Music Exams: Preparing for Success

The Perils of the Classical-Only Music Education

How To Play Piano - Learn to Play Music With Lessons For Beginners - 2

I guess every body at some time in their life thinks about how cool it would be to play the piano. Well it is cool and you can, this article is the second of seven, they will help and give you to a firm grounding to go on and teach yourself how to play. If you remember your school days when you had music or piano lessons the one thing you probably recall, my guess is that FACE represents the names of the notes in the spaces of a line of music; and Every Good Boy Deserves Favour represents the notes on the five lines of the piece of music. This is so, if you read from the bottom upwards.

But it does not stop there; the notes carry on down to the bass lines, which also have five lines and four spaces. The bass line and the treble lines are separated by one imaginary line. There used to be a line many eons ago but nowadays it is omitted, but the note that this missing line represented still exists it is C, usually called middle C; therefore the notes either side of this imaginary line also still exist and they are B, and D,

This leaves us with the bass lines G, B, D, F, A, and our bass leger line spaces A, C, E, G, Now these sets of notes also have a memory aid, probably not known as well as the others, they are for the spaces of the bass "All Cows Eat Grass" for A, C, E, G, and for the lines of the bass, "Grizzly Bears Don't Fear Anything" first letters of which represent G, B, D, F, A, Like the treble lines these are read from the bottom upwards.

You can now see that if you start at the bottom of the base lines from G, alphabetically obviously G, to G, to G, and onwards you can read right to the top of the treble lines to F, Naturally as you will have seen with more complicated music scores you can go higher and lower with the use of leger lines, these are a little line added to the note, through it, above or below it.

With that I should tell you in case you are a complete beginner that the left hand will play Bass and the right hand will play treble, which should be obvious as soon as you sit down at the piano, this is also why it is important to have a reference point " middle C," Left of middle C, left hand, Right of middle C, right hand although there will be times when you cross over. This note is usually slightly left of centre of your keyboard.

To play the piano with both hands is quite an achievement for the beginner but not that difficult, play and practice slowly, although I say practice slowly you try to keep your rhythm and beat, for instance if you are playing a song and you know the words, if you sing them slowly and deliberately, you can play along and still keep your rhythm, it also helps if you tap your right foot to help with your timing.

I would like to mention here again for the beginners sake, when you take piano lessons you will need to know what numbers are used for your fingers, simple enough, start with the thumb as One the index finger as two the middle finger as three, the ring finger as four and the little finger is five, that is the same for both hands. Ok, techno wise you should be in good order to start your lessons.

Next question, should you go online or offline for your lessons, what do you go for? My own view is, that it would be great to have a local tutor that you could call on day or night whenever you had a problem or a thought that you needed to get clear in your head. But being practical that's not going to happen, unless you live with your tutor. Which usually leaves you pondering until your next booked lesson? Whereas with online lessons you will have a well programmed course, videos, e books and help anytime from wherever you are at home or on holiday, anywhere where there is a computer. So in my opinion, I recommend buying a course of lessons online, another point is that you also learn at your own pace, no pressure, no set time limit, you choose your own pace. Make it fun.

My name is Ken Aindow I am, like you, a budding keyboard player, and singer LoL. If you would like to see more and progress in a similar style, read my other articles to and learn how to Teach Yourself Piano, you will find an amazingly easy, quick and extremely enjoyable method. In fact it's notably called, The Ingenious New Way to Learn Piano and Keyboard. I have it and I recommend it highly. See you in my next article.

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Music Piano Theory: Major Piano Scales

Before learning the major scales or any scales for that matter, it's important that you have a basic understanding of what "half steps" and "whole steps" are. I don't know about you, but I'm a huge fan of simplicity. So, simply put, whole steps SKIP a key and half step DON'T. For example, if you started on C and went to D, that would be a Whole Step because you skipped a key (C# / Db). Now if you started on C and went to the black key C# / Db that would be a half step because you DIDN'T skip and keys. So, again, Whole Steps= Skip a key. Half Steps= No Key Skip.

Now it's your turn. If you start on E and go to F...is that a whole step or a half step? If you said half step then you nailed it. Why is a half step? Well you know that there was no note that was skipped! Well done.

Now that you know how to find a whole and half step, you can now play a major scale. The formula for any major scale is R W W H W W W H (Root, Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half). The root is the first note that you're starting on. So if we started on C and wanted to play a major scale using the formula above, it would look something like this: C (root), D (whole), E (whole), F (half), G (whole), A (whole), B (whole), C (half). Ta-da!! You can use this formula for any key you pick. Now, try it. Just pick a random key and use this formula.

