Classical piano is probably the most expressive and complicated genre to learn in terms of note and harmony variation. You never know what’s coming. Arpeggiated chords? Trills? A chord attack? But that’s what makes it a great challenge!
There are those pianists who don’t focus much on advanced classical pieces and lean more toward popular or contemporary pieces. Most often, a good piano arrangement of a popular song can actually sound ten times better than the original song that you may hear on the radio. Some people find them easier to play and learn because arrangements usually take advantage of chords in the left hand that can be easily identified and used throughout the entire song while the right hand plays the melody. And unlike classical music, a popular song will almost always follow the format of intro, verse one, chorus, verse two, chorus, bridge, and chorus. This can make it a little easier because the verses and choruses will sound similar, if not exactly the same.
Learning to play popular and contemporary pieces can be even more fun if you or someone you know has a good singing voice and can sing along to the piano. This is called accompaniment piano, and it can be more difficult to master than you might think.
Even though most contemporary piano sheet books come with piano/vocal/guitar notes and lyrics, this doesn’t mean that you’ll have an easy time fitting the vocals and piano accompaniment together. To make it easier on you, here are six steps you can keep in mind when you’re learning how to play accompaniment piano.
1. Chords are primarily played in accompaniment piano, while the singer provides the melody. The piano acts as a supporting role, not the main role.
2. Be careful not to overplay, especially on an acoustic piano. Pianos are very strong instruments and can easily overpower someone’s singing voice. When you come to any sections in the passage which must be played forte (loud), make sure to limit your aggressiveness at those times.
3. You must lead the singer without making it too obvious. Playing the first note of every vocal line can help guide the singer and cue his or her vocals without sounding awkward or too obvious.
4. You can double the root note of the chords to give weight and expressive range to the chord progressions. The result is a more effective tonal foundation for the vocalist.
5. During the times that the singer isn’t singing, you can create musical fills as it relates to the melody and chords. This is basically the time that the piano accompanist should shine.
6. Make sure to maintain a good knowledge and study of chords, as they are the main tools in your repertoire for accompaniment piano. The more chords that you know, the better equipped you will be.
Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:
For a complete course on how to learn and master accompaniment piano, check out How To Accompany. There is a 30-day moneyback guarantee, so you can give it a whirl for a month to see how it works and how you can benefit from it.
Glee is my new favorite show. It’s one of the most successful new primetime TV shows this year and I gotta say that I’m hooked, yet slightly disappointed that they’re taking a winter break and putting it back on the air in April.
I think Glee has had so much success because it incorporates comedy, drama, and music and performance into one incredible hour-long segment with fantastically talented characters that can appeal to the younger generation (the high school characters) and even the older generation (the teacher characters). This show has a wide range of audiences, and it’s easy to see why.
Lucky for us piano players, Glee has just come out with a brand new piano/vocal/guitar songbook with 120 pages of Glee’s best hit songs so far. The book is made up of 16 songs, including Take a Bo, Alone, Somebody to love, Walking On Sunshine, Don’t Stop Believin’, Halo, Push It, Confessions Part II, It’s My Life, Gold Digger, Keep Holding On, Rehab, No Air, and Bust Your Windows. It doesn’t say what level you should be at to start practicing with this book, but I would expect that it to be at the medium/intermediate level of piano playing.
You can search for these songs on YouTube with the word “Glee” included in the search to hear these incredible arrangements. Their most well-known one is Don’t Stop Believin’, originally sung and released by Journey back in 1981. You can listen to the Glee cast’s arrangement in the YouTube clip below.
The new year (or new decade , rather) is only a couple of days away. Do you have your New Year’s resolutions set and ready to go?
Sometimes I think it’s kind of funny how most people mark January 1st as the beginning of a “new and better year.” You don’t really need a new year to achieve any certain goals, but I guess it gives a lot of people a clean-and-fresh-start type of feeling.
The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that people make ridiculously huge goals to achieve, but don’t make any real plan or mini goals to get there. Quitting smoking, getting into shape, and improving school grades are great goals, but they also take a lot of work and lot of time. Most end up falling off the wagon and never getting back up again.
I’ve done this. Since I stopped musical conservatory training, I’ve been not-so-great with making time for piano practice. After all, playing the piano is really just a hobby I do now. My worst habit is learning one or two pages of a piece without learning the rest. I probably have 10-15 pieces that I could play without their ending because I never stuck around to learn the rest. I always get bored and move onto another piece or get side-tracked and distracted by something else that reduces my practice time.
It’s time to set things straight. Here a few guidelines that you and I can both take to make it a better year for piano practice.
