Piano & Keyboard All-in-One For Dummies
Overview
The comprehensive go-to guide for building keyboard skills
Being able to play a tune on the piano can bring you a lifetime of sheer aesthetic pleasure—and put you in serious demand at parties! Whatever your motivation for tinkling the ivories, the latest edition of Piano & Keyboard All-In-One For Dummies gives you the essentials you need both to build your playing skills and expand your knowledge of music theory, from deciding what keyboard suits you best to musing on the science of what makes music so emotionally compelling.
This indispensable resource combines the best of Piano For Dummies, Keyboard For Dummies, Music Theory For Dummies, and Piano Exercises For Dummies and includes practice strategies, as well as access to streaming and downloadable audio to help guide your progress. In addition to becoming acquainted with the latest in music theory, you'll learn to develop your sight-reading skills and performance techniques—until you can reproduce pieces flawlessly on request!
- Choose and care for your keyboard
- Practice until perfect
- Compose your own songs
- Hook up to speakers, computers, and more
Learning to play the keys is a never-ending journey of new discoveries and joy, and there's no better companion on your voyage than this friendly, erudite, and comprehensive guide.
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 and Keyboard AIO For Dummies (9781118837429). 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
Holly Day and Michael Pilhofer are co-authors of all editions of Music Theory For Dummies and Music Composition For Dummies. Blake Neely was a contributing author to the 2nd edition of Piano For Dummies. David Pearl is author of Piano Exercises For Dummies. Jerry Kovarksy is a contributing writer to Electronic Musician magazine.
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piano & keyboard all-in-one for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Playing piano and various keyboard instruments can become a lifelong passion, so be careful what you wish for. But it all starts with — and often, even for the masters, comes back to — the basics. This includes scales, posture, and determining which type of keyboard you'd like to play.Building a musical scalePut simply, a musical scale is a series of notes in a specific, consecutive order.
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Piano
So many composers, so little time. Both the famous and the not so famous have written enough piano exercises and études to fill your practice time, not to mention your bookshelf. The most difficult are challenging for any pianist, and many are useful to pianists at all levels. Not surprisingly, the greatest composers wrote some very difficult exercise pieces, but even if you don't get around to playing them, listening can be rewarding and instructive.
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To expand your piano expertise, you should try some broken chord exercises. Broken-chord patterns are common in accompaniment figures and can help make you a well-rounded player. Check out these four patterns found in a wide range of styles.Alberti bass exerciseThe Alberti bass is common in classical-style accompaniments.
Put simply, a musical scale is a series of notes in a specific, consecutive order. Major and minor scales are the two most common types, and they have the following attributes:
They're eight notes long.
The top and bottom notes are an octave apart, so they have the same name.
The series follows a stepwise pattern up and down, and the name of each note in the scale follows the alphabet up and down.
The band is building up to the final chord, and it’s time for the big finish. Why not add a little piano or keyboard as a finale? 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” finaleThe “I Loved You, You Left Me” finale">This finale is a simple but effective ending, perhaps even a tear-jerker when played with the right emotion.
When the singer needs a good intro, who’s going to play it? The drummer? Probably not. You are. A piano or keyboard intro is a great addition to a song. And it can’t be any old intro — it’s gotta be good. 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.
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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 (which pretty much just gives the chord names), you’re left to your own resources to supply an interesting-sounding bass line.
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Sometimes just finding the right arp pattern, sound, and chord(s) on your keyboard is enough for a song. Mix it well, and you’ll be happy. But often arpeggiated parts get to sound a bit static and predictable when you just leave them running on their own.
But wait, there’s more! Here are a few cool tips to further enhance your arp-ing adventures:
Sweep the filter as the pattern plays.
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A good pianist should always be able to begin and end a piece in an interesting way. You can join the ranks of good pianists 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.
Put simply, a musical scale is a series of notes in a specific, consecutive order that you can play on the piano or keyboard. Major and minor scales are the two most common types, and they have the following attributes:
They’re eight notes long.
The top and bottom notes are an octave apart, so they have the same name.
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Certain instrument and effect combinations on the keyboard are matches made in rock-and-roll heaven! Some are commonly used based on musical genre (funk and wah-wah, for example), and others are associated with specific artists.
