Fine Tune Your Piano Playing to a New Level
With a Great Sound
The piano is an instrument which is literally classified as a percussion instrument. Hammers, albeit soft ones, are, after all, responsiblefor making the sounds when they hit the strings
Nevertheless I believe it can and should be played in a manner which makes us forget that classification.
Most of us grew up with an upright piano where we considered ourselves lucky if all the notes worked when we played them. No question of employing the subtleties
But now even if you cannot afford a glossy black Steinway grand piano you have the option of having a relatively inexpensive digital piano with hammers and action inside so that you can play just as musically, like a concert pianist.
The picture above, incidentally, is of a Roland digital grand piano!
Here are hints and tips for improving your sound, your technique and add painlessly to your knowledge of how music works.
How to practise
Yes, practice makes perfect, but only if you practise well with these hints. Because it is very possible to practise ineffectually or to play a tune badly! Or confuse yourself by playing it differently every time!
How to be Effortlessly Confident
And of course make your playing even better. With absolutely no rapping of knuckles if you play wrong notes! (And what to do if you do play a wrong note!)
But My Hands Are Too Small
I think most people complain that their hands are two small to play the piano reallhy well. I myself can only just manage to stretch an octave and I thought this for a while.
Help with Reading Music
Some vital reminders to keep you in charge and analysing the music to help you recognise and play it correctly
Finding your key Signatures
Remembering what sharps and flats belong in all the different keys. Usually referred to as the circle of keys but possoibly also a staircase.
Musical Intervals
Nothing to do with when to go for a drink or ice-cream, simply the term for the exact distance between the notes you play
Learn How to Make Chords
.Chords and chordd names are not only important to guitarists, whenever two or more notes are played simultaneously if you are able to identify them it makes things easier
Go On down page to more advanced ideas
READING MUSIC HELP
- Always Read ahead , there is never a time when you did not need to
- Place your hands where they will be next including on the right black notes for the key signature
- Read by interval, it is faster than always identifying exact notes
- Identify chords appearing in the left hand and in the right hand
- The way scales work
- How key signatures work
- The circle of keys may be seen as the staircase of keys for clarity
- Diagrams of half scales and using them to understand scales
- Watchout for the "leading note"
- Play to find your correct scales
- How to find Minor scales
- Built of 3rds piled up
- Mainly Related to the key signature
- Start with simple Root position
- Major chord major 3rd under minor
- Minor is minor 3rd under major 3rd
- 7ths 9ths are more 3rds put on top
- Suspended 4ths and passing notes and chords
Some More advanced Ideas
Scale and Arpeggio Fingerings
You can of course go to the conventional sources for these but you will probably have to learn every scale separately. Here I go behind the scenes of scale fingerings and WHY they need to be the ones I suggest. You can for example learn just one fingering for scales F right up to B natural. Sorted!
With arpeggios the wide spacing feels a bit dangerous, but a single octave can be done inside one hand and each octave covered needs only one "finger crossing" new position.
Play Well in 3rds and 6ths (and Octaves)
You can play these to match the key you are in, or chromatically or indeed use one to transpose or temporarily suggest a different key. As indeed with chords. It is also possible to mix 3rds and 6ths, and from 6ths easily go to 3rds which are entirely or partly inside them.
With octaves you may think you have to use the slightly insecure moving the whole hand with 1 and 5 but with quite average size hands you may be able to do two or three adjoining notes in octaves with safer fingering.
Your basic technique guidelines
Relaxation, letting gravity do most of the work and being in the right place at (and before!) the right time is a key. Forced playing can prevent proceed smoothly.
Then we have hand shape, use of arm weight and varying your technique and attack for a musical result of course. And your arm weight can still be on your finger across your arm even if at an angle at top or bottom of the keyboard.
Moving around the keyboard easily
Conventionally it is assumed that one crosses the thumb behind the fingers till it is in position to take over again in a scale or arpeggio passage. I myself used to advise pupils to have the thumb follow behind the finger that was playing so that it was there to take over. But doing this literally can injure delicate slightly arthritis prone fingers and as you speed up you can actually follow the whole arm along with the note playing finger always in a directt line with the arm.
With wider spacesyou can remember what a particular position felt like to go back with muscle memory. If you have come up an arpeggio for example you can easily replace them back where they have just been
Go on down to left hand playing ideas
Left hand ideas
Boogie Bass
This can be momentarily Incorporated where useful in a left hand part if you want to give a strong outlining of the chord in a bass part. To avoid injury do not overdo and operate in a relaxed manner.
Where an alternate thumb motion is indicated you can try it without first then casually add teh thumb. I have also used this method to free up Alberti Bass, CECE BFDF being transmuted easily with the thumb into CGEG CGEG BGFG DGFG and this can be used to "roll " the chord with pedal to avoid a baroque or Mozartish sound.
Interrupted arpeggios
Fast Arpeggios up can sometimes get too far too fast and hit the area you are trying to play right hand in. You can play right hand in a higher octave if you wish, or send it straight the arpeggio back down again but you can also come up gradually in steps and/or put a bit of Alberti bass in
Left hand tenths
Tenths, eg G to high B an octave plus away, make a deep sonorous sound, but particularly when the D in between is added. Which makes it accerssible and smoother to play, with the help of the pedal or retracing its steps back downwards. Either in spreaad chords or arpeggios with the possibility to go back down and join up with a nearby low note to make a bass line.
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