improving; setting a schedule like ZoW could work but it is painful and not very fun. However, this can lead to you only playing stuff you like at the moment, which often tend not to be great music or conducive for your pianistic development.
So the second (equally important) primer is that you should also gradually expose yourself (force it if you have to) to great music, not just as fledgling pianist but also a music listener, Expose yourself to piano music of chopin, beethoven, liszt, rachmaninoff etc. Given that you are a decently intelligent human, you will grow to really cherish them. In that case, you don't even have to force yourself to work on this works. You will just want to! And you would be also playing and striving to play more of these great repertoire.
This is how it worked for me back when I was around 7-8. I was dying to play the liszt trascendental etudes, although that was ridiculosuly out of reach. But I eventually did get there.. and more.
This is very sound advice. However, I disagree with some minor points. I simply don't recommend learning to play by ear. To me, this is a just a temporary solution and is doomed to be limiting. While i agree technique isn't very important at the earliest stages, once you are slightly better I find it critically important to do the hanon exercises. And I strongly recommend that you get some feedback (from a pianist, a teacher, or, hell, even upload a vid and show us) at least once, so that how you are practicing is roughly correct and helpful
About playing by ear:
To clarify, I do not believe that one should aim to play by ear as a substitute for learning to read music. Unless your ear is extraordinarily good (and you probably already know it if that is the case) reading music will open more doors to you than playing by ear. Reading music is my main focus with every single one of my beginning students. But playing by ear is often overlooked, and I think it is an important thing to attempt. Many people look at it as some sort of "magical" ability, whereas in reality almost anyone can do it at least a little bit. Being able to quickly figure out any simple melody is part of being a well-rounded musician, and is fun and accessible to even the less-skilled. Playing by ear is also a window into improvisation and composition. Another consideration is that if your tastes run to pop and jazz, sheet music may not be easily available for the music you want to play.
This is very sound advice. However, I disagree with some minor points. I simply don't recommend learning to play by ear. To me, this is a just a temporary solution and is doomed to be limiting. While i agree technique isn't very important at the earliest stages, once you are slightly better I find it critically important to do the hanon exercises. And I strongly recommend that you get some feedback (from a pianist, a teacher, or, hell, even upload a vid and show us) at least once, so that how you are practicing is roughly correct and helpful
About playing by ear:
To clarify, I do not believe that one should aim to play by ear rather than learn to read music. Unless your ear is very, very good (and you probably already know it if that is the case) reading music will open more doors to you than playing by ear. Reading music is my main focus with every single one of my beginning students. But playing by ear is often overlooked, and I think it is an important thing to attempt. Many people look at it as some sort of "magical" ability, whereas in reality almost anyone can do it at least a little bit. Being able to quickly figure out any simple melody is part of being a well-rounded musician, and is fun and accessible to even the less-skilled.
Fair enough. But, I've never found playing by ear fun at all! But, maybe that might because my relative pitch is rubbish while my sight reading is blazing.
In the sense of, is capable of learning it. I often ask children who come in for their first lessons to sing along as they play. Many of them are not even capable of accurately singing one pitch in the beginning, but after a few months, they can carry a tune. I don't teach them this, but being around music causes them to pick it up. I have had at least one student who was completely tone-deaf. It happens more often to boys than girls. He could never learn anything by ear, obviously, but thats an exceptional case.
If I ask a child (or adult) to play "Mary had a little lamb" starting on E, they will usually fail completely at first. But if I play it two ways and ask them which is right, they will unfailingly give the correct answer. That is the beginning. If you can do that, there is nothing stopping you (with practice) from playing any melody by ear.
I don't question that a lot of people can do it, which was my point, because I'm all the sadder because I -can't- seem to do it. As someone who's played piano/violin/clarinet/oboe, I am woefully bad with my ear, despite numerous attempts to change that. Half the time I can't tell if a note is higher or lower than another :3
That is really too bad - have you ever been in a choir? That could help. My ear is not great by any means, but my musical cross to bear is sight-reading - I sight read less well than anyone I know who plays piano at the same level I do otherwise. Oh yeah, except for one guy who is blind, and another who is dyslexic. :p (and I graduated from a conservatory, so I know a lot of pianists!). Practice has helped, but i seem to be "negatively talented" in that area.
On May 12 2010 09:13 phosphorylation wrote: maga33: i think you have the right attitude and approach but i hope for your sake that you eventually get into -- pardon my elitism -- real music
don't hate on anime/touhou music, it can be amazing at times
EPT