To help you get the sound you want for various songs, here are the essential keyboard sounds and the effects commonly used and associated with them, often naming artists and songs as examples.
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In simple piano exercises, you play each interval as single notes to see and hear the distance between each. But that’s not harmony. You have to play the intervals together to get harmony.
Playing two notes together
Check out each interval — perfect, diminished, augmented, major, and minor — from seconds to an octave.
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If your keyboard doesn’t have onboard speakers and you want to share your playing with others, you can connect your instrument to a number of different devices or speakers. The main requirement is that the other device must have its own power source.
Here’s a general rule for turning electronics and audio gear on and off when connected to a separate amplifier, powered speaker, or whatever: With both devices off, always turn on the sound-producing item first.
The Apple iPad has a growing number of music applications available and is becoming a favorite tool and toy for keyboard players and musicians around the world. To connect your MIDI keyboard to it, you have a few choices.
A new edition of the iPad seems to come out every five minutes, so you may be working with one of several versions.
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To play keyboard alongside your favorite song, of course, that song has to be playing on something. Many electronic keyboards have inputs for plugging another device (such as another instrument, a microphone, or a music player or iPod or phone) into them. This setup simplifies your cabling and connections and lets you listen to both devices at the same time through headphones.
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In music, a time signature tells you the meter of the piece you’re playing on your piano or keyboard. Each measure of music receives a specified number of beats. Composers decide the number of beats per measure early on and convey such information with a time signature, or meter.The two numbers in the time signature tell you how many beats are in each measure of music.
The most basic form of recording is to capture a keyboard performance as it happens. Whether it’s one person playing solo on a single instrument, a small group, the playback of your electronic keyboard that has drums and accompaniment, or a symphony orchestra doesn’t matter. You set up the recording system as needed, press record, and it all happens at the same time — in one pass.
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Changing the attack and release of a keyboard sound is another common, very effective tweak to make. Many good sounds that have some release after you let go of the key can sound sloppy when you’re playing faster phrases.
To fix this issue, just follow these steps:
Go into the sound or program edit mode of your keyboard.
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This common keyboard sound tweak is sometimes just a small adjustment to darken or brighten a sound; that can be all you need to go from “not quite” to “perfect.” For example, this edit is the first thing many players like to do to acoustic piano sounds. What sounds good playing alone at home doesn’t end up cutting through the sound of a full band when you play a gig.
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A common issue among owners of keyboards is liking a sound though it still doesn’t “feel” right to them. It gets loud too easily or is too hard to control when playing quietly. Playing harder and softer does switch between waveforms, but getting the hardest velocity layer to sound consistently is difficult.
There are a few easy edits to make to correct this problem.
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It’s difficult to have the perfect song any time around. Most musicians feel it’s necessary to do some editing. The fastest way to create a new sound is to simply change the waveform of an existing sound.
Go into the sound or program edit mode of your keyboard.
Find the oscillator parameter or page.
Select a new waveform or multisample.
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One way to extend the length of a note when playing the piano or keyboard, and make it look a little fancier, is through the use of a dot. A dot on any size note or rest makes that note or rest last 50 percent longer.
Dotted half notes
A quarter note lasts one beat, a half note lasts two, and a whole note lasts four.
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The division of music into parts occurs when you link two or more periods on the piano or keyboard that sound like they belong together. They share major harmonic focal points, similar melody lines, and similar rhythm structure. They may have other resemblances, too. Parts can be further linked together to create musical forms.
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No keyboard law defines what sounds you can and can’t arpeggiate; feel free to experiment away! That said, here are some tips and practical advice for matching sounds and arp patterns:
Sounds with a fast attack work well at any tempo. If a sound has a slower attack and you’re playing at a fast tempo or using a fast timing subdivision, the results can be kind of unclear.
After you’ve recorded all the parts you want and are happy with the keyboard performances, it’s time to mix your song. Mixing is the act of adjusting the blend of sounds and parts in a song to make them all sound good (volume, panning, and effects), blend together without clashing (EQ), and ensure each part can be heard without overpowering each other (volume).
Here, you can see the two most common pedaling indications. On your piano, press the pedal down at the “Ped.” sign, and release (pedal up) at the asterisk or at the bracket ending the line. These indications are always shown below the bass staff.
