Piano For Dummies
Overview
The key to fast and fun piano proficiency!
Whether you’re a wannabe Mozart or are an experienced hand at tinkling the ivories, the latest edition of Piano For Dummies has what you need to take you to the next level in making beautiful music using this much-loved and versatile instrument. Working as an introductory course—or as a refresher to keep those fingers nimble—you’ll find information on getting started, improving your technique and performance, and the best ways to practice until you hit finely tuned perfection. And, along the way, you’ll pick up the techniques for different styles, including classical, blues, and rock.
In an easy-to-follow style, the book also helps you sharpen your sight-reading. You can also tune in to audio and video online to help you improve your creativity and discipline, as well as hear and see that you’re hitting the right notes.
- Choose the right piano
- Know your keys
- Scale up for success
- Care for your instrument
Whatever you want from your love affair with the old “88,” you’ll find enough right here to keep you hammering happily—and even more proficiently—away for years to come!
P.S. If you think this book seems familiar, you’re probably right. The Dummies team updated the cover and design to give the book a fresh feel, but the content is the same as the previous release of Piano For Dummies (9781118900055). The book you see here shouldn’t be considered a new or updated product. But if you’re in the mood to learn something new, check out some of our other books. We’re always writing about new topics!
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About The Author
Hal Leonard Corporation, headquartered in Milwaukee, WI, is the largest sheet music publisher in the world.
Adam Perlmutter is a freelance music writer, transcriber, and engraver.
Sample Chapters
piano for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Learning to play the piano takes a lot of practice. For that practice to be productive, though, you need to make sure your hands are in the right place to get the notes you want and that you correctly translate musical terms and symbols.Common musical symbols and terms for playing the pianoWhen you’re learning to play the piano, or any instrument for that matter, it can be hard to remember all those different musical terms and symbols — base or treble clef, whole notes or half notes, confusing time signatures, and more.
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Piano
Most musicians at some point find themselves in a rut in their practice sessions. If you've reached this point on the piano, don't despair. You can reinvigorate your sessions with some fresh approaches, such as the following. Some of these ideas may seem unconventional or even counterintuitive, but when used thoughtfully, each one is all but guaranteed to yield great results in both practice and performance.
Piano
After you decide to hire a private piano teacher, your next step is to find one, a good one. Oh, sure, you think it’s easy, but finding a good teacher takes time, commitment, and patience. Many pianists change teachers three or four times in the span of a career.
Whom else have you taught?
Possible answers:
“I’ve had several students over the years and would be happy to give you some of their names and numbers so that you can contact them.
Piano
Here, you discover how to maximize your piano practice time and make learning and growing more enjoyable. And if you get the itch to perform for your friends and loved ones or the world at large, there are also tips on preparing for your time in the spotlight.
Also, check out these ten additional tips to make practicing easier.
Arpeggios are very useful tools, to say the least. These broken chords, in which the notes are played one after the other rather than all at once, can be used for everything from warm-up exercises to accompaniment patterns. Here you work with a handful of seventh chords.
One good way to practice seventh-chord arpeggios is by using different inversions, as shown on the first five lines of music here, representing the five basic seventh-chord types based on the root note C.
Piano
When you're learning to play the piano, or any instrument for that matter, it can be hard to remember all those different musical terms and symbols — base or treble clef, whole notes or half notes, confusing time signatures, and more. The following can help you keep all these music symbols and terms straight — and if you get stuck often, click here to print this sheet to use as a quick reference when you need it.
Just like you can shade your piano music with dynamics, you can make subtle variations to the tempo of the music you play. The tempo marking at the beginning of a song tells you how fast to play the song.
As a rule of thumb, your goal should always be to keep steady time without unintentionally slowing down or speeding up.
Comfortable hand position and comfortable posture are of the utmost importance when playing the piano or keyboard. Poor hand position can cause your piano performance to suffer for two reasons:
Lack of dexterity: If your hands are in tight, awkward positions, you can’t access the keys quickly and efficiently.
The band is building up to the final chord, and it’s time for the big finish. The singer belts the last lyric, and it’s up to you to drop the curtain. Quick! Grab a handful of these finales and you’re sure to receive an encore request.The I Loved You, You Left Me finaleThis finale is a simple but effective ending, perhaps even a tear-jerker when played with the right emotion.
When a singer needs a good intro, the pianist needs to be able to bring it. The audience has a tendency to talk between songs, so it’s your job to shut ’em up and announce the start of the new song. Playing a few bars of show-stopping, original material really gets things hopping and leaves them begging for more.
