Become a piano genious in 6 months GUIDE //COMPLETE!

Victor V. wrote:Yeah well, you can either be a genius and start composing something from that mistake, which would be awesome, or you could just keep playing like the mistake never happened

I see what you did there . it depends if the mistake sounded good or not. its a matter of taste.

I taught my self to play songs up to the equivalent of level 7 during the last year but I made the huge mistake of essentially, though unintentionally, throwing threory out the window.

I have only one goal when it comes to piano, I want to be able to improvise seamlessly. Obviously this will take lots of time and practice, which I am fine with, but I don't really know the rules.

I've learned main scales and arppegios, but I don't understand their applications. What am I supposed to do with the scales?

I wrote a ****load of **** here, but my stupid mouse got this backspace button that I accidentially pressed.

Anyway, I see you dont understand, but it's easy.

1. Pick the scale you have learned, I suppose you know the C scale is all the white keys when you start from C ( when you start from A it's A minor ). When you start from another key then the scale states it is you change its mode, but that's to complicated right now.

2. It's all about tension and release, C(home)DEF(street)GAB(another place)C <--- the first C is very relaxed, the F have a little bit of tension and the last C just want you to go back to the first C. It's like C is home, and when you go away from it you go to another place, but in the end you really wanna go back home again.

3. So lets make a song, what you do? It's easy, with your left you can play some arps or chords in a pattern of your choosing. In the right you play a melody you figure out as you play.

4. As you play the song will come out of the blue, improvised, at first it can be hard, but it will get easier, and not all will sound good, but aslong as you keep youself inside the scale it will sound fairly good if you have a nice rythm in your playing.

A scale is a group of notes that sound good together.

SinkingHigher wrote:I taught my self to play songs up to the equivalent of level 7 during the last year but I made the huge mistake of essentially, though unintentionally, throwing threory out the window.

I have only one goal when it comes to piano, I want to be able to improvise seamlessly. Obviously this will take lots of time and practice, which I am fine with, but I don't really know the rules.

I've learned main scales and arppegios, but I don't understand their applications. What am I supposed to do with the scales?

Once you've chosen a scale it's your "worksheet" for your song, these are the notes your song will consist of. Start with the first tone of the scale and go out "exploring" but eventually you will want to come back to the note you started on to get the feeling that a "phrase" is finished. It's like when you're writing a book, you start with capital letter and end with a dot.

So lets say im playing in C major I have these tones to choose from:

C D E F G A B
C Major, D minor, E minor, F Major, G Major, B Dim

So I start counting a tempo, and start from the tone C and chord C Major and jump to G and then climb my way back down to a C, but I time it so that exactly when I hit the C, the next measure starts so just when I hit the C tone, I can change to maybe A minor and give it a nice effect of going from happy mood to sad mood.

This is a short example of one single phrase of a song. When you get better you get more fluent. I KNOW you will get this soon.
I've only played for a year and 2 months now and I can improvise songs with my eyes covered.
Just follow the guide and ask when you get stuck with something =) make sure to take youre time on every step

I decided to take a jump and just go for it. It turns out I'm not as horrible as I thought! (Not to toot my own piano).

Thank you guys so much for your responses.

pianohama, when you chose that string of chords, is there a rule for that or did you just make it up?

I noticed the desire to go back "home" before I read about it. My strength is melodies, but I have trouble matching the chord in my head to the piano. With some ear training and practice I'm sure most of my problems will disappear.

One last thing: After I play through a bar or phase that I've improvised, I feel lost and don't know where to go next.

Say I alternate through chords C Major and D Minor (I think? D + F# + A)

Is there like a rule or guideline for following that up? A minor seems to work but then I'm lost again and can't find a melody for it.

You can change to any chord you want, as long as you go back to C major eventually.

F# Major, G# Minor, A# minor, B Major, C# Major, D# Minor, E# Diminished <- i don't understand where that comes from

i only played improvised for years ha ha its a good way to start i think if u have a good sense of what sounds good.... then move onto theory and technique

great subject!