The notch in the line indicates where to change the pedal, quickly clearing any sustained sound (pedal up) and resetting the sustain (pedal down).
If your pro and con list reveals that an acoustic piano suits your needs best or you have decided that you can’t live without one, the following may help select the right model piano for you.
Take location into account
Most older pianos were produced with a particular climate in mind. The wood used to make them was weathered for the finished product’s climate.
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Scales and melodies are fine material for the left hand, but they aren’t Lefty’s main gig on the paino or keyboard. Rather, 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.
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In addition to major and minor chords, piano and keyboard players should be familiar with augmented and diminished chords. Major and minor chords differ from each other only in the third interval. The top note, the fifth interval, is the same for both types of chords. So, by altering the fifth interval of a major or minor chord, you can create two new chord types, both triads.
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Always playing chords on the piano or keyboard with the root at the bottom means you have to jump your hand around the keyboard, which can result in difficult, choppy-sounding playing.
By simply rearranging the order of the notes of a given chord, you can make much smoother transitions. These different groupings of the notes are called inversions.
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Chord playing is one of the greatest pleasures — and biggest advantages — of playing the piano. The piano sounds the best when you make the most of its full harmonic potential.
To get your piano to really sing out, you need flexibility in the wrist to increase your attack speed when you play chords. To balance, or voice, the chord notes, you need control in your fingers to vary the quality of your touch.
Before there was rock and roll, there was country. And believe it or not, you can play country on the piano or keyboard. 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 Brad Paisley put all kinds of musical influences in their country music, including elements of rock, blues, and even jazz.
On a piano or keyboard, a handoff is achieved by passing a melodic line from one hand to the other. Typically your left hand will hand off an ascending line to your right hand, and vice versa.
A hand crossover is for when you find it handy (and impressive) to cross one hand over the other to grab a note or a chord or two.
Playing piano can be like having a choir at your fingertips. You have a ten-member group, some are shorter and some are taller, some like to show off and some prefer to blend in, and one or two really don’t take well to being singled out.
As the conductor of the fingertip chorale, you have control over how each “voice” in your choir responds to your direction.
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 Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, and many others have taken these elements and added them to classic songs to make them a little more jazzy.
Piano
When you know the techniques for playing melodies in the right hand, you’re guaranteed to want to put them to use on the piano or keyboard playing more melodies. The following are four well-known melodies that let you apply hand positions, position shifts, and finger crossings.Ode to Joy:Ode to Joy:">You can stay in C position for almost the whole melody.
Piano
When you understand note values and ways to extend those values with ties and dots on the piano, you can expand your rhythmic range with some fancy ways to divide, delay, anticipate, and swing note values. After all, you live in a world filled with rhythm, and most of the music you hear day in and day out is surprisingly rhythmic.
Piano
Feel like playing some rock or pop on the piano or keyboard? Most early rock and pop songs follow the structure of either the 12-bar blues or the 32-bar blues. Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” is one variation of the 12-bar blues structure used in rock, as is the Rolling Stones’s “19th Nervous Breakdown.”
The Beach Boys were masters of the 32-bar structure, using it in such songs as “Good Vibrations” and “Surfer Girl.
Piano
The songs you find here give you a chance to play music on the piano or keyboard featuring rhythmic tricks, from pickup measures to ties and dots to swing eighth notes and syncopation.
Here are a few tips on each of the songs to keep in mind:When the Saints Go Marching InWhen the Saints Go Marching In">This song has a pickup measure with a three-beat pickup.
Piano
These songs give you some experience adding chords to familiar songs on the piano or keyboard. As you play the songs, try to identify the chords as you play them in the left hand and match them to the chord symbols written above the treble staff. First locate the chord root, then the third, fifth, and seventh (if included).
Piano
As a beginning piano or keyboard player, you will start out with simple songs. Once you get some practice, you’ll be getting antsy for something more complicated. Feeling ready to play songs with more harmony? Each of the following songs explores different ways to use harmonic intervals.“I’m Called Little Buttercup”:“I’m Called Little Buttercup”:">In this song the left hand plays single bass notes while the right hand plays the melody.
Talk about a broad category of music for 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. It’s also great for dancing, although not so much while sitting at the piano.