Now that you have the formula down, lets focus on how to play the Major scale smoothly so you can play it fast without tripping over your fingers. So, assuming you have five fingers on your right hand and not six, your fingers are going to be coded as follows: Thumb=1, Pointer=2, Middle=3, Ring=4, Pinky=5. This will apply to BOTH hands. When you're going from E to F, you'll need to tuck your thumb (1) under your middle finger (3) to make it a smooth transition. There we go! Go ahead and bust out this formula with the right fingers for both the RIGHT HAND and the LEFT HAND. You'll be speedy in no time!

R W W H W W W H

RH 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5

LH 5 4 3 2 1 3 2 1

Until Next Time,

Dale Jessee

What The Heck Is A Music Sequencer? Is That How You Make Beats?

Confusing as heck eh?

I know it's hard to explain easily so let's do it like this. Most beat makers start at a 4/4 with 1/16th quantizing default. This means that for every bar of music, the bar is split up into 4 small pieces, and in each of those 4 pieces, there are 4 slots open to drop sounds into on the grid.

So one bar has room for 16 sounds (4/4 at 1/16th) that are played in 'sequence' one after the next along a time line. If you filled up all 16 slots you'd simply have a machine gun sounding repetition. If you placed a sound on every fourth slot, you'd get a house music thump (assuming you used a drum sound)...

Now picture one of these 'bars' sitting on a stack of 16 layers of bars in an interface where you control each layer and bar, and they all overlap each other.

So each layer has its own 16 slots per bar - and each layer has its own sounds. One layer can be a kick drum, and the next layer can be a snare or a highhat.

Now imagine if on each of those 16 layers you can open up a separate panel where you get 10 more layers for the bar, this is commonly known as a drum kit, where there are a collection of 10 (or more/less as it ranges per software) sounds that compliment each other well.

This drum kit is one bar, on one layer, but it has 10 layers within it - so in total you have 16 slots going horizontally (1/16th quantizing), and 10 layers going vertically (10 sounds per kit). That gives you a grid of 160 spots to place sounds, and when you arrange them right, and choose a proper tempo, you can achieve pretty much any music you want with the drum kits.

Now picture the 10 drum sounds being OTHER sounds, not drums but voice effects, alarms, samples, quick scratches, beatbox sounds, etc. You can start to see how versatile this grid pattern can be.

Incase that confused you here's a recap - you have 16 layers in your main interface. On each layer you place a bar, in each bar you have 10 more layers.

The main interface simply acts as a shell for most sequencers, and once you place a bar into any layer, and assign your kit, that's when you open your drum or instrument panel and start to make your patterns.

So technically, if you filled up all 16 layers with drum kits, you have 160 layers to work with. It would sound like MUD if you did this without being smart with your patterns, however that shows you the possibilities of just the drum kit layers.

Sequencers also utilize keyboard simulation, where instead of having a 'kit' with 10 sounds/layers, your 'bar' opens up a keyboard panel and this time you have 16 slots, and 4 octaves to work with.

Mathematically this is huge, and the grid turns into 12 x 4 (12 keys per octave, 4 octaves) = 48 keys x 16 (1/16th quantizing = 16 spots per note) = 768 spots on your grid for ONE bar alone. Again this is with the grid going 16 spots horizontally, and 48 spots vertically now with one note scale per each of the 48 'layers'.

With sequencers you can usually draw in 2 bars at a time, or 4 or 8 or as many as you want, and when you open the panel the grid will look insane and not be easy to work with.

This is why most producers like to work with 1-2 bar chunks at a time and arrange them in interesting patterns for their chorus/verse/chorus2/verse2/bridge/outro/etc.

So the keyboard, unlike the drum panel, triggers the same sound, and scales it up and down the keys, just like a real synth/piano. If you assign instrument sounds or record your own on a C note and import them, you'll also be able to manipulate them on a real piano like scale, including sharps and flats.

This also means you can assign DRUM sounds, not KITS, but individual sounds to your keys. So instead of choosing a 'piano' category, and scrolling through piano sounds until you find one you like, you scroll through a drum kit (as a category) and pick a drum you want to scale up or down the keyboard. This is how the wicked drops and build ups are done, where you hear the snare go crazy building up and dropping in pitch or climbing in pitch until the main beat drops in, otherwise simply known as a 'complex fill'.

When you combine both features together:

You get a 16 layer grid and each layer can be a drum track, OR a keyboard track. You can use the drum sounds on the pads OR on the keyboard to change their pitch. And you can assign keyboard instruments/sounds like pianos and saxes to the drum pads as well.

