Mikes Music Room – Music Articles

What are some practical games a piano teacher can use? That’s a frequent question that piano teachers and parents write me and ask about.

I’d like to discuss a time-worn classic piano game that I have updated.

Games are an indispensable resource of the inventive, patient piano teacher. The reasons are several. Children’s psychology demands that you adopt a light-hearted approach to learning, in order to gain their trust and interest. Attention spans are short, and the teacher must know when to let the student rest and then later seize the right moment for learning.

Another reason for piano games is pacing. Piano lessons can grow tedious quickly while difficult parts are refined and repeated. A wise teacher will try his student’s patience with care and as little as possible, and after doing so will reward them with playful learning.

QUARTERS

Quarters is derived from an old piano teacher’s trick, wherein a student must play with a coin balanced on the back of their hand to teach the hand to lay flat. This may sound difficult, but it’s not, and in fact kids find it fascinating.

The truth is that I have kids who could care less about ‘hand position’ and resist all patient, erudite attempts to explain and demonstrate it to them: they are simply not interested.

But put a quarter on the back of the same child’s hand and say, “Play Jingle Bells that way, bub,” and you have a child primed for an unusual, witty experiment in dexterity.

Yes, the quarter will drop on the floor. Yes, it will roll under the piano. Have several ready. Just laugh and continue. It’s worth 75 cents.

If it’s all right with the parents, give them the quarter for particularly good work. This game has led to indifferent kids showing me how they can play with all sorts of things balanced on their hands, a piece of gum, a Tic Tac, a rock.

One brilliant kid was also an eight-year-old magician, who, unknown to me, sprayed his hand before the lesson with a magician’s trick powder which sticks metal to the hand. I was mystified by his expertise during Fur Elise until he slyly turned his hands upside down and the quarters remained!

Who cares how kids arrive at the correct hand position as long as they do so willingly and without tension?

Be aware that some kids will raise their right shoulder to compensate for the coin, so gently push the shoulder down and say quietly, “Relax.”

This game works best when the child has started to use the fingers as a group. Even a small group such as three fingers makes use of this game quite well, and will help the child comfortably and quickly adopt a flatter hand position instinctively.

Make a game of everything at the piano.

By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2000 Walden Pond Press. Visit http://www.pianoiseasy.com to see the fun PIANO BY NUMBER method for kids. John Aschenbrenner is a leading children’s music educator and book publisher, and the author of numerous fun piano method books in the series PIANO BY NUMBER for kids. You can see the PIANO BY NUMBER series of books at http://www.pianoiseasy.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Aschenbrenner

choochootrain0852 posted:


i know a lot of people who teach themselves to play the guitar using online lessons or books or both. can you do the same thing to learn to play the piano/keyboard… or do you need formal training?

in people’s opinion, what’s more difficult to learn to play… the guitar or piano/keyboard?

thanks!

piano lessons

Ed R posted:


hi,

i have got a yamaha psr-225 which has 2 midi slots, out and in
i bought a cable which connects midi to soundcard using the joystick thingy, i also have reason 3.0, however wen i connect the keyboard to sound card using the cable i still cant find the keyboard in the import device bit of reason.

please help, thnx : )

basic piano lessons

Key signatures are a theoretical approach to knowing what scales, chords and ideas you can play during a song without worrying about playing wrong notes. You can use the chords in a song to figure out what key it is in or if you are using regular notation you can simply look at how many sharps and flats or flats there are at the beginning of the clef. Key signatures can be major or minor and be any of the 12 notes of music, such as A minor or C major. Key signatures can give a certain feelings or moods to a song as well, much like major and minor chords.

Circle of Fifths

An easy way to figure out what key your playing in is to use the circle of fifths chart. At the beginning of a sheet of notation music there are a group of sharps or flats. The lines these symbols are on affects the notes on that line for the duration of the song or until the key changes again. To use the circle of fifths chart you can just count how many sharps or flats there are on the staff and compare it to the chart. If your music has 1 sharp, it is F major. Make sure if there are sharps, you use the right side of the chart, since the left side is for flats. If there are 3 flats, the key is Eb major. The numbers inside the circle correspond to the number of sharps (right side numbers) and the number of flats (left side numbers). There are a lot of different style of the circle of fifths charts so make sure you know what chart your looking at and know what everything means.