What happened to Pianohama? We could do with some more of his input.

pianohama wrote:
Lesson #3; Learning the chords of the scale

Ok, this part is probably going to be the most difficult one. If you haven't already, you will start learning the chords of the F# Major scale which is;

F# Major, G# Minor, A# minor, B Major, C# Major, D# Minor, E# Diminished

Now what you have to learn now is a very important arpeggio pattern that is used in many modern pieces.

I will demonstrate it with a C-Major chord: C3 -> G3 -> C4 -> G3 -> E4 -> G3 -> C4 -> G3 (repeat)

So what you will do is; learn all the chords, pick one of the chords and practice the arpeggio pattern, once you can play the arpeggio for the chord without having to even think about it, it will be much easier to learn it for the other chords.

When you know how to play the arpeggio for all the chords, you are ready for the next lesson!

I'm just quoting pianohama's opening post. Can someone please explain what he means by this pattern C3 -> G3 -> C4 -> G3 -> E4 -> G3 -> C4 -> G3. I can't understand what he means by C3, G3, C4 etc.

Thanks.

C3 = C in the third octave of the piano/keyboard, counted from left to right when facing the piano,
G3 = G in the third octave,
C4 = C in the fourth octave,
E4 = E in the fourth octave, and so on.

Note: The first two keys furthest to left are usually called A0 and B0 on an 88 keys piano. I think it's because they are not part of a full octave. Then the first octave begins, with C1 of course and ends on B1. The last C and the last key of the piano is C8.

Explained in a picture:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_ideas/Phys_img024.jpg

Finally a link that explains proper fingering for various scales:

http://www.audiblefaith.com/artists/rharrell/music/pianoscales.html

That's brilliant. Thanks very much.

Good explanation Pianoted Thanks for the input. Feel free to ask any questions that you are curious about guys. I might update the original post soon and add some Jazzy stuff in there.

Thank you, Rayman and pianohama, glad you appreciated it. I have yet to start practicing the scales and look forward to it. Still waiting for the chance (and for saving enough money!) to buy a digital piano.

But that gives me a good opportunity to brush up on the theoretical stuff. I will probably ask some questions about scales and chords when I start practicing them.

Pianoted wrote:Thank you, Rayman and pianohama, glad you appreciated it. I have yet to start practicing the scales and look forward to it. Still waiting for the chance (and for saving enough money!) to buy a digital piano.

But that gives me a good opportunity to brush up on the theoretical stuff. I will probably ask some questions about scales and chords when I start practicing them.

You're from Sweden right? I am too.

I am currently selling a digitalpiano(in perfect health) if you are interested.

Hey great (jag vill gärna titta på det/would like to take a look at it.) What brand is it?

I'm from Iceland, but living in Malmö trying to find work (hope we are not too far apart!) You can PM me if you prefer that.

Pianoted wrote:Hey great (jag vill gärna titta på det/would like to take a look at it.) What brand is it?

I'm from Iceland, but living in Malmö trying to find work (hope we are not too far apart!) You can PM me if you prefer that.

http://www.4club.com.ua/published/publicdata/CLUBCOM4CLUB/attachments/SC/products_pictures/YAMAHA%20DGX-620_enl.jpg

Check this picture out, it's a Yamaha DGX-620. It's both a digital piano AND a keyboard, which is good because if you get bored sometimes you can try playing one of the other 500 sounds that comes with it.

You can also record a song on the piano, and put it on a memory stick and then putting it on the computer(creates a midifile, which is very handy!).

The buttons are weighted and feels very real, except that they aren't made of wood. You can check the other specs online.

I live quite a bit away from you, in Enköping(Near Uppsala). If you are interested let me know through a PM!

I know a bit about this one, was considering the DGX-630 or one of the Casio Privia models.

I'll check and see if I can get a ride to Enköping or Uppsala and contact you through PM tomorrow, with questions and more.

Tack så mycket!