Make time to practice. There are only 24 hours in a day and almost everyone struggles to get everything done before the day is over. You don’t have to spend hours practicing the piano. In fact, you don’t even have to spend one hour, or half an hour. Spaced repetition is the best practice method. Long periods of practice are unproductive because the brain starts to tire and get bored after a while, thus resulting in less effective practicing. Try spending at least 15 – 20 minutes a day practicing. Maybe break that down into 5-minute sections of three or four pieces that you are working on.
Start off small. So, you want to tackle a piece that is 27 pages long? You’ll get there, passage by passage. Don’t rush it. Make it your goal to play one entire line within one week. Make a second goal to learn one an entire page by the end of the month. Mini goals like this will make the task seem less daunting.
Play it 10 times repeatedly. As Chopin once said, “Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” Take one bar or one passage, and play it 10 to 15 times. Repetition forces your hands and fingers to get used to the positioning and forces your brain to memorize the passage. By the 10th repetition, you’ll probably notice that you can play the passage faster and more easily. Yes, it can be tedious, but it is necessary.
Use the metronome. Ah yes, the dreaded metronome. We all love that terrible little device that sends a piercing clicking noise through our ears and literally forces us to know the truth about our playing in conjunction with timing. Don’t avoid it. Use it. Lucky for you, practicing with a metronome for long periods of time messes up your personal sense of timing, so remember to keep metronome practice short. Read my post about how to effectively practice with a metronome here.
YouTube It. If you want to learn a specific piece, do a search on YouTube and you can listen to various interpretations. There are even thousands of tutorials that people make to help you learn. You can watch a person play and study the hand and finger movements as often as you want. Listening to a certain piece repeatedly is very helpful when you practice because your brain automatically develops a framework for what the finished piece should sound like, and then you can add your own artistic components to make the performance your very own.
Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:
2010 is going to be a big year for everyone. I know how hard it is to force yourself to sit down and groan through the repetitive and tedious movements of a certain passage, but it must be done to achieve what you want. Take these tips with a grain of salt and remember how good it feels once you’ve completed and mastered a piece.
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Posted 2 months, 1 week ago at 1:54 pm. Add a comment
By its simplest definition, staccato is the execution of play in which the finger is instantly bounced off the key, producing a very brief sound with absolutely no sustain. Basically, it’s a very swift and quick “plunk” of the piano key or keys.
Playing staccato ensures that the backcheck is not engaged and the damper cuts off the piano’s sound immediately after the key is pressed. There are two music notations to denote staccato, the normal (dot) and hard (triangle). For normal staccato, the jack is released, while in hard staccato, the finger moves up and down much more quickly and leaves the key before the jack is released.
So, when playing in normal staccato, the key drop is generally about half way down, while in hard staccato, the key drop is usually less than half way down. The damper returns to the strings more rapidly, thus resulting in a shorter note duration. Since the backcheck is not engaged, the hammer can actually bounce and make repetitions seem very tricky depending on speed of playing.
In staccato, there is no sustain. Play the staccato notes as if they all include rests after each of them.
I, myself, have experienced problems executing staccato at relatively quick speeds. This happens with many piano players, usually because it is being played at the wrong frequency where the hammer bounces the wrong way. Changing the speed and the amount of key drop will help optimize the sound staccato and correct execution.
Considering the fact that I’ve talked a lot about key drops and hammers, you should know that it really helps to understand how a piano works to learn how to play staccato correctly. Staccato can be divided into three groups depending on how it is played:
Finger Staccato. This is played by holding the hand and arm still, using the finger to press the key in a pull motion.
Wrist Staccato. This is played with a very neutral motion. The hand neither pulls nor thrusts, and is mostly played with a flick of the wrist, or wrist action.
Arm Staccato. This is played using a thrusting motion, with the upper arm executing the motion.
As you progress from finger staccato toward wrist staccato and arm staccato, you’ll likely discover a number of new things. Working toward wrist and arm staccato adds more mass behind your fingers. Therefore, using finger staccato will give you the ability to produce the lightest staccato, and is mostly used for single notes, or notes played pianissimo. Obviously, arm staccato allows you to use the heaviest touch and is useful four passages that use a number of notes and/or chords and which are generally played forte. Wrist staccato lies there somewhere in between.
Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:
Some music teachers frown upon the use of some staccato plays (specifically, wrist staccato), but it is generally very useful to become familiar with all three types. Changing between the three types of staccato can help reduce fatigue during a long piece. Body movement plays an integral part in playing in staccato, and you must learn to use the weight of your body to execute the sound, while remaining relaxed at the same time so as not to produce stress over the course of playing the passage or composition. To vary the speed of staccato you must remember that staccato repetition is controlled by the amount of up and down motions. Therefore, the smaller the motion, the faster the rate of repetition.
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Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago at 9:23 pm. Add a comment
