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Playing the Piano: How to Read Chord Symbols
When you encounter piano sheet music or songbooks containing just melodies and lyrics, you usually also get the little letters and symbols called chord symbols [more…]
How to Use Volume in Your Piano Playing
Volume is perhaps the most easily recognized and executed technique in bringing your piano playing to life. Varying degrees of volume give your piano music a different dynamic. And that’s exactly what [more…]
How to Articulate Your Piano Playing
The various ways to play a note on the piano are called articulations, often referred to as attacks.You use articulation to place an accent on certain notes or slur over other notes and generally add interest [more…]
How to Use Piano Pedals
The two or three pedals on your piano help make your playing dynamic and interesting. Using the pedals adds to the ways you can dress up your music. [more…]
Playing Grace Notes, Trills, and Glissandos on the Piano
Aside from the range of regular notes, composers occasionally enliven piano pieces with fancy note combinations that add a bit or interest and elegance to the music. Grace notes, trills, and glissandos [more…]
Playing the Piano: Adding Time to Musical Notes with Ties and Dots
In music, ties and dots are symbols that add more time or length to the notes you play on the piano. If a quarter or half note doesn’t quite cut it, the composer throws in some of these value-adding notations [more…]
Using a MIDI System with Your Digital Keyboard
An acoustic piano does one thing — produces piano notes as you press the keys. But, with a MIDI system attached to a digital or hybrid keyboard, you can connect to and communicate with other keyboards, [more…]
Note Names in the U.S. and U.K.
In the world of music, you may encounter different names for the many notes used. The U.S. and U.K. standard terms differ, but the U.S. names — which were originally translated from the German names for [more…]
Extending Notes with Dots and Ties
All notes have a certain value, indicated by the size and shape of the note, that determines how long a pitch should be held by the voice or an instrument. Sometimes, however, you want to add to the value [more…]
Understanding Simple and Compound Time Signatures
Written music always contains a time signature, which looks like a fraction and is found at the beginning of a piece of music. In the time signature, the upper number represents the number of beats per [more…]
Measuring the Distance between Pitches with Intervals
The distance between two musical pitches is called an interval. Intervals are important to music because they build scales and chords. In other words, music gets its richness from intervals. Composers [more…]
Creating Music with Chord Progressions
A chord progression is a group of chords that you use to create music. Some chord progressions just sound better than others, so it pays to experiment. The following table, which shows commonly used major-key [more…]
How to Breathe Fluidly during Piano Exercises
Breathing is an integral part of piano exercises — after all, it's the model for fluid motion where the end of an inhalation is the beginning of an exhalation. When you play the piano think of the music [more…]
How to Warm Up Your Wrists for Piano Exercises
Before you begin piano exercises, warm up your wrists, shoulders, and other body parts. Doing so helps the physical component of playing the piano by heightening awareness of your body and the way you [more…]
Piano Exercise: Practicing Chord Relaxation with a Two-Chord Progression
Aspire to play chords with a relaxed approach — that is, don't hold tension in your hands, arms, and body. You do need a certain amount of muscle tone and firmness in the finger joints to play nice, solid [more…]
Two Piano Exercises for One Hand on Top
Try these two piano exercises, which give you some practice with top/bottom hand positions. The exercises are fun to do on the piano and provide a visual treat, yet they can be tricky and challenge your [more…]
Piano Exercises For Dummies Cheat Sheet
Piano exercises can improve the way you play and heighten awareness of your mental and physical approach to the piano. Warm up before piano exercises by stretching and contracting your wrists; and then [more…]
