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Posts Tagged ‘Right Hand’

I’ve been away for a few days at a friend’s cottage for my last vacation for the summer (no Internet of course), so now I’m back to posting regularly again. One of the first things I did when I got home was practice Debussy’s Clair De Lune on the piano.

Whether your goal is to be a musical success, or you just want to add another skill to you ever growing repertoire, learning how to play the piano can open the door to a variety of different possibilities if you have the right skills. Whatever your persona l goals in music are, you have to start somewhere in order to achieve those goals. Learning the music notes and how they correspond to the piano is one of the first skills you must learn.

Hopefully, you own or have access to an 88-key piano or electronic keyboard. Learning how to identify and play those basic notes should be your first step in learning piano. These basic notes are known as the first seven letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. The note, “C”, is always the key that is connected in front of two black keys. The “F” note is the key that is in front of the three black keys which are compacted together. This explanation may seem a little confusing, so it’s best to use a visual aid. Use the diagram below to locate the keys on the keyboard with their corresponding letter notes, and even which line or space they fall on the grand staff.

Musical Notation and Corresponding Piano Keys

After you have gained some knowledge from identifying keys and their corresponding notes, you need to learn how to distinguish between sharps and flats. The black notes on the piano represent sharps and flats, but their use will depend on the side you plan to start from. A sharp symbol (#) identifies a black key that directly follows a white key. Oppositely, a “b” is used as the symbol that denotes a flat, which is most commonly a black note that precedes a white note. So, for example,  D Flat (Db) and C Sharp (C#) are actually the same key on the keyboard, even though they are called different notes. If you don’t understand this now, that’s no problem. It takes time to recognize these and you should find the proper piano teacher or music theory book to help you get familiar with musical notation.

Next, you need to learn where Middle C is located. If you look on the diagram, Middle C is always the fourth C from the left, almost right in the middle of the keyboard. Basically, Middle C functions as a wall that separates the right hand and the left hand of the keyboard. This makes reading and playing music a little bit easier. So, the keys located to the right of Middle C are usually played with the right hand, and those to the left of Middle C are normally played with the left hand.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Study the diagram that I posted above. If you are very unfamiliar with musical notation and which key is which on the keyboard, you should print out this diagram and use it to your advantage. Take it to your piano, look at each note, and play the key. Even further, you can print out tiny letters from A to G on your computer, cut them up, and tape them with scotch tape onto each key of your piano. This may help initially, but it may also be uncomfortable for your fingers when you play. It should merely be used as a familiarization exercise. Once you know these notes, you will need the bare keys of the piano to properly form your technique and avoid bad habits and injury. I wish you good luck!

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I’m definitely a victim of bad habits when it comes to practicing piano and I’ve known this for years. So why does it happen?

Well, most bad habits usually appear out of stress or impatience when practicing a piece that’s too difficult. Here is my top 5 ranking of bad piano practice habits. Read through them and see if you can diagnose yourself with any.

1. Always practicing piano with hands together. This is number one where bad habits develop. The best method is to practice the left hand and right hand components separately a few times before practicing them together. You’ll familiarize yourself more with the notes and timing for each hand.

2. Overusing the damper or soft pedal. In my personal experience, I’ve used the damper pedal a lot to avoid holding down my notes. This was a big no-no, and my teacher caught me every time. To fix this bad habit, I had to practice the entire piece without using the pedal at all. Only when I made sure I was holding all the notes could I start using the damper pedal again.

3. Stuttering. This occurs when a piano player realizes they’ve made a mistake, stops, and goes back to fix it by repeating the passage. In other words, this is known as stop-and-go practice. Most of the time, it feels natural to go back and fix what you just played. During professional piano examinations, marks will be deducted if you play with the stuttering habit.

4. Banging away at the piano. As piano players learning a new piece, we sometimes get so preoccupied with figuring out the notes and the timing and fitting together of both hand finger movements. When this happens, we forget to actually listen to the sound coming out of the piano. This can be difficult because we often put all of our energy into playing, leaving nothing left for actually listening to ourselves play.

5. Weak fingers. Most common among beginners, piano players often experience trouble stretching their hands to their desired keys and putting enough force on them when pressing against them. A lot of beginners have trouble using fingers four and five, and depending on whether you’re right- or left-handed, the stronger hand will likely perform more easily than the weaker one.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

It’s often difficult to diagnose yourself which bad habits you have. My piano teacher picked out all of my bad habits and forced me to fix them, but now that I don’t take piano lessons anymore, I don’t have someone there to tell me what to improve on. I would recommend recording yourself playing the piano and listening to it carefully. You’ll notice how different it sounds because you’ll be focusing all your energy on listening opposed to playing. This makes it much easier to pick out what sounds wrong. Too much pedal? Weak notes? Poor dynamics? You can go back and fix these problems and record yourself as many times as you want until your piece sounds the way you want. I use this method all the time and it works great. It will work for you too.

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