Advice For Piano Players Just Starting Out....

This article provides advice for anyone just starting out to learn to play the piano.The first important area is learning music theory. It is not a fun part of learning playing the piano but understanding the theory is what will turn the light on as you start playing the piano. Most starting out will never get anywhere without understanding the basic of music theory. All established pianists have a very good knowledge of music theory.

The second area to concentrate on is listening to a lot piano music from pianists like George Winston and David Lanz. Start by listening to some the slower songs while trying to figure out by listen which notes the artists is playing. This is a great way to train yourself to play by ear recognizing notes, chord patterns, and intervals. This might sound hard but over time you will become better at playing this way.

As you listen to the CD piano music you should begin to hear repeating patterns from songs to songs of pianists. You may hear songs that play octaves and fifths will little embellishments. Listen carefully and you will be able to work it out and play the music.

To begin you do not have to work at learning the whole song at one time. You will find that once the main thing is learn from the song you will find the theme or patterns are repeated with small changes throughout the arrangement. For example a song may have a pattern like A-B-A-B-C-A with small changes in different sections of the song. These changes may involve octave changes and little embellishments to help keep the music interesting.

Here is some advice for what a practice session should focus on. A course your practice should be in line with your personal goals for playing the piano.

Working on scales is great for improving your dexterity and helping the fingers learn the feel for the piano keys. Music theory and scales go hand-in-hand because if you know the key a song start in your mind and fingers will know where to play sharps and flats automatically without thinking about them and looking at the keyboard.

You do not want to become obsessed with scales. Just use them as you warm up. Do not worry about making mistakes. Over time you will learn to play the scales with no mistakes and they will become accurate as you improve your pianists skills. Do not play the scales fast. You want to play the scales slowly when you start to get the best benefit of learning.

Learn to develop you ear's ability to hear intervals between notes through practice. This will help you with learning to improvise and playing songs with your own style.

You should identify your personal goal for playing the piano. Do you want to improvise, write and compose songs, or play sheet music by sight? Knowing your goal will help develop your skills for playing.

There are some pianist for example that are totally 'ear' oriented and do not sight-read music very well. But they are able to improvise making up a song or a music theme on the spot.

There are two types of pianists around. Those that only sight read a piece of sheet music very well and those play by ear improvising well. Very rarely will you find a pianist that can do both well. Those that can do both are very exceptional.

Whichever method to decide to develop the theory of music is very important. Understanding theory will help you see the keyboard chord patterns. For sight readers the theory will help you see the patterns and chords in the sheet music and help your fingers play them without looking at the keyboard.

Finally, playing the jazz piano is about playing with expression not just hitting the right notes and chords. It is a great musical instrument that allows you to express emotion and feeling. If you learn to play that way you will have a better sound than some of the better pianists around who play the music correctly but with no emotion and feeling.