Basically you can interchange the kits between panels, import your own sounds into EITHER part of most aps, and create your own kits out of drums or instruments or voices or scratches or any samples you want!

WICKED!

The only thing left, and basically what makes or breaks most beat makers and sound sequencers - is the default sound kits that come with your audio workstation. While you can get VST's and you can import your own kits or even buy them, it's pretty much all the same at the end of the day - you have a grid, you have layer types (drum vs keys) and you have sounds to put in that grid.

If you start with amazing samples, the patterns you create won't matter as much it will still sound amazing (within reason), and with wack basic flat sound kits it won't matter what patterns you make or how complex your performances are it will sound flat as heck.

Good kits are well mastered with tweaks and tails and panning so when you combine and overlap a performance of even just a few layers, it sounds beautiful. If you notice, the better beat maker software sequencers usually have amazing default sound libraries.

Having great kits is indeed important, however the sound TYPE is more important. Meaning you must be able to build your patterns and performances AND export them to.WAV first, not.MP3 or anything less than STEREO 44.1.WAV. The same standard studios use when making their beats. From there you have a.wav master and you can convert it into an mp3 or other file type(s).

Now that you understand how the grid/matrix system works with sound sequencers, imagine each layer being able to do more than one bar, imagine 32 bars (a verse).

Or....

Imagine 64 bars, double timed...

Lost?

Ok example - Most hiphop beats are around 90bpm.

If you can't change the quantizing from 1/16th (so 16 spots fit in one bar) to 1/32 (so now it's broken up into 32 note spots), then you can trick the system out by simply making your tempo 180bpm (2 x 90bpm). So your beat will play twice as fast, and you'll have to build twice as slow (meaning you'd draw TWO bars, and consider it one, and now you have 32 spots to fill).

Sequencing isn't a toy, or a game, but damn, it keeps you SHARP!

You're learning math, complex problem solving, tons of tweaks and pattern recognition scenario's, and most importantly you're being creative and working your right brain along with your left without even knowing it.

It's a mix of relaxation type therapy i.e. playing piano at the end of your day, and adding a splash of crossword puzzle like situations - but with sound; that when placed in appropriate code like patterns make BEAUTIFUL music, beats, sound beds, audio-scapes, and more.

You are at it's core, creating vibration combination patterns (sound), that the human ear/mind/soul respond to in ways that.... well that make you want to dance, vibe, lounge, get naughty, sleep, get tranced out to, rock out, drive faster, etc etc.

Music and vibration is how the planet even started but that's for another day...

...Once you get good, the beats and pattern making becomes easy, and you simply start to add your emotion and flare with creative sounds. Or import your own to create blissful like soul healing music, or do what most do and start selling them to artists, studios, and whoever needs audio production done right! It's 'art meets science' in a fun environment. Almost like a game but you're in total control of the stage, the orchestra, and the final cut.

...If you've never tried one or found the bigger tools too difficult to get a grip of - you should check out the new age online and desktop sequencers out there like http://www.cybersequencer.com/ - I think you'll find it much easier to get into, and making your first few beats happens fast. Enjoy!

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Learn Keyboard Keys Fast - Without Reading Music

Anyone can learn keyboard keys fast, without reading music, by knowing a few simple musical structures and practicing just a few minutes each day (NOT hours and hours, unless you want to!).

The word "key" can refer to the physical key on the piano or keyboard, or the key of the song you're playing, but we will address the physical keys in this article.

There's no secret shortcut to learning the keys and note names quickly, but you can speed up the process by keeping in mind just a few simple ideas.

First, the entire piano keyboard is simply a pattern of 12 distinct notes, repeated over and over up and down the keyboard: C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, and B. C#, D#, F#, G# and A# are the same as Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, and Bb, respectively.

Second, as you probably noticed or already knew, the notes are lined up in a repeating pattern using part of the alphabet from A to G: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Most books and piano teachers start off on the white keys, in the key of C major, and the C major scale is C D E F G A B, which seems a bit confusing for some new students. After all, why not put A where C is and start the alphabet at the beginning? The answer is... that's the way it's always been and it's not going to change now!

Third, a note can be made sharp simply by moving it one half step up the keyboard (to the right), to the very next key on the keyboard or piano. That could be a white key or a black key, as long as it's the very next key.

Finally, a note is made flat by moving it one half step down the keyboard (to the left), again to the very next key on the keyboard or piano.

Learning the keyboard or piano keys is now a matter of simple repetition and testing. Call out any letter of the alphabet from A to G, possibly saying "sharp" or "flat" after it, and see how quickly you can get to that note on the piano or keyboard - anywhere on the keyboard is fine, since the key patterns repeat. You can also have a friend help you with this.

