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Category Archives: Piano

Piano, let’s learn to play a piece (part 2)

How can we read the pitch of the notes?

In today’s lesson we will see more depth our piano piece!
We will try to understand how to read notes on the sheet music before playing them on the piano.

As playing is often difficult, it is better, before sitting at the piano, to know exactly which notes to play. In this way we learn where to place the beats which are the basis of reading notes. Once we have placed the beats, it is very easy (thanks to what we learnt in the music reading lesson) to know how to read the notes with their correct duration.

Since to play our music piece we need to know the pitch of the notes, we will learn to read the same notes in treble clef, which are normally used to indicate the notes played by the right hand.

So after today’s lesson, you will have learnt something very important in order to play many music pieces at the piano.

Preview of this lesson:

Learning material of this lesson

5 videos	38 mins
Intro	3m 22s
1. The second step of our study method: simplify as much as possible the sheet music	3m 17s
2. How to place the beats	11m 51s
3. We determine the exact duration of the notes	10m 13
4. How to learn the exact pitch of the notes in treble clef.	10m 27s

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Reading notes: are you sure that you know quavers and semiquavers?

Quavers and semiquavers

Do you know the meaning of quaver? Do you know exactly what semiquavers are and how they are represented graphically?
They are two notes that need to be known perfectly in order to read music notes with their correct duration.

Today I will explain why quavers and semiquavers are introduced and how they are used. We will learn how to read these notes in a bar.
So after today’s lesson you will be able to recognize the principal symbols that express the duration of a sound, essential in learning to read a piano sheet music or of any other instrument.

In order to put into practice what we have learnt so far in these lessons, we will do many exercises by combining notes of different duration. Thanks to the new interactive didactic system, you will be able to practise on your own and later check your answers.

Just like a real lesson!

Preview of this video lesson

Learning material of this lesson

5 videos	35 mins
Introduction	2m 35s
1. What are quavers and how to read them	9m 54s
2. What are semiquavers and how to read them	8m 27s
3. Practice pt.1	8m 10s
4. Practice pt.2	7m 09s
+1 pdf file

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The first exercise to start developing your hands independence

Start developing your hands independence

Today we are going to introduce a very important exercise to start developing your hands independence.

As you see, it will be very easy, since our starting point is the first essential exercise we learned in the previous lessons.

So, in this way, thanks to some variations, we’ll obtain some new versions of the exercise, allowing you to start developing your hands independence.

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Learning material of this lesson

2 videos	13 mins
1. Introduction	2m 29s
2. The exercise to start developing your hands independence	10m 52s

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Piano, let’s learn to play a piece (part 1)

How to play a piece at the piano

Today we start the journey that will finally take us to play the first piece at the piano!
As I have already told you in the presentation of this lesson cycle, this is only one of the many things you’ll be learning.

The first thing we will focus on today will be studying the sheet music of the piece we want to play quite deeply.
A sheet music indeed contains a lot of info that are essential to play the piece in the best of ways.
First off we must understand how to read the notes with their correct duration and pitch.
And then we must know the meaning of all the symbols that the sheet music holds.

How to read the sheet music

After the first video, then, in which I will explain the intricacies of how this lesson cycle will be carried out, we will step into the music and we will learn to read the sheet music so that we understand every symbol and sign that it holds.
We will also be seeing the first of the study method that I will be teaching in these video lessons that will also come useful when trying to play any other song in the future.
It doesn’t end here!

An ineractive learning method

In fact, starting today, we will use a new teaching and learning method to make these lessons even more interactive: thanks to this new method you’ll be able to play the keyboard or the piano during the video lesson, so that you can play live what I’ll be showing you from time to time.
Before saying goodbye, let me remind you that you can find the sheet music of the piece which we will study in a pdf format.

To better understand this and the following lessons I recommend you watch this lesson first:

The duration of sound: the bar and its’ beats, the first notes, rests

Learning material of this lesson

4 videos	37 mins
1. How to learn to play a piece at the piano. Introduction to the video lessons	9m 54s
2. The first step of our study method: analyzing the sheet music	9m 56s
3. How to read the dynamics	8m 49s
4. Slurs and fingering	7m 54s
+ 1 pdf files

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Reading notes, today I’ll be explaining the first essential concepts you must know

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Reading notes

One word you probably heard uttered hundreds of times is rhythm.
But what is rhythm exactly?
Rhythm is that aspect of music that deals with the duration of sound through time.

The duration of sound is the first property of sound that we want to depict graphically.
This is the first thing we have to learn to understand how to read and write music.
In today’s lesson, starting from a series of intuitive and common concepts, we will be able to understand how to represent the various sounds and their duration through time.

How can we graphically respresent the silence?

And it won’t end there: music is also made up of silence, the alternating presence of silence and sound.
But since silence has a duration too, we have to understand how it can be graphically depicted.

After today’s lesson you’ll have seen the basic knowledge necessary to begin reading (and writing) notes, among others;

What a bar is in music, and its’ beats
What notes are and how to distinguish them by their duration
What we mean when talking about crotchet, minime and semibreve
What rests are and how to graphically depict them on paper

But you’ll especially have taken the first step into learning to read music, which is the first step to being able to play it on piano or any other instrument from the music sheet.