Piano
Another popular type of three-note chord in the piano playing world, although it’s technically not a triad, is the suspended chord. The name means “hanging,” and the sound of a suspended chord always leaves you waiting for the next notes or chords.
The two types of suspended chords are the suspended second and the suspended fourth.
The concept of using auto-accompaniment is simple: You play some notes on the lower range of your keyboard, and that tells the system to start playing some backing music in the key you gave it. You choose the style of music it plays from the choices presented on the front panel.
The result is the sound of a full band playing, giving you a professional backing track that you’re in complete control over.
A glissando (also known as a gliss in this lazy music industry) is a fast slide across several keys on the keyboard. There’s nothing quite like starting and ending a song with this effect. It will dazzle any audience.
To try a right-hand gliss, put your thumb on a high C note and drag your thumbnail down across the keys very quickly all the way to the bottom of the keyboard.
Piano
Major chords are the most frequently used in piano or keyboard playing. They are the most familiar, and easiest triads to play. It’s a good bet that most folk and popular songs you know have one or two major chords.
You make major chords with the notes and intervals of a major scale. You build a major chord by starting out with a root note and then adding other notes from the desired chord’s scale.
Piano
Piano and keyboard players need to know how to build a minor chord. Like the major chord, a minor chord is a triad comprised of a root note, a third interval, and a fifth interval. Written as a chord symbol, minor chords get the suffix m, or sometimes min. Songs in minor keys give you lots of opportunities to play minor chords.
A trill occurs when you flutter your fingers very quickly between two notes that are close together on the piano or keyboard, either a half step or whole step apart. So, what do you call fluttering between two notes that are farther apart? You can call it whatever you want, but the music world calls it a tremolo.
The blues has its own scale. How do you apply the blues to the piano or keyboard? Its time to create your own blues from scratch. That’s right: You get to be a composer.
You can play fast blues, slow blues, happy blues, and sad blues. Whether your dog left you or your woman (or man) has done you wrong, playing the blues is as easy as counting to 12.
Piano
Position is a common term you hear regarding any musical instrument. Using effective hand positions is vital to playing the keyboard or piano well. From each designated position, you can easily access certain notes, groups of notes, and chords and then move to other positions.
C Position
Many easy piano tunes start at middle C or close to it, so you often find yourself in C position at the beginning of a song.
Piano
If you consider middle C the middle of the keyboard, you can think of the keys to the right of middle C as the East Side and the keys to the left of middle C as the West Side. It’s time to head west.
To explore the lower keys, first reacquaint yourself with the bass clef. The best way to figure out this staff is to dig in and start playing.
Piano
If you want to play keyboard or piano, you will need to have a firm grasp of bar lines. In addition to horizontal staff lines, music employs some vertical lines to help you keep track of where you are in the music, sort of like punctuation in a written sentence.
A bar line divides music into measures or bars, breaking up the musical paragraph into smaller, measurable groups of notes and rests.
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When learning to play the piano or keyboard, you will likely be somewhat confused by sheet music. When you encounter sheet music or songbooks containing just melodies and lyrics, you usually also get the little letters and symbols called chord symbols above the staff.Knowing how to build chords from chord symbols is an extremely valuable skill.
Piano
A key is a set of notes that corresponds to a certain scale. Keys and scales provide a foundation of compatible notes that piano players use to construct melodies and harmonies. Understanding them can go a long way toward deepening your understanding of the music you play.
What does reading key signatures do for you?
Piano
To play the piano or keyboard, you need to know that notes and rests in music are written on what’s called a musical staff. A staff is made of five parallel horizontal lines, containing four spaces between them.
Notes and rests are written on the lines and spaces of the staff. The particular musical notes that are meant by each line and space depend on which clef is written at the beginning of the staff.
If you want to record more than one sound via MIDI, you need to use the full sequencer of your keyboard. Perhaps you want to record your keyboard playing along with an accompanying drum groove or record all the backing parts from the auto-accompaniment features of your digital piano or arranger.
You may want to add more parts to your solo piano performance to make a full production from it.
After much deliberation, and for whatever reasons, you decide to buy a digital keyboard over an acoustic one. Think your job is done? Not so fast, pal. Now you must decide what type of digital keyboard you want:
Digital pianos and organs
Arrangers
Stage pianos
Workstations
Synthesizers
Don’t assume that you’ve necessarily gone the cheaper route by selecting a digital keyboard as your instrument of choice.