Some people also like to make flash cards with a single note name on each card - for example, C#, F, Bb, etc.

Don't try to learn them all at once, in one sitting, or you may get frustrated. In fact, if you reach the point in any practice session where you're getting angry or upset, that means it's time for a break.

The magical part about practicing is that little breaks help you - in fact, they're required if you really want to retain the information. So, practice your keyboard or piano keys (notes) a few minutes today, then maybe later in the day or tomorrow, and in just a few days, you'll be able to play them with lightning speed.

Tips on How to Build a Relationship With Your Music Teacher

It is a teacher's duty to dedicate himself towards the education of all his pupils, without exception. Still, there's something to be said for that extra boost you get from having a strong relationship with your teacher. Maybe it's the extra care or extra time, but it's something extra, however hard it is to quantify. We can all reflect on being at school and having a teacher who made a real difference for us, and frequently it was a teacher with whom we had a strong relationship. There's obviously a personal element to it, but at its core the best relationships between teachers and students relate to the subject matter. The same is true of music teachers, and there's lots of things to keep in mind to ensure you have a most positive experience with your teacher.

The most important element is that you take your studies seriously. Your teacher knows he has a job to do first, and he can't be seen to be friends with someone who is failing or neglecting his studies. You will put him at ease when you show him the progress you make each week, and if this is impossible, that you are working diligently to improve. Little things like showing him how organized your music notes are demonstrate that you care about the work he does. This provides a good platform for a relationship.

For whatever reason, musicians usually have strong senses of humour. Maybe there's some correlation between taking delight in using language skillfully and their strengths in music, but it's frequently the case. Have a couple jokes ready for your teacher. Sharing a laugh with anybody is a sure-fire way to warm relationships, but it's especially time-efficient when you have a half hour or hour segment. It goes without saying it should be a good joke, and if you trust your judgement, making it appropriately bawdry is a quick way to accelerate warmth and increase trust. So long as you're comfortable telling such jokes.

Perhaps you can teach him something about music and increase his musical repertoire. Expand his borders by requesting to learn music he doesn't know. Teacher's get tired of playing the same songs all the time, and showing you listen to obscure music suggests you're more interested in the subject. He'll enjoy knowing this. He'll be grateful if he ends up liking the music also. Many teachers are open minded and enjoy a wide spectrum of music. Don't let one kind of music you know they like convince you they don't like something widely different. And in any case, don't be afraid to put forward the music you love most-that's the reason the lessons are happening in the first place.

Lastly, be punctual with appointments and payments. So long as you stick to these fundamental things the teacher will be able to cope. Most teachers love their work! Just be gracious and studious and there ought to be no problems at all.

Why Every Musician Has to Learn How to Read Music

Let me ask you a question. Do you read music my friend?

And now before you begin to answer my question please let me add that as I know a lot of drummers DON'T read the music!,They say they don't for various reasons, many drummers prefer not to learn how to read. They think that it will take too long time or that it will be really too hard for them. Hey, remember that it is not bad if you don't read music! But you should work on it! You have to teach yourself or work with your teacher to obtain the important skills!

I wanna tell you a short story which happened in my life. I remember the time when computers just appeared in our lives and almost nobody could print fast! But I understood that it can be very useful to print fast and I made myself to practice in printing every day! And after 7 or 8 years I could print about two hundred words per minute! I've got a job and promotion!) Hmm... Well I just wanna say that it's very important to obtain new skills. And if you are a musician the ability of reading music makes you much smarter!

The Reasons You Should Learn to Read Music:

1. It builds confidence in your ability and allows you to 'understand' what you're playing.

2. You'll be able to teach yourself anything out of a book or magazine..anytime, anywhere.

3. You can supplement your income by teaching others.

4. There are great gigs to be had out there but some of them require that you read at least a little bit.

5. You can communicate intelligently with other musicians using standardized musical language.

6. When learning new songs, you can write out drum charts for yourself quickly and more efficiently. This saves valuable time.

7. You can program sequencers in step mode.

8. It is easier to learn musical concepts as well as other instruments with a fundamental knowledge of basic theory.

9. Most studio work, show work and more challenging styles such as jazz and fusion, require reading.

10. You'll find that many higher caliber players read music. This may give you an opportunity to play on their level.

Thank you so much if you read this article! And remember! It is very important to learn reading music as soon as it possible!

Besides take a look at my site about Single Bass Drum Pedals.

Hello there my friends. My name is Albert. I am a beginner drummer. I fount a lot of useful information about drums. I gathered it and wrote an article about the point of learning the ability to read music. Thanks)

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