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Best way to Learn piano
Little back story:
I enjoy making Edm/pop type of music and it works pretty good with little understanding of music theory.
With apps like chord poly pad and beatmaker 3 it's super easy to play in key.
I just think I miss something when I draw the notes into midi or play it on the screen pads. So I bought a roli block, which is a nice solution for leads and stuff but not the ideal solution. I also don't really like the pressure sensitivity of it, midi tools help for that, but it just feels a little of.
I recently got myself a xkey air 2 and I loooove the feeling of it. I just want to learn how to play in key and basic chords, so that I can midi them in via piano. I think it feels way more natural doing it that way.
So now to my question, what's the best way to learn those piano skills? Do you have any beginner Tipps? I played some songs in my childhood, but that was basically learning which buttons to press in which order.
BTW I can solve a rubiks cube in under 20 seconds so I consider my finger skills as pretty quick if that helps XD
Jokes off, I would appreciate some tips from you more experienced piano players.
Comments
If you just want to play chords it's really easy to pick up (much easier than guitar for example). You could literally just look up the common chords and practice them, within a week you should be able to play all the most common chords I would think. then just practice switching between them and you can start writing your own chord progressions.
There's lots of free tuition on YT, and when I first started I bought a course on Udemy called "piano for all" that taught all the basics, and you got to play some simple versions of popular songs.
Songwriting piano skills don't need to be all that elaborate, especially if you stick to keys that don't have too many sharps and flats (there's a reason why most songs are in C or G).
Thanks, well appreciated. When I learned about music theory, I was shocked, that basically different keys are just higher or lower versions and that every major scale has an equivalent minor scale. So it seemd to me that there isn't so much variety, but it's crazy how many diffrent combinations there are with 8 notes and 12 semitones.
I would add that you need to learn the inversions of the chords as well. Playing every chord in the root position will get old fast. Also, when you learn a chord go up and down the keyboard chromatically so you get a feel for the chord in all twelve keys. Same with inversions.
Practicing the chords in both hands is something most folks don’t do, but it will pay off big in right hand piano skills. My training was based in melody, so I have a bias about chord centric approaches.
The emphasis on chords leads to less innovative exploration, IMO. Chords and chord progressions can make music creation rote and lacking in feeling. I’m not saying ignore them... just saying to neglect development of melodic lines will hinder real creativity and original expression. Here is the exercise my teacher, Connie Crothers, taught me about melody creation. That opened the door.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/27012/how-to-improve-your-keyboard-improvising-100-in-three-weeks
Thank you much for the Tipps, yes I will get to the melodys after I get better in chords. Would you recommend learning one scale first ( cmajor a minor) as it's easy to transpose?
I don't think they need to be mutually exclusive, and I certainly agree that melody is (far) more important than chord progressions. It might be coming from different musical genres - jazz versus popular song - that the approach differs.
In songwriting a chord progression is a musical bed, a foundation, upon which the melody rests. The two are interlinked, but the melody is more important. In jazz you might see things quite differently, with harmony in some cases being predominant. In most genres of popular music the melody is always the main attraction.
The key difference of course is that in popular music the melody will be sung or played on another instrument.
If you practice chords chromatically you can avoid choosing scales. The basic chords are major, minor, diminished, major 7, Dominant 7, 6th, 9th, minor 7. There are more, of course, but a good place to start, Thru 12 keys that’s about 100 chords in the root position. Add the inversions and you’re at around 3-400 😳😉😂. Don’t be discouraged, you’ll have plenty of fun with just the basics. 🙏
Yeah that is one thing that really does make piano hard, you have to learn each scale and key individually. That's a lot of stuff to memorise.
Changing key on the guitar just involves moving the capo up and down the frets.
The first thing that comes to mind when reading this is that you have barely scraped the surface of music theory.
It’s not entirely accurate to say that every major scale has an equivalent minor scale - what you’re discovering is modes, and even the common church modes in Western music can be altered.
There is way more to music theory than just chords within two modes, and it’s almost impossible to learn everything there is to know sin just one lifetime.
I had my first piano lessons from my uncles. They used some kiddie piano books. Not sure I'd recommend them for an adult student.
I would however recommend Alfred's Basic Adult All-In-One books. The last piano teacher I had as an adult had me get these books. Just Vols 1 and 2 are enough. Vol 3 is just a bunch of "easy classical" pieces that don't sound very good imo.
https://www.alfred.com/alfreds-basic-adult-all-in-one-course-book-1/p/00-5753/
And what's more, merely "learning" all these things is not enough. You have to get all of these things engrained, "in your hands", so you can play them more or less without thinking. In one sense it's creating a whole new neurological network in your brain.
For someone into typical iPad music production who wants to learn basic keyboards, I think Rikky Rooksby's book, "How to Write Songs on Keyboards", is a decent way to start.
Quite honestly I think anything that encourages people to both read and play is worthwhile. Theory on its own will not lend itself to progress, but adding it to playing will open up a lot of things that might others seem unachievable.
I would also highly recommend always having a piece of music to hand that is beyond your ability to play it and keep working on it until you can.
Sounds like a good idea. For me music making ist alot about hearing, playing. So I don't want to get to taktical, but as I improve my further understanding of music theory it helps me to get which things aline together. As stated I'm really at the start. I guess in today's time you can make alot good music without knowing any music theory, but I'm pretty sure that every successful artist who states he doesn't know music theory, doesn't know that he actually uses music theory everyday...
Well all aspects of music are an ongoing journey, so whichever path(s) you take there’s no real target to reach, more of a series of them, and always one more beyond each one you achieve.
There is the matter of natural gifts and talent. Unfortunately, many can grind away with little progress. Sounds like the OP is good to go.