I’m not very good at the piano but I can sort of half-ass it. I have a strong background in music (bass, guitar, banjo, saxophone), know my chords and a decent amount of theory. Having recently inhereted a decent keyboard, I’m going to dedicate myself to becoming a fairly fluent pianist. Or I’m hoping to, at least. That’s where you come in.
Besides “practice, practice, practice” (only because it’s a given), do any pianists here have any tips? How can I improve the quickest? Are there any programs out there you’d recommend? Anything will help.
(as an aside: my major problem right now is the inability to place different rhythms/melodies with either hand. And sight reading.)
I can play near about anything, but because I don’t practice, my sight to fingers is s-l-o-w. I’m old school trained, so I recommend anything by Schumann. Start with C then move to G than anything with oddly placed sharps or flats. When you’re studying C, you should also know your timing. Your previous musical work should carry over, but IME, except for maybe the guitar (maybe violin), the piano can be one monstrously dense instrument to learn. Once you can read chords on sight, playing should be relatively easy by sight as well. Oh, and take it slow, and spead up things when you can really read the music.
I’m in love with the C scale. I should probably move on to the black keys soon.
I exaggerate…barely. But that’s a great idea. I think I need to be very methodical about this. I usually more or less jump into an instrument with little thought to it’s intricacies & methods, essentially just feeling my way through it, but the piano is, well The Piano. I need to get back to the boring scale excercises. A good point.
I’m sorry: “RCM” is lost on me. And I’m a bit…underfunded to hire a teacher. I’m hoping prior musical experience & the fact that I’ve played some instrument nearly every day for 15 years will allow me to pick it up without instruction. Best luck quasimodal.
Though at least try to befriend someone who knows the instrument. Instruments have so many quirks it can be devastating to learn you practiced a concept the wrong way and then have to spend time undoing the damage.
First, find a book that shows the scales and chords with fingering 1-2-3-4-5 to show you which fingers to put where. It’s very tempting for inexperienced pianists to use fingers 2-3-4 instead of 1-3-5 to form chords and triads — it works, but only for very simple chord constructions, and sooner or later you’re going to run into problems.
(I also note a lot of beginning piano players to avoid using their weaker finger, the pinky, but developing it is quite important.)
Spend some time practicing reading piano by sight without looking.
Definitely work your off (left?) hand, even though it’ll be awkward and slow at first.
Work your way into the more difficult keys gradually through the Circle of Fifths.
0 sharps or flats - C major, A minor
1 sharp - G major, E minor — 1 flat - F major, D minor
2 sharps - D major, B minor — 2 flats - Bb major, G minor
3 sharps - A major, F# minor — 3 flats - Eb major, C minor
4 sharps - E major, C# minor — 4 flats - Ab major, F minor
5 sharps - B major, G# minor — 5 flats - Db major, Bb minor
6 sharps - F# major, D# minor — 6 flats - Gb major, Eb minor
Scales are boring as hell, but learning to do them quickly and nimbly will help your fingers learn — you’re not just teaching yourself which keys to play, but educating your muscles so they remember how far apart each key is. Importantly, it will also teach you how to tuck your right thumb behind your other fingers as you go up, and how to cross your fingers over your right thumb as you go down. Valuable exercise.
You might try picking up a good set of exercise books. I personally prefer the three volume series by Hanon, which includes fingering exercises (for learning how to glide around on the keyboard) and scales, arpeggios, chord progressions, chromatic thirds, fourths and sixths, etc.
Oh, and since you are a musician already, and less likely to insult ears with dumb sounding “music” when left to your own devices, I recommend just playing around on the piano. It’s like the soccer player who is just goofing around with the ball when nothing else is going on.
I will also say that fingering is important at the beginning. I have seen amateurs who play without using their thumbs - an extreme example of what can happen with self-teaching.
When you practice try this:
play the passage twice with right hand only at about 75% of tempo and use a metronome.
ditto two times on the left hand only.
play both hands together very slowly without the metronome.
don’t make mistakes. I’m not being facetious: it’s important to play slowly and carefully, slowing building speed. If you find yourself losing control and making mistakes, slow down and regroup. Sloppy playing at too fast a tempo is disastrous - it will take years to recover if you ever do because your fingers are “learning” the mistakes.
On fingering, watch out for your thumbs on black notes. Sometimes a passage or chord is better played with thumb-on-black, but most of the time it’s actually making things harder for yourself, since crossing over the thumb is much more difficult.
In other words, if you find yourself fingering thumb-on-black, spend a bit of time checking that you can’t do it with your thumb either still back on the white notes or not playing anything. If there’s no way - say, playing a four- or five- note chord that starts on a black note - then fair enough.
I’m a mostly self-taught pianist, playing mostly jazz, and learning that from the great British jazz pianist Brian Lemon made my playing much easier and fluid.
I was on a master class of his, and I’d commented how professional pianists can play intricate passages with the the palms of their hands almost always parallel to the keyboard and oriented more or less perpendicularly. By contrast, my palms and wrists were all over the place. He watched me play and gave me the advice above, which helped enormously.
