How to Play Piano – Number One Tip

by Linea on March 19, 2011

Photo by Kari'sKlicksHi! I’m Linea, and welcome to my piano information blog. I’ve been playing piano since I was eight years old and I only grow to love it more every year. If you want to learn to play piano, or you’re in the process of it right now, you’re in the right place.

If you’re looking for easy songs to play on piano, try my Easy Songs to Play on Piano category. I’ll be adding posts every so often with new songs and types of songs that are fun and easy to play

If you’re looking for reviews of piano software like Rocket Piano, here are my Piano Course Reviews. This, too, is going to get updates. Or you can go straight to my Rocket Piano Review.

My Number One Tip

Learning the piano is a great experience at any age. You might think you’re too old, or not old enough, that you don’t have the time or the talent. The truth is, though, that anyone can learn–if they want it bad enough.

You know what you have to have to learn to play, more than anything else? Sure, you need a piano or keyboard to practice on, someone to teach you (or a book or program to teach yourself), and easy-going neighbors who won’t complain about the noise. But the number one thing, NUMERO UNO, really the ONLY thing you HAVE to have to succeed…is wanting it.

Wanting it means making the time, a little each day, to work on your skills, even if that just means sitting down and playing for a few minutes. Wanting it means not giving up and smashing your piano in the beginning when everything seems hard and impossible and your fingers stumble over each other like drunken hot dogs (it gets better, I promise!).

Wanting it means no more sitting on your duff, thinking about how nice it would be to be able to slide onto that bench and play cool songs to impress your friends, or just to enjoy the music, but actually DOING SOMETHING TODAY, RIGHT NOW, RIGHT THIS SECOND, to start you on the path to success.

Support from other people is great too. A good program and teaching plan to keep you learning and improving every day is amazing. But first and most importantly, it depends on you and how much you want it.

All the information I’ve compiled here is meant to help other piano players on their journey. It never really ends, but that’s the good thing. You can click the links in the sidebar, click the blog categories, or just wander around and see what’s here.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Easy Songs to Play on Piano – Coldplay The Scientist

by Linea on August 26, 2011

Coldplay is one of the most popular pop-rock bands of recent years. You may have heard their songs on the radio or TV or even heard one of your friends singing or humming them. They are also one of the bands that likes to play piano!

Here’s a piano cover of one of their songs, The Scientist. The pianist is quite skilled and the video is pretty high quality. It’s good example of the fun you can have playing popular songs on the piano.

This song, The Scientist, is pretty easy to play on piano. The hands don’t move very much, and the song is mostly based on chords. The chords tend to stay in first position, too, which is easier than chords going into second and third position a lot. This pianist is also good at working the melody into the chords, which is a little tricky, but definitely possible even playing by ear if you practice a bit.

If you can’t quite figure this song out by ear yet, there are also a couple of books you can try. The Best of Coldplay for Easy Piano: Updated Edition has simple arrangements of many popular Coldplay songs, including The Scientist, Fix You, Yellow, Clocks, and others. If you’re up for something a little more complicated, Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head has the official sheet music for the album that includes The Scientist.

This book includes the actual music played by the band rather than a simplified score, so it will have parts for all the instruments and may be a bit difficult for beginners to sort through, at least at first. Keep practicing and I’m sure you’ll get it!

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Easy Songs to Play on Piano – Pink Panther by Henry Mancini

by Linea on August 10, 2011

Some songs for the piano sound very difficult but actually are rather easy once you learn a few techniques. One of these is The Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini. It’s not quite a song for beginners, but you really don’t have to be incredibly advanced to learn it, either. It’s a good piece for intermediate pianists.

This guy throws in some fancy stuff while he plays and makes a few bobbles here and there, but the sheet music you can get for this song will be a little more straight-forward.

This song is really a LOT of fun to play. I memorized it in high school and still play it often. It’s quite good for impressing random passersby with your amazing skills!

