Hi, forgetting that I had a "learn guitar" blog entry last year...
I learnt some piano when I was younger, being quite good. I learnt most of "Titanic" copying a girl then "To Zanarkland" by listening to a midi file and then learnt "Moonlight Symphony" with a few lessons from a teacher. But that was it, I never bothered to learn anything else even though I could easily if I spent some time on it. Instead I just played the same 3-4 things over and over and over and over.
I have a 36 (?????) key keyboard now and looking at piano tutorials on youtube. These tutorials let you pause and see where the keys to press are, and I learn really quickly like this.
My main question is, since I literally don't know any songs other than final fantasy songs, do you have any suggestions for a piano song to learn?
I especially seem to like the non-intrusive backing music to vocals (often I think "that would be nice without the singer"). I'm not keen on modern/pop songs turned into piano. I would like to learn something jazzy/funky/upbeat/oldschool aswell, not just the standard sad/normal stuff, which is great but I'm quite picky about it.
As you can see there are loads of "here's the fingering" tutorials on youtube, just I don't know where to start apart from browsing every video there is (which I will do). Channels like this pop up on youtube immediately: http://www.youtube.com/user/jraciti1/videos
I do really like Eyes on Me, its fucking great, and youtubing "eyes on me tutorial" gives me fingering straight away so I think I will just jump into this: + Show Spoiler +
I definately need to learn sight reading after my first or second song, so the second question to you would be with relation to learning site reading (suggestions, what worked for you, what songs help you?).
Well I hope you understand this is a very broad post basically saying "hi, comment if you want to".
PS: is it just me or does he play several wrong notes in that eyes on me video i spoilered?? Edit: yeah he does, the youtube comments confirm. but it does seems like it fits on 36 keys...
Well I'm learning piano songs from sonic the hedgehog 1/2 for Sega Genesis right now, so I recommend those! :p
It's so rough coming back to piano after not studying it since elementary school though. I can handle the right hand... but the left hand? Not so much.
ahaha yeah i seriously worry how much my brain has deteriorated since then. i decided on a song and have the first 5 notes down. man it is epic. how does the mind work??!?! nobody knows
the hardest thing is trying to see what notes hes pressing coz they dont line up properly in the video. no other versions the same as that are available :/
I can't give you any ideas for songs to learn, I spent my whole life immersing myself in depressing music
But for sightreading, start simple, something you could probably do off the bat if you played either hand separately. Focus on trying to get the flow of the song, i.e. don't stop for wrong notes. Better yet, get a melody you know and is possible to play on your chosen keyboard, but don't actually know how to play. Then play it right through. If it sounds remotely like it should, that's a success.
If you want to go past sight reading, i.e. you think you really like what you're playing and you actually want to learn the song properly, only then you fix all your mistakes. Playing a song wrongly and not stopping to correct myself was one of the hardest habits to break when I started sight-reading, but once you get used to forcing yourself through it, sometimes you can even get away with playing wrong notes and nobody will notice. It also makes learning piano in general much faster because you don't get bogged down in the small stuff, you learn the piece and then just buff and polish your way to perfection. I can't offer really specific advice, but as a general rule you get better the more you practice it, just like anything else you learn.
I worked last winter for about two weeks as a piano accompanist, basically learning the piano parts for about a half-dozen kids playing violin, flute, etc. at a recital. It gave me maybe like two hours per kid to learn my part as well as I could, and another hour to actually practice it with their part. And during the actual recital because of the short notice I'd actually slip up two or three times per song, but covered by my other hand and the violin part or whatever instrument was performing the part, nobody seemed to notice, not even the students. So once you do get used to it, learning piano music takes much less time, although the difference is much less if you're practicing to the point of perfection.
But yeah. Find something you like and ease yourself into it.
On June 24 2013 01:41 FFGenerations wrote: ahaha yeah i seriously worry how much my brain has deteriorated since then. i decided on a song and have the first 5 notes down. man it is epic. how does the mind work??!?! nobody knows
the hardest thing is trying to see what notes hes pressing coz they dont line up properly in the video. no other versions the same as that are available :/
The notes aren't too hard to figure out, just a bit disorienting because, like you said, they don't line up.
The grey lines are B-C and E-F boundaries. Within the smaller divisions is space for the C, D and E keys, and within the larger divisions is F, G, A and B. B-flat is a different color and smaller than the other bars, and somewhere between A and B. It's just another way of looking at the notes he plays, but without his hands getting in the way.
Everything to the right of his right thumb in the screenshot is more or less lined up neatly.
man well i went back over To Zanarkand, its incredible what muscle memory you have once you start going. the bits i couldnt remember ive started to relearn. afterwards i went back to the Suteki intro.....i couldnt do it at all and after the first few notes it seemed completely alien and unfamiliar to me, like i'd never heard it before >___> got it down again now. i think it must be coz its like random discord notes
don't force yourself to play, try to only play when you are enjoying it. That way you create a sound relationship to the instrument and music. Otherwise you will associate boredom with it and kill the love of music
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ofb7PxZ.png)