Keys and Chords

You can also tell what key you’re in by studying the chords you’re playing. When you’re playing just power chords using the root, 5th and 8th notes, you can judge by the root notes of the chords what key you’re in. For example, using the chords C5, D5, G5 you could be in the key of Gmaj OR Cmaj since both keys contain the notes C, D, and G. To really narrow down the key you’re in, you have to use chords that contain more notes. If you add in the 3rd to each chord it only leaves the key of Gmaj because the third of Dmaj is an F#, which doesn’t exist in the key of Cmaj. This shows why keys are important. If you’re playing these three chords, C, D, and G, you could maybe get away with playing a Cmaj scale for the melody by leaving out some notes, but it would be more to your advantage to use all the notes of the Gmaj scale.

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After the minor scale the next thing we can learn is minor chords. The major chord is made up of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the major scale. There are two ways to make a minor chord, either take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the minor scale and play them together or you can take a major chord and flatten a couple of notes to make a minor chord. After you learn to play minor chords you can use them either playing your favorite bands music or when you make up your own music. You can use minor chords to make a sad or murky fealing in music. Lets take a look at both ways and then we will be able to make and play minor chords.

Minor Chord construction with the Minor Scale

To use the minor scale to make a minor chord you can simply take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the scale and play them all at the same time. Like the major chords we will have to relocate the 3rd note on a different part of the neck to make this possible. This is the same concept and making a major chord from the major scale but instead of the major scale we are using the minor scale.

Major Chord vs. Minor Chord

The big difference between a major and a minor scale is the 3rd scale degree. In a minor chord this tone is flat compared to the major chord. And when comparing scales remember that the 3rd, 6th, and 7th tones are flat in the minor scale when compared to the major scale. These are the only things that are different between the major and minor scales and chords.

Uses

Minor chords are used in a lot of slower music to give a sad and gloomy feeling. Sometimes you can use minor chords in conjunction with major chords to better enforce a key signature. If you just through a bunch of major chords together to make a progression each individual note of each chord may not be in the key you are tying to play in.

As far as technique you can pluck and strum them the same as you do with major chords. Just make sure you have the 3rd scale degree flat and you will be on the right path to playing a minor chord. Remember when your constructing your chords your playing all the right notes otherwise you might be playing the wrong chord.

If you have any questions about minor scales, chords or minor 7ths, check out the forums or message one of the moderators! http://www.guitarlessoninsider.com

After you learn the major scale pattern you can start to construct a plethora of chords, even make up your own chords. Chords are made up of certain note of a scale and then played together. It is good to know that just because some chords don’t sound pleasing to the ear doesn’t mean that they aren’t chords. Some chords are made to go with others and sound better accompanied by other chords.

The Pattern

The short explanation of how to play a major chord is to take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the major scale and play them together. If thats all you need for an explanation then your on your way, but to fully understand this subject we need to put it into context.

The Details

Lets take the G major scale as an example. G, A, B, C, D, E, F#. If we take the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes from that scale we would have G, B, and D. Now we can play them together on the fretboard and have a nice sounding Gmaj chord. But we are only using three strings at the most. To really get a nice full sound we can repeat these notes on higher strings. Since there are D, G, and B strings on the guitar we can play these strings open and they will fit into the chord nicely. The more correct notes you an play at once the better and fuller the chord will sound. If you are using distortion it may be better to use less notes, sometimes more strings can just make distortion sound muddy and nasty.

Constructing other Chords

To construct other chords take the scale that pairs up with the chord you want to make and take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the scale and play them together. Remember that you may have to move the 3rd note to another string to make it playable. If you want to fill out the sound try to figure out were you can play those same notes other places on the fretboard at the same time.

Like scale chords are moveable as well. Barre chords are the easiest chord to move around the fretboard. Take the major barre chord pattern and move it up and down the neck to make new chords. Chords with open strings in them are a little harder to move up and down because of the weird shapes of the open chords.

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