I learned with this music right here: The Pink Panther. This version is easy to read and learn. Have fun with your cool jazz panther self!

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Rocket Piano Review – Piano Lessons Online or at Home

by Linea on August 3, 2011

The fact that you’ve found this blog at all tells me that you’re probably interested in learning to play piano, or you’re doing it right now. (Psst, tiny secret… You never really stop learning. And that’s a good thing.) Unless you’re a music prodigy, you probably need some tools and help to get you on your way, and you’re looking for the best system to launch or accelerate your learning. Really, I should say “even if you’re a music prodigy,” because prodigies like learning too. Whether you’re a beginner or have been playing piano for years, there’s always something new around the corner, which is one reason this hobby is so fun and exciting.

So what is Rocket Piano, and how can it help? In this review, I’ll go over just what this program is and what it can do for you, what some other people have said about it, and where you can get it and get started on your journey.

 

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How to Play Piano Chords – Another Comedy Song

by Linea on July 29, 2011

Early in this blog, I posted about how a lot of songs use the same three chords, with a video from a comedian playing the chords from Pachelbel’s Canon in D and singing a huge number of songs along with it.

Here’s another video, with even more songs. It’s pretty amazing!

These explain, tongue-in-the-cheek, how to write a block-busting pop song and become rich and famous. Just use four chords!

It’s a lot of fun to play around with chords on the piano and see what songs you can sing along with it, or make up as you go along. The more you work with it, the more you practice, the more you will build your skills as a musician. Have fun learning with your piano!

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Easy Songs to Play on Piano – Pop Songs

by Linea on March 23, 2011

A lot of popular songs you’ll hear on the radio are actually surprisingly easy to play on piano. (And just because they weren’t written for piano doesn’t mean you can’t play them on piano.) Good arrangers can transpose many of your favorite popular songs so that they both sound good and are easy to play.

Here’s an arrangement of “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day arranged by Dan Coates. I’ve played many arrangements from Dan Coates over the years and can personally recommend him. You can hear the quality in this video, too.

That particular arrangement was sold in Top 50 Easy Piano Hits, which sadly appears to be out of print now. If you want a copy, I’d snatch it up quick from those who are still selling one.

You can find other popular songs arranged by Dan Coates in 10 for 10 Sheet Music Modern Rock: Easy Piano Solos (10 for 0 Sheet Music) and The Ultimate Pop Sheet Music Collection (Easy Piano Edition). These books include songs by The Eagles, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Savage Garden, Faith Hill, Katy Perry, Plain White Ts, Nickelback, and the list goes on and on. Having access to songs on your level of difficulty that you already know and want to play makes the process of learning to play piano a whole lot easier and more interesting, and there’s absolutely no reason to feel that these simpler arrangements are somehow worth less than the complicated versions. They’ll have worth to you where you are, and that’s what’s important.

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Easy Songs to Play on Piano – Gymnopedie No. 1 by Erik Satie

by Linea on March 22, 2011

Once you get to the appropriate level, this song is super easy to play. I was able to play it right away just sight-reading with very few mistakes. And it sounds absolutely fantastic.

One reason it sounds so amazing is because it’s not built on the usual harmonic structures that we find in western music. Erik Satie was experimenting with a new kind of sound, one that still hasn’t really caught on even today. So even now, it still sounds fresh and interesting and different. For a piano player who’s bored with the usual stuff, that’s all good.

The different sound Satie used here is called modal harmonies, with inclinations on the pentatonic scale. It’s actually not “new” so much as it is really, really old… Modes are what the Greeks called different kinds of scales and sounds. What we now call major and minor scales were once called the Ionian mode and the Aeolian mode.

Satie based the Gymnopedies on different modes altogether, especially the Dorian mode. You can hear what the Dorian mode sounds like by playing from E to E on the piano, playing only the white keys. This is not what the usual scales sound like.

