Practice

[Pomster]

After a couple of weeks now my fingers are, dare i say it getting there. I'm now trying chords but I cant get my left hand to play chords whilst i' play the melody with my right hand.

Is there any training tips etc to help, or is it just sheer persistance?

 

[Pomster]

Trying to learn Gary Jules mad world

 

[happyrat1]

Think of your fingers as percussive instruments.

ie. Try simply tapping the beat on your knee with your left hand while you play the right hand part and then eventually practice transferring the beat to the left side of the keyboard.

A piano is technically classified as a percussive instrument. We play it as though we were tapping out rhythms with our fingers.

Correct timing can be the toughest part for a novice player to master.

Gary

 

[Rayblewit]

but I cant get my left hand to play chords whilst i' play the melody with my right han

It is a frustrating learning process. At this stage many people just give up.
Coordination. Your timing will suffer too as you learn. But don't worry about that. Just be patient and persistent.
It took me years to get it running smoothly. Just keep practising and one day the fingers will know exactly where to go before the brain even tells them.
Cheers Ray

 

[RalphL]

I think the piece of music in the video may be too much stretch for beginners. I learnt that being able to play a piece requires many techniques than just following the falling bars. For example timing, coordination were already mentioned above. There are a few more, eg scales,arpeggios, intervals, etc.
You may want to follow some method books or online programs. These programs/books break down the music to smaller topics and train you to make small gradual progress. Then before you realize, you can play a difficult piece by putting your skills together. That'd be a much less frustrating process in my opinion than trying to follow these videos right away.

 

[Pomster]

The video was just for learning which keys to press. I constantly stop, pause rewind

I guess thats my way of learning?

 

[CowboyNQ]

Is there any training tips etc to help, or is it just sheer persistance?

Persistence is definitely a big part of learning anything new and challenging.

I have struggled with left hand/right hand independence my whole time playing keys. It's something I'm not naturally good at, and I'll share with you what I do when learning a new piece.

If it's a pretty simple piece, I chunk it down one small part at a time and learn it very slowly, chunk by chunk. I don't force myself to learn too much in any one practice session as I find I "hit the wall" and become frustrated as nothing new gets retained. Then I put all the chunks together, again very slowly. Then I repeat and repeat and repeat until I can play the song at the correct tempo. Then as a last step I play through it several times very slowly again, before bringing it back up to tempo. Then it's done. Depending on the length of the song and how often I get to practice, it sometimes can take a little while to get the thing up to performance standard. I also find I need to refresh every so often too to keep my skills on a particular song up.

If the piece is complex, I do everything exactly as stated above, except I learn both hands separately. So I apply the above method to the right hand only until I have it perfect. Then I start with the left hand and do the same. Then I put them together, again using the above method. This seems to lock it in really well for me. Sometimes I'll do right and left in chunks and then learn together before combining the chunks, sometimes I'll learn the whole song right hand then the whole song left handed before putting them together. With longer songs I tend to go the first method as I'm rewarding myself by playing something recognisable sooner.

That's how I've done it since I was a little bloke. May not work for you, but hope it gives you some ideas in any case.

 

[odnt]

You should start with major triads and learn every chord in every inversion all the way up the keyboard with both hands ( seperate hands , not both at the same time).

Start with the white keys, so C, D, E, F, G, A, and B.

The C chords would be C-E-G, E-G-C, G-C-E, and so on from the bottom of the keyboard all the way to the top.

The D chords would be D-F#-A, F#-A-D, A-D-F# etc

You’ll also want to learn at least B flat and F sharp too if you plan on jamming with a broad range of musicians.

Then learn all the minor chords – so C would be C-Eb-G, Eb-G-C etc You should know all of them.

You should practice every chord all the way up the scale as well – C –C# - D –Eb – E – F – F# etc

And keep doing it with both hands at the same time until you can do it with your eyes closed.

That will get you started J

 

[Pomster]

Had my first lesson with my second tutor today. Only a young chap at 24 but yeah i'm quite happy with him .. Think we'l get on well.

He's given me some basic exercises to do for the week, to help build up the strength in my fingers, and he corrected me on my posture. He also recommended i put a coin on top of my hand when i'm practicing as my forearms and wrists keep dropping and my finger tips lift of the keys

There you go .... 3wks in and i'm already picking up bad habits

 

[Fishingmusician1]

When I took a few piano lessons years ago, my instructor taught me that to learn how to read music and play a piece, to play the left hand part 5 times first and then the right hand 5 times, and then put them together. Each hand learns independently, which will make it easier to play them in unison when the time comes. As has already been mentioned, build up very slowly so you can go at an easy pace where you have less chance of making a mistake by rushing. Also good advice above is to learn chord inversions up and down the keyboard starting with major chords and learning at the very start major scales going up a half step at a time until you get the note memory. There is a ton of stuff you can learn on Youtube but don't overwhelm yourself with that now. It's good you have a teacher who can take you slowly through the steps. I was a drummer as well, and the same advice applied when learning rudiments or new beats or fills. Take it as slow as you can and build it up and it will get easier. It's natural that you will have bad habits in the beginning. You're fortunate to have guidance.

 

[delaware dave]

Everything you need to know about practice is here. Listen to the whole thing

 

[happyrat1]

"Base-uh-ball been berry berry good to me."

Chico Rodriguez aka Garret Morris.

Gary

 

[happyrat1]

Actually Jordan Rudess has put out some excellent videos on his warmup exercises and general tutorials.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jordan+rudess+exercise

Gary

 

[CowboyNQ]

Everything you need to know about practice is here. Listen to the whole thing

I'm unclear. Is he talking about practice?

 

[Pomster]

Hmm ... I think he's saying he practices practice

Y'all hear it maaan, com'mon

 

[Rayblewit]

Actually Jordan Rudess has put out some excellent videos on his warmup exercises and general tutorials

Yes indeed.
How's this one? if you have an hour to spare.

 

[happyrat1]

The interesting thing about that particular Rudess video Ray is that he's playing on a Kurzweil K2600 or K2000. His studio way back then looks a lot like mine looks today.

Pretty advanced stuff for a beginner though.

Gary

 

[Pomster]

He has bad habits of dropping his wrists, my teacher tells me off when i do that! lol

 

[happyrat1]

Yeah but ask your teacher when's the last time he got a multi million dollar recording contract

But seriously though, your teacher is correct. He plays with his wrists in a bad position.

Gary