An instrument with drums always has a beat ready to go; you don’t have to dig through a bunch of menu options on your keyboard or anything special to hear them. Locate and press the Start/Stop or Play button, and something will start playing. If it doesn’t, try playing a key on the keyboard, and the drums may start with you.
Shifting positions on the piano or keyboard can be smooth and easy when rests are involved, but when the melody doesn’t stop, you must find alternative ways to move between positions. The best way is to use a little maneuver called finger crossing. Finger crossing is one of those techniques that can be awkward at first, but it has a whopping payoff once you get the hang of it.
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As with any electronic device, sometimes things go wrong with a keyboard. It may show funny symbols in its display, lock up or freeze, or simply not make sound. Perhaps you’re just not sure how to do something or whether your keyboard can even do what you’re thinking of. Here are a few tips to help you figure out what’s wrong and what to do:
If you hear anything funny or the unit freezes, the first action you take should be to turn it off, wait a few moments, and then turn it back on again.
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How can you expand your keyboard music with features already included? Modern arrangers have a number of other cool features that help your playing sound fuller and fancier without any extra work on your part.
Adding harmony to your melodies
Block chords is a style of playing right hand melodies where the melody is harmonized with additional notes below it to form full chord voicings, using smooth voice-leading.
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Every keyboard made since the mid-’80s has a connection on the back called MIDI, which stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. This round jack with five pin connections revolutionized keyboard playing and music making by providing a way for all keyboards to “talk” to each other.
Every company making electronic musical instruments uses MIDI in some way; when you see MIDI listed as a feature on a product, you can be guaranteed that it will work with other MIDI devices and with various types of music software.
Most electronic keyboards have some built-in demo songs, which the store uses to show off the instrument’s sounds and sonic capabilities. But this class of portable keyboards, along with many digital pianos, usually also has a library of simple folk songs, holiday favorites, popular classical selections, and instructional songs to help you in your studies.
If you are planning to learn the intricacies of piano or keyboard, the pedals come in handy for developing your own unique sound. The information here gives you the basics on how to use the pedals on your instrument.
Piano pedals
Most pianos come equipped with three pedals.
To the far right is the damper pedal(or sustain pedal).
The key to making good, accurate jumps on the piano or keyboard is the same whether the jump is big or small: Maintain a comfortable, balanced hand position as you jump from the starting hand position across the keyboard to your landing destination. Jumping with an overextended pinky and your hand outstretched like the descent of a giant hawk upon its prey is very common.
If you are a budding piano player, you should familiarize yourself with the major scale. Each of the eight notes in a major scale is assigned a scale degree according to the order it appears in the scale:
1st note: Tonic
2nd note: Supertonic
3rd note: Mediant
4th note: Subdominant
5th note: Dominant
6th note: Submediant
7th note: Leading tone (or leading note)
8th note: Tonic
The 1st and 8th notes, the tonics, determine the name of the scale.
You need to understand something right away to be a piano or keyboard player: Minor scales are no less important or smaller in size than major scales. They just have an unfortunate name. Minor scales come in a few varieties.
Like major scales, minor scales have eight notes, with the top and bottom (tonic) notes having the same name.
You can use the pedal on the piano or keyboard to achieve different effects with your musical sound and add a whole new dimension to your playing. Give these exercises a try for some practice.Uniform Pedal Changes on One LineAlthough changing the pedal with the change of harmony is a general rule, change it more frequently when you’re also playing a melodic line.
Piano
Playing piano and various keyboard instruments can become a lifelong passion, so be careful what you wish for. But it all starts with — and often, even for the masters, comes back to — the basics. This includes scales, posture, and determining which type of keyboard you'd like to play.Building a musical scalePut simply, a musical scale is a series of notes in a specific, consecutive order.
Piano
In Western music, an octave is broken up into 12 tones called half steps, or semitones. To play the piano or keyboard, you should know that a musical scale contains seven notes, meaning that some of the distance between notes in a scale spans one half step, and some spans at least two half steps. In other words, some half steps are skipped when building scales.