As you keep learning how to play piano, you will discover many interesting piano pieces like this. Some of them will even be easy to play, and that’s just bonus, if you ask me.

You can buy Gymnopedie No. 1 * Satie * Masterpiece Edition at this link for just under four dollars, which is well worth it in my opinion. It’s one of the loveliest and most relaxing pieces of music you’ll ever find that’s also quite easy to play.

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Awesome Piano Music – Rondo alla Turca

by Linea on March 21, 2011

This is the coolest song for piano that I know. Well, it’s the coolest one that I know how to play–there are others out there that are even more cool.

It’s by Mozart, and it’s called Rondo all Turca, or the Turkish March. Mozart wrote it to imitate the sound of janissary bands, janissaries being Turkish infantry units, and it really has an uplifting, triumphant, military sound to it.

I cannot play it even close to as well as this man does.

I do have a goal, though, to one day be able to play it this well. It’s one of the most awesome pieces of piano music in my collection, and I’d love to be able to do it justice.

No matter where you are in your journey toward learning how to play piano, it’s important to have goals. You goal could be to play hymns for your church someday, or write a song for your girlfriend, or be able to play an awesome song like the Turkish March. Long-term goals keep your eyes on the prize and motivate you to keep going when the going gets tough.

Of course, short-term goals aren’t a bad thing, either. Even if that just means getting through the next practice session! Whatever it takes, keep it up and you can make it.

You can find sheet music for Rondo Alla Turca * Masterpiece Edition for just under four dollars at Amazon. That edition has only a single song, but you can also buy it in collections. This piece is enduringly popular, and it’s not hard to see why.

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Fun Piano Music – The Clown by Kabalevsky

by Linea on March 20, 2011

No matter where you are in your journey to becoming a piano master, it’s important to have fun with where you are. Goals are great, but if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing right now, it will be hard to keep the motivation. Fortunately, the world of piano music is large and broad, so you should be able to find fun music at every level.

When I was still a beginning piano student, having only played for a few years, one of my favorite pieces was The Clown by Kabalevsky. It was simple enough for me to learn, but it had such a bouncy, funny, cheerful sound that I loved playing it very much. Playing it felt like a true accomplishment, and I loved showing off.

The problem with having a certain piece of music that you love playing is that you can easily overdo it. If you only play your favorite pieces, you’ll get stuck and never learn anything new. Look ahead – see what’s on the horizon that might become your next favorite song. They’re always out there. Learning how to play the piano can be fun at every level, I promise.

Here’s someone having fun playing The Clown. Can you see why I loved it?

Also, the clicking sound you hear throughout the video… That’s why I keep my fingernails trimmed short. :)

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How to Play Piano Chords – Pachelbel’s Canon in D

by Linea on March 20, 2011

If you read my article How to Play Piano Chords – Building Blocks of Music, you read about how most songs in western culture are built on basic major and minor chords. You might have even thought about some songs that had always sounded similar and to you and had a bit of an “A-ha!” moment. “Oh, so that’s why they always sounded alike to me!”

Each key of music has certain chords that just sound good to us in western culture. They’re called primary chords. And over the years and centuries, musicians and composers have formed certain series of the chords, called progressions, that turn out to be popular and get passed down from generation to generation. Everyone hears them, everyone is used to them, and no one thinks about it.

If you’re at all interested in music theory, or what makes music tick, you’ll enjoy looking at the songs that have been written through the years that have the same chord progression. People can do awesome, creative variations on the same basic building blocks, and people have done that over and over and over again.

Or, if you’re a comedian with an ear for hearing this stuff all over, it might just be really, really annoying. :D

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Piano Fun – Sound Effects

March 19, 2011

Here’s a guy just really having fun with his piano. He plays sound effects from a windows computer and from video games. Can you recognize them all? When you start to get a little burnt out with learning how to play piano, it’s important to remember that this is FUN. Try pausing to pick out [...]

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