Piano For Dummies

Adam Perlmutter

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119701064
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

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!

Part 1

Getting Started with Piano

IN THIS PART …

Find out what makes playing the piano so satisfying and what elements come together to make beautiful piano music (you’re probably aware of some without even knowing it). Also check out some tips that will make your piano-playing journey a smooth one.

Take a tour inside the piano and meet the extended family of keyboard instruments. Get the lowdown on the two major players in the keyboard arena — acoustic and electric pianos — along with an introduction to the organ and the harpsichord.

Gather advice for finding and purchasing a piano or keyboard, getting one that’s not only right for you now and but will also allow you room to grow as a musician.

Keep your instrument — be it a traditional piano or a digital instrument — clean, in tune, and in perfect working order.

Get to know the keyboard, what makes it tick, where to put your hands and feet, and what all those keys are for.

Chapter 1

Preparing to Play a Piano

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding what makes the piano unique

Getting acquainted with the instrument and reading music

Discovering what you may already know about playing piano

“I love to run my fingers o’er the keys, the ivories.”

These lyrics from the 1915 Irving Berlin song, “I Love a Piano,” were no doubt true for many people when they were written nearly 100 years ago. The piano was in its heyday, and your average Joe and Jane felt owning and playing the piano in their home was almost as important as putting a roof over it. But neither the song nor the sentiment has lost its charm; the lyrics certainly ring true for a whole bunch of people. The piano remains a very popular instrument, with the number of piano lovers growing and its popularity spreading throughout the world. Even as the piano is treasured for its quality as an instrument, it also adapts itself to the changing times through technological advances.

This chapter helps you understand what makes the piano unique and what’s involved in learning to play the piano. You may find out that you know a lot more about music than you thought you did, even if you’re a beginner.

Knowing Why the Piano Is So Special

Playing the piano involves the following fundamentally musical tasks:

• Playing different pitches and melodies
• Controlling the attack and release of a note
• Playing different dynamics (relative loudness and softness)

But playing the piano is different from playing other instruments in some important respects, and the piano has several attributes that make it an ideal tool for learning and understanding music.

Advantages to playing the piano

The piano occupies a central position in the world of music. It’s the gold standard of musical instruments, utilized by composers and arrangers and featured routinely in nearly all musical styles, in chamber groups, rock bands, and jazz trios (everything except marching bands). The following characteristics make the piano a wonderful instrument:

• You can play many different notes at the same time. The fancy word for this characteristic is polyphonic.
• It’s a completely solo instrument. You can play a complete song or other musical work without requiring additional accompaniment or other help from your musical friends. That makes the piano satisfying and self-sufficient.
• It’s the perfect choice for accompaniment. You can accompany a singer, a choir, a dance class, a silent movie, your own opera, or your own soap opera, not to mention any other instrument.
• You can play almost anything on the piano. The piano has an unmatched repertoire of music. You name it, there’s piano music for it.

Advantages to studying music at the piano

The piano is an ideal instrument for studying all about music, starting with the design of the keyboard. As you sit in front of your keyboard, the notes are laid out before your very eyes in a clear, organized, and orderly way. Understanding and playing musical pitches is quite easy because the keyboard presents a clear visual image for your brain to process the way musical notes go up (higher in pitch), down (lower in pitch), or stay the same.

Each key produces a single, distinct pitch, and you can’t beat that for simplicity. Not much skill is required to make a nice, musical sound. Compared with some other instruments I shall refrain from naming (well, okay: oboe and tuba, to name just two), playing any key on the keyboard, no matter how high or low the pitch, is as easy as playing any other key.

Another advantage of the piano is that you can play chords and layer sounds. The keyboard makes it easy to play harmonies and immediately hear how a combination of notes sounds. This really seals the deal.

A skill and an art

After all is said and done, the reason playing piano is so special may be that it’s an activity that invites your full participation and rewards you just as completely. It has its mental side and its physical side. It requires both creativity and discipline, and engaging your mind and body is deeply satisfying.

As you learn to read music and play the notes on the piano, you create information loops from your brain throughout your body. The first loop is from your eyes to your brain, as you take in the notes on the page and process the information. In the second loop, your brain sends signals to your hands and fingers, telling them how and where to move. Your fingers start to develop a sense of what it feels like to move around the keyboard and use different kinds of touch to produce different results from the piano. A third loop is made as your ears hear the sound from the piano and send information back to your brain for it to process: Did I play the right notes and rhythms? Did I play a note too loudly or softly? Does what I play sound musical, overall? All this information helps you to modify the signals you send throughout your body to improve the results.

This full-sensory experience is paired with an interpretive element, as your inner artist is at work. The notes and directions on the page can only go so far in describing how the music should sound, which is why two pianists playing the same piece may create noticeably different performances. Even two performances by the same pianist will come out differently. Playing the piano lets you be the decider when you make music: how fast, how slow, how much more, how much less, how many encores to give your audience.

The combination of executing skills and interpreting the music is something that happens each time you play. Even when you simply play what’s written, your personal interpretation comes through. With the piano, you’re a musician from day one.

Understanding Why People Take Piano Lessons(And Why They Often Quit)

Many people start taking piano lessons as kids, when they don’t have much say in the matter. But adults come to the piano for many reasons, including wanting to take it up again because it didn’t stick the first time around, when they were kids. Following are some reasons you may want to learn or relearn to play piano:

• You want to re-create your favorite songs and compositions. When you play a piece of music on the piano, you bring that music to life. Written music is like a blueprint — a set of directions that tell you what notes to play and when and how to play them. It takes a performer to complete the process that starts in the composer’s mind but is unfulfilled until the music reaches the listener’s ear.
• You like a challenge. There’s no doubt that getting to the intermediate and advanced levels of piano takes time, patience, and practice. Some people relish this challenge. Whatever your ambition, learning to play piano is a never-ending challenge given t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Getting Started with Piano
• Part 2: Deciphering Squiggles on Paper to Create Sound
• Part 3: One Hand at a Time
• Part 4: Living in Perfect Harmony
• Part 5: Technique Counts for Everything
• Part 6: The Part of Tens
• Appendix: About the Website: Audio Tracks and Video Clips
• Index
• About the Reviser
• Advertisement Page
• Connect with Dummies
• End User License Agreement