Piano
If you hope to be a piano or keyboard player, you need to know the key signatures. Here’s a rundown of the major and natural minor key signatures and a couple of octaves’ worth of notes in those keys, arranged in a scale. (The key signatures are ordered following the Circle of Fifths instead of alphabetical order.
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To be a good piano or keyboard player, you need to understand the anatomy of a triad. Chords begin very simply. Like melodies, chords are based on scales. To make a chord, you select any note and play other scale notes at the same time.
Generally, the lowest note of a chord is called the root note. The root note also gives the chord its name.
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Lucky for you beginning piano players, there’s a method to the madness of key signatures, an order that starts with no sharps and flats and cycles the ring of keys to all twelve keys. Check out the famous Circle of Fifths with the letter names for each possible home key, or tonal center.
As you travel around the circle, you find each of the twelve keys in the Western tonal system.
Aim to situate yourself comfortably in a stable, balanced position so you can play and read music, with room to move freely. Keyboardists can get so caught up in the complication of notes, clefs, fingering, rhythms, and dynamics that they often forget about their bodies.
If you're too close to the piano or keyboard, you cramp up your arms and scrunch your shoulders.
Psalteries, virginals, clavichords, and harmoniums are acoustic keyboards. Honestly, you don’t need a list of pros and cons for these very rare instruments. If you find one and can’t live without it, go ahead and purchase it.
Pianos, harpsichords, and pipe organs are also acoustic keyboards. These pros and cons focus on acoustic pianos because they’re the most commonly purchased acoustic keyboards.
You can rent some digital keyboards, but not all. Some of the fancier models are mostly for sale only, although you may find a used one in good condition. On the other hand, plenty of stores offer a rental option on larger digital pianos or digital organs. Many online stores will ship a keyboard to you and provide knowledgeable staff available by phone.
They combine the best of both worlds! They offer unmatched versatility! They cost a million dollars! Well, not that much, but hybrid acoustic/digital keyboards are expensive. If the idea of a hybrid interests you, there are two ways to go: Buy an acoustic/digital hybrid piano, or have your acoustic piano retrofitted with a digital player system.
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Syncopation in music is often misunderstood. It is, very simply, a deliberate disruption of the two- or three-beat stress pattern. Musicians most often create syncopation by stressing an off-beat, or a note that isn't on the beat.
In 4/4 time, the general stress pattern is that the first and the third beats are strong, and the second and fourth are weak.
Electronic keyboards fall into well-established families or categories of instruments. Each has a relatively standard set of features and is meant to be used for specific musical needs and playing situations. Within each family, you encounter entry-level models that are more basic and then step-up models that add to the quality and number of sounds, number of features, size and quality of the keyboard feel, and so on:
Digital pianos: Acoustic piano wannabes or replacements.
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When you're playing a song in a major key, certain chords sound right for that key, and certain chords don't. The root notes for the chord progression in the C major scale are as follows, including which other chords each one tends to lead to in a typical chord sequence:
I Tonic (C): Can appear anywhere and lead to any other chord.
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 goal naturally just happens. Unless you’re playing strictly by ear, you need some music to read. Enter the concept of printed music.
Nothing teaches music better than playing music. 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, and even most small towns, you can easily find other musicians who simply love to play together.
Piano
There’s nothing wrong with recognizing that you’re a beginner when it comes to playing the piano. Perhaps you took a few lessons many years ago and have now decided you want to get back to the joy of making music for fun and relaxation. That’s great! You’re likely a beginner and should be proud of that.
Maybe you never took a lesson or even touched a keyboard except for using the one on your computer to send a few e-mails and post pictures of your cat.
Piano
You will need to know some things about tempo to play the piano or keyboard. Like heartbeats, musical beats are measured in beats per minute. A certain number of beats occur in music every minute. When a doctor tells you how fast your heart is beating, you can think, “Who cares?”
But when a composer or sheet music tells you how many musical beats occur in a specific length of musical time, you can’t take such a whimsical attitude — not if you want the music to sound right.
When you have a good idea of which type of digital keyboard fits your needs, you’re ready for some recommendations. This information recommends several top brands and models to help you narrow the search for your keyboard.
Recommendations for digital pianos and organs
If you’re having trouble finding any of these brands in stores in your area, contact the companies directly; they’ll be happy to help sell you a keyboard.
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