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Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	27 mins
1. What does it mean to keep time and what is a bar?	8m 27s
2. The first graphical symbol to represent sound: a quarter note	8m 07s
3. Other notes of different durations and musical rests	10m 39s

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Piano, here is the essential exercise to start playing hands-together

The first exercise to start playing hands-together

Thanks to today’s lesson and the next piano lessons, you will finally be able to start playing by using both hands from the beginning.

In fact, in this lesson I will show you in a very clear way the exercise that forms the basic of all piano technique: this exercise will let you learn, through practice, the shift of weight between one finger and the other, using both hands at the same time.

Thanks to today’s video lessons and the exercise shown within you’ll be able to;

Put into practice what you’ve learned up to today, finally playing the piano or keyboard.
Get the hands used to the weight shifts between one finger and the other (a technique essential to the playing of a succession of notes)
Develop a perfect coordination between the two hands from the start, since the exercise is done “hands-together”. (This is expecially important if up to now you have been playing with the right hand more than with the left hand, and you feel the latter to be weaker, this exercise will help you equalize the two hands’ technique)
Learn how to keep a steady tempo from the start, without picking up the pace or slowing down (tank to the way the exercise is carried out)

My advice is to do this exercise as often as possible, even for a few minutes every day.

Consistency and regular practice are fundamentals to developing any kind of musical technique: you’ll see that if you follow my advice, in a short time your hands will be set in the right position and ready to play the first songs at the piano.

And this will be an enormous satisfaction!

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	31 mins
1. Two preparatory exercises	10m 24s
2. …the real exercise, finally!	12m 43s
3. Let’s make the exercise wholesome by adding all combinations	8m 00s

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Here is the key to learn to read musical notes

How to read musical notes

Today we start our path into the world of reading musical notes.
If you will follow the path where I will lead you, musical writing will not appear as obscure as it probably was for you up to now.

To try to progressively under stand these concepts, we will try to put ourselves into the shoes of those who listen to music and want to find a musical aplhabet to represent it graphically.

With the videos that follow you will learn some fundamental concepts that will allow you to learn to read musical notes.

Learning material of this lesson

2 videos	11 mins
1. How to graphically represent music	4m 13s
2. The properties of sound	7m 04s

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Piano, how to play a succession of notes using all the fingers

How to play a melody

Imagine sitting at your piano and wanting to play a melody using all of your five fingers.

Can you do that?

Do you know the correct technique that allows you to play, for example, a succession of notes with multiple fingers?

Today we will be approaching this issue, but we will take it through some steps; in fact, before reaching the succession of multiple notes, you’ll learn how to correctly lower a key of the piano with a single finger, which will have to be able to sustain the weight of your arm.

And before that, we will discuss how the various fingers are shown in the musical sheets.

At the end of this lesson you will have learned three very important things;

what is the “fingering” for piano
How to play a single note using the weight of your limbs
how to play a succession of notes using the whole array of five fingers

If you haven’t seen them yet, for a better comprehension of the current lesson I suggest watching the following lessons before undertaking this one:

Piano, give me half an hour and I’ll explain the correct position of the hands
Piano, paying attention at how you sit down to play

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	18 mins
1. The fingering	3m 30s
2. Playing single notes	5m 53s
3. Playing a succession of notes	8m 04s

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With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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Piano, paying attention to how you sit down to play

How do we sit to play the piano?

This is an often overlooked question, of which we sometimes don’t understand the importance.
Coupled with the correct hand technique, the posture you use when sitting is extremely important to develop a correct technique. In fact, only if you’re sitting down correctly can you use the weight of the arms to your advantage, along with the weight of the wrists and hands so that you can lower the piano keys, without having to perform useless and frankly dangerous muscular movements.
And more than anything, by learning to sit in the correct way, you will avoid developping tensions in your joints and muscles, that could later bother you.

But which are the aspects we have to look into to understand how to sit properly at the piano?

Let’s see them together:

On which part of the stool you should sit
The height of the stool
Distance from the piano
The position of the legs

In the next videos we will accurately examine these aspects and we will study an exercise that will allow you to put into practice what we have learned up to this point, regarding the hand position, while also sitting in the correct way at the piano.

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	10 mins
1. Where to sit, the height of the stool and the distance from the piano	5m 46s
2. The position of the legs	1m 19s
3. A simple exercise to put in practice what we’ve learnt today	2m 45s

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Piano, I will explain the correct hand position: only in half an hour

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The correct piano technique

Do you want to learn the correct position and setting of the hands to play the piano?
Today we are beginning a series of videolessons during which I will try to help you learn the correct piano technique which will allow you to play songs of various degrees of difficulty.

Let’s develop the correct position of the hands from the beginning

Thanks to the routines and exercises I will show you during the course, you’ll be able to learn to keep your hands on the keyboard but most importantly you will not risk learning and developing an incorrect position which would be difficult to correct later on in your studies.
First off you will see and realize that playing the piano does not mean “pushing” the keys, by exerting a muscular force.
That’s because to lower the keys you will only be using the weight of your arms.
You will see how in the correct piano technique the muscles at work are a very small number.

For the time being, I don’t want to give too many spoilers … you’ll find everything in the videos on this page!

Learning material of this lesson

5 videos	26 mins
Intro	4m 31s
1. Why learn the correct technique on a table	1m 54s
2. The correct hand position	6m 48s
3. The position of the hands from different video shots	3m 56s
4. Two preparatory exercises	8m 08s

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With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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