In music, the term mode can refer to a number of different things, but most commonly it describes the different collections of notes found within the major scale, each with a distinctive flavor. Each major scale contains seven different modes, which were first identified by the ancient Greeks. Start with the C major scale, which is based only on the white keys.
Piano
Piano playing is a dynamic experience. Some people think of classical music as old, intellectual, sometimes boring music written by a bunch of dead guys who wore wigs. This may be true (except for the “boring” part), but the sound and feel of classical music is unique. You, too, can apply the sound and feel of classical music to your songs, even ones written in this century.
Piano
A good pianist should always be able to begin and end a piece in an interesting way. You can join the ranks by filing away some stock intros and finales (sometimes called outros) you can apply to any piece of music at any given time. An intro or finale is your time to shine, so milk it for all it’s worth.
Few things are more fun than playing a great intro or finale.
No matter how much you enjoy something, you can’t do it forever. Most composers know this and allow piano players and other musicians places in the music to rest. It may be resting the hands or simply resting the ears, but rest is an inevitable and essential part of every piece of music.
A musical rest is simply a defined period of time in the flow of music when you don’t play or hold a note — you play nothing.
When you play a chord on the piano with the root on the bottom, or the lowest note, you’re playing the chord in root position. But you don’t always have to put the root on the bottom of the chord. You’re free to rearrange the notes of a chord any way you like. This rearrangement, or repositioning, of the notes in a chord is called a chord inversion.
Before there was rock ’n’ roll, there was country. And yes, the piano can still be included in a country ensemble. This style often sounds relaxed, lyrical, simple, and grassroots-ish, but it ain’t afraid to rock, roll, and rumble.Artists like Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Shania Twain, and others put all kinds of musical influences in their country music, including elements of rock, blues, and even jazz.
If there’s one particular music style that embraces all that the piano can do, it’s jazz. Celebrated by many as America’s greatest art form, jazz is king when it comes to interesting chord harmonies, changing rhythms, and improvisation. Legendary jazz pianists like Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, and many others have taken these elements and added them to classic songs to make them jazzier.
Even pop musicians need pianists. Arguably, every song on the radio is a popular song because few radio stations play songs that listeners don’t like. Country, rock, rap, Latin, and many other styles of music are popular with one audience or another.But most people know the term pop to be the category for Top 40 songs and superstar ballads by such artists as Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Prince, and a multitude of others.
The piano is not limited to classical music. Hop in your time capsule and travel to a time when Elvis was still king, The Beatles didn’t have solo careers, and avocado green was a popular appliance color. Rock ’n’ roll burst onto the music scene in the 1950s and 1960s with a pair of swinging hips and masses of screaming groupies.
Piano
Some songs actually begin with rests. That’s right: The performer walks out on stage, sits at the piano, and rests for a few beats before hitting a single note. Rather than give you a long and boring explanation for this, let’s discuss pickup beats and measures.
The first two notes of the song “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” actually fall on beats 3 and 4 of a measure of 4/4 time.
Talk about a broad category of music! And, don’t worry, this genre doesn’t leave out the piano. Soul can encompass anything from R&B (“rhythm and blues”) to gospel, hip-hop, and rap.
Such soulful styles have been made popular by artists like Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, and Otis Redding, and can feature a lot of wonderful piano playing.
On the piano, a trill occurs when you flutter your fingers very quickly between two notes that are close together, either a half-step or whole-step apart. So, what do you call fluttering between two notes that are farther apart? Well, you call it whatever you want, but the world of music calls it a tremolo.
To play a tremolo, pick an interval — anything larger than a whole-step — and alternate playing the two notes as quickly as possible.
Want to get that blues sound in your own piano playing? The blues is a style of music all its own. Heck, it even has its own scale. Here, you don’t apply the blues style to an existing song, but rather create your own blues from scratch. That’s right: You get to be a composer.Whether your dog left you or your boss has done you wrong, playing the blues is as easy as counting to 12.
Piano
Buy them or borrow them — just get your hands on some CDs that you like and listen, listen, listen! Listening to other pianists gives you insight into the quality of your own playing as well as stylistic ideas you can borrow to liven up your performance. Plus, being inspired is always motivating.
Perusing record stores
It used to be you could find a record store on nearly every major street in every major city — not so anymore.
Piano
In the 20th century, many composers and pianists became bored with the normal sounds of a piano. No longer satisfied by the effects of trills, glissandi, and tremolos, these brave pioneers started tinkering around under the piano lid.
Try it yourself. Open your piano lid and pluck the strings with your fingernail.
It’s important not to neglect the left hand while learning the piano. They may not be the most exciting things to play, but by working on left-hand scales you unwittingly master the following music essentials:
Reading the bass clef
Playing with the correct fingering
Using nifty patterns and harmonies
Realizing how much you miss playing with the right hand
Start with some major and minor scales by reading and playing the following scales left-handed.
Piano
One of the most important tools for your piano playing bag of tricks is a good supply of left-hand accompaniment patterns. Any time you’re faced with playing straight chords or even playing melodies from a fake book, you’re left to your own resources to supply an interesting-sounding bass line.
Try chord picking or octave hammering for that extra addition to your sound.
If you’re not ready to hire a piano teacher, an excellent resource for the beginning musician is a good method book. A method book is an instructional book or series designed to teach you how to play a musical instrument in a strategic, proven, methodical manner. Countless volumes of these books exist, each featuring its own “method to the madness,” whether old-fashioned or new-and-improved.
Nothing teaches music better than playing music. The piano is no exception. After a while, you may feel in the mood for collaboration. Lucky for you, the concept of piano duets, ensembles, and bands came along. In any city, college, or university, you can easily find other musicians who simply love to play together.
Learning to play the piano takes a lot of practice. For that practice to be productive, though, you need to make sure your hands are in the right place to get the notes you want and that you correctly translate musical terms and symbols.Common musical symbols and terms for playing the pianoWhen you’re learning to play the piano, or any instrument for that matter, it can be hard to remember all those different musical terms and symbols — base or treble clef, whole notes or half notes, confusing time signatures, and more.
Keys on a piano and each one's location on the keyboard can be difficult to remember when getting started playing piano. Print this page (the notes are large enough to see easily from a distance) and place it right above the keys on your piano or keyboard to help you instantly recall the note name for each key.
The beat may go on and on, but piano music can be quite dull if every note you play is on the beat. By changing up the rhythm a bit and playing some notes off, around, or in between the main beats, your songs take on a whole new life.Ultimately, the best way to understand swing is to hear it.
Listen to a sample of swing in Chapter 8, Audio Track 16 while you look at the four measures of music.
In music stores, libraries, and online, you find literally thousands of music reference books, sometimes called supplementals, about the piano. Books exist on everything from the history of keyboards to building your own piano (good luck!).
Don’t be fooled: Reference books don’t teach you how to play. They should be used in addition to, not instead of, a method book or teacher.
Piano
When playing a piece on the piano, you sometimes may be tempted to gloss over rhythmic values that look unfamiliar. Rhythmic values basically form the backbone of a piece of music. Ignoring them can have the unfortunate effect of marring an otherwise nice performance. Luckily, you can avoid this problem if you work diligently to gain rhythmic proficiency.
You’re learning to play the piano for one simple reason: to play music. Okay, so maybe you’re also learning piano to impress your friends, but after you achieve the first goal, the second naturally just happens.
Unless you’re playing strictly by ear, you need some music to read. Enter the concept of printed music.
Piano
Scales and melodies are fine material for the left hand, but they aren’t Lefty’s main gig. Rather, on the piano, your left hand begs to be playing accompaniment patterns while your right hand noodles around with a melody or some chords. One of the most user-friendly left-hand patterns is the arpeggio.In addition to pizza, rigatoni, and ciao, the other Italian word that should be part of your everyday vocabulary is arpeggio.
When playing the piano, each hand has a specific function. The right hand, stationed in the treble-clef notes, general plays melodies and the left hand, in the bass quarters, handles the low end. Both hands generally flesh things out by adding harmony. Of course, there are exceptions to these rules; one hand sometimes ventures into the other's territory.
Piano
One of the most important things you can learn as a piano player is an assortment of left hand accompaniment patterns. Here are a few excellent and professional-sounding left-hand patterns that you can apply to just about any song you come across. Each of these patterns is versatile — applicable to both 3/4 and 4/4 meters — not to mention user-friendly.
Piano
Nothing helps your own piano playing like checking out the experts. Many of the great composers of classical and romantic eras were also keyboard players — some of them better known for their playing ability than for the music they wrote. Whether they used a piano, harpsichord, or pipe organ, these old masters managed to find a set of black and white keys to suit their styles.
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